Insights

Bedsides, Gravesides, and RIPs

After Martin Luther King was killed, we stopped moving together as a people. Overall, there has been no organized mobilization of us as a cohesive family unit since then because the physical threat of harm via lynching has been removed.  Prior to, and up until the assassination of Dr. King, we were unified in what was known as “the struggle.”  Now, in the age of Obama and the internet, many blacks believe we have finally arrived when the truth is that American blacks have never been so far removed from each other and from their own true nature.  We have shifted from the traditional African centered philosophy of “I am because you are, and because you are, I am” to the very European centered “I think, therefore I am” way of life. As a result, we have embraced the Western individualized, competitive, and power obsessed culture as our own and the worst part is that for the most part, many blacks don’t even know it.   We are however, very good at huddling up to bedsides and gravesides, shouting out our RIPs, and going on back home until the next crisis arises…

A single black mother of three says that those neighborhood boys dressed in red should be arrested on GP because they were all Bloods, no questions asked. Meanwhile, she is upset because landlords known to take Section 8 vouchers won’t take hers. In the case of Derrion Albert, one group of black high school students fought with another group of black high school students and Derrion got stomped to death, though there were no reported gang affiliations. A nation of blacks question how this could have happened while the black elite huddle up to bedsides and gravesides, shout out their RIPs and then go on back home until the next crisis arises… .

We have been taught by the church to value suffering and the redemption of the physical death as was necessary to get through the physical horrors of slavery and Jim Crow. Even today, word on the street is, “As long as you don’t put your hands on me, its all good.”  We have been taught to put up with absolutely any and everything else short of death. No death, no harm, no foul, no problem. You fry the chicken, I’ll make the potato salad and meet you back at the house after we all huddle up to bedsides and gravesides, shout out our RIPs and then go on back home until the next crisis arises…

The slave master finally broke Kunta Kinte with that open air lock down and the braided whip beat down. “What’s your name boy?” “Toby, my name is Toby.” This type of response is a real life tactic of survival that was necessary through the late 1960s when Dr. King was lynched via his assassination in April 1968. Had a spade been called a spade, i.e., had the murder of  Dr. Martin Luther King been identified as the lynching that it was, as opposed to having been reported by the media as an assassination sandwiched between those of JFK and RFK, maybe blacks would have reached back to their African centered roots to respond in a way that would have kept us together.  Maybe the focus would have reverted back to the people after the requisite period of mourning had passed.  No disrespect intended.

Instead Dr. King was identified as one of the martyred political elite though this was clearly not his stance in life.  Had we celebrated the life of Dr. King and continued on with the guiding principles of the civil rights movement, we might have have actually been able to maintain the unity that seems to have eluded us since.  Either way, Africans in America have clearly been acculturated, via media and the educational system, to a Western philosophy that is linear in nature, values individuality, exclusivity, competition and because of all this has an external locus of control.  The worst part is that for the most part, we are not aware of the context into which we have been placed.

On the other hand, African centered philosophy is circular in nature, values family, kinship, and inclusion and because of these factors, has an internal locus of control.  The point here is that a greater state of unity among blacks in America has not been possible thus far because the ew world values we’ve adopted are driven by external events. 

Consider the work of Harriet Tubman who risked her life to bring fellow slaves to freedom via the Underground Railroad or Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman, the men (one black and two white), who were killed by the Ku Klux Klan in 1964 for their participation in the “Freedom Summer” project of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) to register blacks to vote in Mississippi.  Very few people, black or white, have that kind of commitment to their fellow human beings these days and blacks in particular have nothing to “fight against.” 

Instead of looking inward and forward to those principles such as those found in the Nguzo Saba that would sustain us, the black elite continue to look outward and backward to the government for handouts and subsidies to change things when clearly there’s more to the good life than that.  Human rights, civil rights and civil liberties  continue to fall away  unabated, and the people believe that’s just the way it is - all brought to you by the classic fake left, go right shake and bake move.  Can you say, hoodwinked? 

The end result is that unless we come to recognize the real deal, we will continue to huddle up to bedsides and gravesides, shout out our RIPs and then go on back home until the next crisis arises…