#alltragediesmatter

I need to address some incredibly offensive, inaccurate, and racist comments by . . . some dude whose name is not even important to this discussion. His arrogant comments however need to be addressed. In several deluded comments he made in response to a piece I wrote explaining why white people cannot claim to be victims of racism, he made some statements that were patently untrue. He claims that there have been lots of other races of people who have been enslaved and had their histories, identities, religions, and names stolen from them and they aren’t whining and crying about it like us sniveling African Americans. Well, let me set the record straight.

First and foremost, there has never been another group of people kidnapped from their homeland, forced to give up their names, forced to give up their language, forced to give up their families, art, history, culture, and their entire identities to the same extent as Africans who were enslaved in America. Not the Irish, not the Jews, not Cambodians, no one on the planet has endured what the descendants of slaves suffered. Want to know how I know this? Because white people won’t let you forget about Jon Benet Ramsey 30 years later, they won’t let you forget about OJ Simpson, you know they would never let you forget about something as horrific as an event that robbed them of their humanity for generations. The racist troll stated that the Jewish people were enslaved and they pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and it’s only us lowly niggers who keep insisting that we are the victims of racism.

OK, so let me ask a few questions to see if the tragedy of the Jewish Holocaust compares to the tragedy of slavery in a game I like to call Oppression Olympics.

1. How long were the Jewish people enslaved during the Holocaust? Was it for generations? Were Jews taken into concentration camps and made to live there under German rule as inferiors for multiple generations without being able to read, write, or get any education? No, they weren’t. The individuals who entered the concentration camps knew freedom, autonomy, they knew independence before they were imprisoned. They were ripped from a world where they functioned as normal human beings. Those individuals who were fortunate enough to survive that hell, when they were freed, they knew how to live and function as a human being in a world that saw them as human beings.

Africans who were enslaved, those ripped from Africa, transported to the New World, they also knew what it meant to be free. Here’s the kicker, slaves born into the system of slavery, those who never knew freedom a day in their lives, those who never made an adult decision about their destinies, about their lives, never had the same luxury as Jews who were imprisoned in Nazi Germany. Slaves born into they system never learned to read, write, they never learned how to run a household on their own, they never learned how to properly raise their children. Not because they were inherently inferior but because those options were not available to them because of their skin color.

2. Were Jews robbed of their history and identity? Hmmm, excellent question. Jews . . . created history. The entire Old Testament bible is based on their supposed greatness. Jews have the very same religion they had since, as they claim, God created Earth. Do African Americans have the religion our ancestors practiced? Not only do we not know what religion our ancestors practiced, we have been beaten, brainwashed, and convinced that the religion our ancestors practiced was heathen. Jews have a language they can call their own. Jews have songs they can sing that go back millennia. Jews have the same surnames they have had since the beginning of time. Jews have art, food, and books that go back thousands of years. Want to know what African Americans have? We have negro spirituals we learned under the whip of the white slave master because it was illegal for Blacks to practice their own traditions or tell our own stories of greatness. It was illegal for Blacks to even beat a damn drum. What if Jews had bar/bat mitzvahs taken from them? If there were no Jewish holidays on the calendar THEN they might be able to claim equality in the Oppression Olympics.

3. Were Jews dehumanized for their appearance? Well, I’m sure some racist troll who thinks he can put me in my place is going to suggest that Jews’ unique hair texture was different and thus it made them easier to be identified as Jewish, thus, it’s the very same thing as Blacks who were enslaved because of our beautiful dark, smooth skin, our gorgeous thick, wooly, hair texture, our beautiful facial features like our wide noses and our thick lips. We were dehumanized because our women had bigger asses and our men had bigger dicks. It’s pretty easy to take off your yarmulke to hide your Jewish identity. It’s not so easy to take off your skin though. But, I’m sure, racist nudist troll is going to insist that it doesn’t matter, that those things are unimportant. Well, let me take your child, brand them with a burning hot iron, rename them, denigrate them daily for their stringy limp hair, their thin unkissable lips, their flat asses, their inferior genitalia, and their pink, pasty, sickly looking skin. Let me do it to their children for their entire lives. Let me do it to 15 generations of your offspring and then we can see if there is similar damage done to their psyches.

Jews and Germans, for the most part, had the same hair, same skin color, same facial features, same body types. If you put a SS uniform on a Jew, the overwhelming majority of them would be able to pass as their oppressor. Here is a fun fact, slaves didn't have that same luxury. They couldn't pass as their oppressor, pretend to be one of their slave masters simply by putting on a different outfit.
4. Were Jews taken from their homeland? Ahhhh, here is where Jews can claim some competition in the Oppression Olympics. Exodus. Jews were driven from their home at one point in history. Were they kidnapped? Were they transported to another country thousands of miles away living in the piss and shit of strangers chained to them? Were they fed food infested with maggots and rat shit? Hmmmm. Were they chained to the hull of a ship with no water or fresh air? They walked for 40 years in the desert, united, together. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that is not the same thing as being captive on a slave ship.

There is another difference. Jews were given a little plot of land called Israel to do with as they pleased, including the systematic oppression of Palestinians at their discretion and pleasure. I’m going to also note here, and forgive my repetitiveness, but at no point in history were Jews robbed of their God, their names, their culture, their identities. It makes a difference. Want to know how I know? Because if it didn’t matter, Blacks and Jews would be in the same position today. If what happened to Jews was as tragic as what happened to Africans who were enslaved and their descendants then Jews were be in the same predicament as African Americans today. They aren’t. It’s not because they are more resilient, not because they were able to rebound better, not because they aren’t sniveling and whiny and playing the victim card. It’s because what has happened to them doesn’t compare to what happened to slaves. IF it was the same, if the impact of the horrors of American slavery were the exact same as what happened to any other race of people you would find the same outcome. Jews are not better at picking themselves up by their bootstraps. Jews are not better at rebounding from tragedy. Simply stated, what Jews endured in history does not even compare to what slaves endured.

Here’s where I need to empower the Black readers. If you ever find yourself in a situation where you have read and understood the context of what I’m trying to teach you, if you can wrap your head around the fact that no other race of people have endured what we have, if you muster up the courage to confront white people with your understandings, inevitably, you are going to encounter the, “YOU”RE RACIST,” chants from whites who are going to be offended that you would even suggest that what Blacks endured was worse than any other crime against humanity. Here’s what I want you to ask them. First, ask them if every tragedy was equal, if every crime against humanity was the same, if there was no difference whatsoever, why is it that Blacks in America (and in colonized Africa) have suffered greater than any other race and seem to have such difficulty pulling ourselves up by our collective bootstraps like other races? Ahhhhh, not an easy question to answer if you are racist and think there there is something inherently inferior about Blacks in the first place. The ONLY reason Blacks occupy more ghettos, we are more disenfranchised, is because we have been systematically oppressed in ways that far surpass anything that any other race of people has ever endured.

Next, ask them why they are so offended that a Black person would suggest that slavery was the worst crime against humanity. You see, inherent in racism is this notion that if Blacks claim what happened to us was worse than what happened to other races, we are an arrogant, uppity nigger. White people have to have to have suffered more. They have to be the most maligned. They can’t stand to let anyone say that what happened to Africans who were enslaved and their descendants was worst than the Irish and the Jews or anyone else in history because we aren’t human to them. If this were a real competition, and Africans born in America won the Gold medal for being oppressed, white people would contest the results, they would fight and scream that they were the rightful winners. Why? Because they don’t give a damn that millions of Africans were thrown overboard ships. They don’t care that white slavers raped women to make a profit from their children. They don’t care about the horrors we endured because all that matters to them is trying to silence our voices. They only care about refuting facts with their distorted lies in order to claim superior status.

One has to wonder what points white people lose, what privilege they have to give up if they lose the Oppression Olympics. Whatever the cost to them it must be great because they refuse to acknowledge that the American slave trade was the greatest crime against humanity ever. The truly non-racist person would say, “Wow, thank you for opening my eyes to the horrors of slavery. I think what happened during slavery was reprehensible and I for one am willing to adjust my thinking to help eradicate the racism that exists today because of it.” The racist will read the first paragraph or two and then say that Blacks are whiny, that what happened to other races was worse, and that we are just making excuses for our inherently lazy, criminal, dysfunctional behavior. I’m here to tell you that not one unhealthy behavior exhibited by Blacks in America today is not the result of our collective enslavement and the horrors inflicted on us by evil, sadistic white people. Sad, but oh so true.

NO, white people cannot, have not, will never experience racism!

In every single conversation about racism, inevitably white people will insist that they have experienced racism and that my discussion of racism, because it offends them, means that I’m racist.  White people cannot, have not, and will never experience racism.  

Racism is the intricate system of oppression, denigration, and devaluation that deems people of color as inherently inferior and that has existed for centuries.  It is not possible for white people to be born into a society where they are constantly told, in both overt and covert ways, that they are inferior merely because of the color of their skin.  White people are NEVER told that their hair, facial features, and body types are not considered the standard of beauty.  White people have never ever had legislators regulate their lives in a way in which they are left disadvantaged and substandard to people of color because legislators are always white, thus they have never lived in a society where their best interests are intentionally undermined.  

·         White people have never turned on a television and been faced with every face they see that looks nothing like them.

·         White people have never worshipped a God that looks unlike them.  They created God in their image, they have convinced the world that God is white and every image of a Judeo-Christian god (capitalization intentional) for thousands of years has been Caucasian. 

·         People of color have never colonized, controlled, and destroyed a nation and its population in Europe.

·         White people have never had their entire history, names, identities, art, culture, religion and history stolen from them.   Let that and the implications thereof sink in for a minute.

·         White people have never been told that the world’s greatest musicians, artists, philosophers, and scientists are people who look unlike them. 

·         White people are never told that their culture, music, speech patterns, and norms are abnormal.

·         White people NEVER have to fear that people of color are going to control and dictate their fate in a legal, medical, professional, or financial institution.

·         White people have never had people of color dictate their morality and/or social norms.

•             White people have never lived in a society where people of color have denied them rights as human beings nor have they ever been told that their attractiveness means they have to have facial features as close as possible to people of color.

Because white people have never experienced any of those things, they have never experienced racism. 

A white person who has grown up in a Black neighborhood has never experienced racism because racism is not bigotry.  Bigotry is someone not liking a person because of the color of their skin. Racism is a complex, intricate, multilayered system of oppression that informs everything about a person’s identity, both white and black.  Racism informs how parents raise their children, it’s how one is socialized, it is NOT being discriminated against once or twice because you are in an interracial relationship.  Racism is generational, it’s the very fallacious belief that allows whites to think that their ancestors kidnapping, raping, torturing, beating, colonizing, and murdering people of color makes them somehow inherently superior or that it’s a fact that can be ignored so they don’t feel uncomfortable.  Racism is the arrogance that white people inherent because they believe that they can have the last word on every conversation, that they know it all, that they have a right to silence anyone who disagrees with them.

I know, I know! Saying that a white person is racist is the single most offensive thing that a Black person can say.  According to white people, a white person has to be wearing a white sheet, burning a cross, and screaming, “I hate Niggers,” before they can be considered racist and even then, there will be white people insisting that they know them personally and they are a good person and not racist.  I’ve seen it.  

Aaaaand . . . queue the white person who is going to say that they practice Buddhism or some religion where their God isn’t white and thus they aren’t racist but again, racism is not dictated by one single action or experience. 

#MuslimVisasMatter . . . more than Black Lives Apparently

First off, let me be 100% clear.  I know, it’s not up for question or debate, that Trump’s “Muslim ban” is racist, Islamaphobic, xenophobic, fascist, and illegal.  PERIOD!  It is nothing more than his thinly-veiled attempt to make America lily-white again, just like his custom-made, 100% cotton, picked by American slaves, 400 thread count, percale, lightly starched Klan robes.  Non-Christian Trump is, first and foremost, aligned with the sole goal of removing, oppressing, and even exterminating if he can, ALL people of color within these borders to restore it to the great racist, evil bastion it once was. 

I want America to be more tolerant, I want America to be more diplomatic, I would love for my America to be the true melting pot that it was supposedly created to be.  I will forever embrace diversity.  I will fight, resist, and protest any and every effort by this deranged lunatic in chief to make AmeriKKKa more racist again.  When the time comes, I will register as Muslim as an act of conscientious dissent against tyranny and the efforts to go back in time to segregation, Jim Crow, slavery, and the mass genocide of “others” that this country is so damn proud of. 

All that being said, I do find it a bit odd that moderate/progressive/liberal white Americans are more horrified by the thought of Muslims being banned from the country than they are the thought of white cops murdering Black people in cold blood.   For two years, we’ve seen the videotaped evidence of innocent Black men, women, and CHILDREN slaughtered in the streets like animals time and time again and the most moderate/liberal whites could muster up was some luke-warm enthusiasm.   While a few picked up signs and donned BLM t-shirts, more often than not, they deflected, defended, and denied that there could be the slightest possibility that systemic racism was at the core of the hundreds of police killings of African American citizens who were born in this country.   

But I’ll be damned if white people haven’t found their raison d’etre now.  They are shutting down airports and highways, they are boycotting companies, they are united in their #NoBan #NoWall fight.  I just have to ask where was all this empathy and compassion and activism for Black Lives?  I want all those white people who are ready to register as Muslim in defiance of Grand Wizard Trump to register as Black for a day.   I want all those white people to see our lives as worthy to fight for too. 

I’m not at all angry at white people for their enthusiastic defense of the principles that made this country the land of the free.  Their indignation is righteous for sure.  I just wish it extended to the Black citizens who lived here as well.  I just wish they didn’t feel so inclined to dismiss the plight of their Black American brothers and sisters so easily.  

The Lion Sleeps Tonight

It’s hard to believe that it’s now been 20 years since I used to watch The Lion King every day with my two and a half year old cousin.  We watched The Lion King like she was studying it for her Master’s thesis.  We would watch The Lion King three or four times a day.  “Watch it again, Miss Avity!  Avity!  Watch it again!”  We sang the songs together, we did the dances; suffice it to say that I was extremely knowledgeable about that movie.  Every time we watched it, every single solitary time, she would ask me some existential, philosophical, metaphysical question that a 2 year old should not have even been able to ask.  She asked questions that I couldn’t answer and that would have me stumped as to how to respond.  I would struggle to explain to this beautiful, inquisitive little girl about the concepts of life, death, and morality and how it all wove together in a movie about a damn lion.

Here I am today, two decades later, and I’m still very much struggling with the concepts of life and death and morality as it pertains to Simba’s cousin, Cecil.  (You didn’t see him in the movie?  He didn’t have a speaking role so it was easy to miss him. He was the one that had black on his mane.)    Anyway, Cecil the Lion was a “famous” lion who was hunted and killed as a part of a blood-sport safari package.  His killer, Walter Palmer, is a dentist from Minnesota who paid $50,000 for the thrill of killing Cecil.   I must, out of necessity, put the word famous in quotes because Cecil wasn’t really famous.  It wasn’t like he was a Barnum & Bailey star performer that millions of people had grown up loving; he wasn’t the lion that ate Siegfried.  Or was that Roy?  Anyway, he didn’t have his own reality show; he wasn’t on a t-shirt.  He wasn’t the latest toy craze he; didn’t have a stuffed animal fashioned after him that parents had to get their children because they were having meltdowns in Toyz R’ Us.  Cecil wasn’t even on social media.  He didn’t have a Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook page; there were no memes with Cecil’s image that had gone viral.  The nation is mourning a lion that . . . 99.9% of the people in this country had never heard of before his death, in a country that 95% of the people can’t find on a map if you paid them.  But, oh, poor Cecil.  Oh the horror, oh the tragedy.  Posthumously, Cecil has become the nation’s golden child.  Their outrage and fury have reached a fevered pitch over the death of poor Cecil that is unparalleled. 

Walter Palmer is a wanted man.  Everyone is out for his blood.  Every conceivable form of social media has got him in their crosshairs.  He’s had to shut down his dentistry, he’s in fear for his life; there is even talk of extraditing him back to Zimbabwe to have him prosecuted.  Celebrities are speaking out, people are crying.  Walter Palmer is the most hated man in America. 

I will tell you this, and of this I am 100% positive, if Walter Palmer had killed a Black man in cold-blooded murder, all caught on video, right here in these United States of America, he would be a national hero right now.  He would have a GoFundMe account where people would donate millions of dollars to him.  He would be the bastard love child of Fox News and the NRA.  White people would be OUTRAGED if there was talk of prosecuting him.  People would find ways to excuse his actions as long as his victim was a Black man.  People would be chanting his name, only this time, it would be to hoist him on their collective shoulders and cheer him on as not only innocent, but justified in his actions. 

White America cheers when a Black person is murdered in cold blood.  They celebrate it.  Every day in a national holiday when a Black person is killed in this country because it’s always their fault.   They shouldn’t have been so uppity.  They shouldn’t have been so menacing.  They shouldn’t have resisted.  They shouldn’t have been walking in a neighborhood they didn’t belong.  They shouldn’t have been playing in the park or buying a toy in Wal-mart.  Clearly, he shouldn’t have been running away or working on his own car in his own driveway.  She shouldn’t have been sleeping on the sofa or asking for help for her broken car.  They shouldn’t have been driving without a license or had a broken tail light because those are crimes punishable and justifiable by death.  They shouldn’t have been arrested 20 years ago.  In essence, they shouldn’t have been a NIGGER. 

The murderers of Eric Garner didn't get indicted. The coroner ruled his death a homicide and no one was held accountable for his death. The police department turned their backs on the Mayor for asking for further accountability after the incident. People posted pictures of themselves wearing t-shirts saying, "I Can Breathe," they posted videos of themselves being choked like it was funny. LEGIONS of white people posted online, justifying the murder of Eric Garner for resisting arrest, saying he shouldn't have been selling cigarettes, saying he was fat and it was his fault. Yeah, but poor Cecil the Lion though.

Walter Palmer’s life is in ruin.  He was forced to issue a lie, I mean an apology saying that he didn’t realize that he had killed a protected animal and how very sorry he was.  Conversely, Darren Wilson said he would kill Mike Brown again if he had to do it all over.  He wasn't even the tiniest bit apologetic.  He retired from the Ferguson Police Department amidst rumors that he had in excess of a million dollars donated to his defense fund.  A fund, incidentally, that he never had to use because he was never even indicted.  His flimsy story, contradicted by every eye-witness, even by the autopsy report, was never questioned by John W. Public.  (I’ll give you two guesses what the W stands for.)  The public swallowed it hook, lie, and sinker.  White people went so far as to photoshop pictures of Darren Wilson making him look bloody and bruised when in actuality, all he had was a case of rosacea.  White America said that Mike Brown DESERVED to die because he stole some cigars.  No, this isn’t 1815 when Black men were killed for minor offenses all the time, when whites would kill niggers for any tiny infraction.  I want you to listen very closely to what white people are trying to say.  White people are boldly proclaiming, loud and clear, that they want to go back to the good old days when they could murder Blacks for offending their lily-white sensibilities.   Being Black in America is a crime.  Being poor in America is a crime.  Being under-educated and unemployed in this country is a crime punishable by death. 

George Zimmerman has shown the world time and time again that he’s volatile and unstable, that he’s actually a thug.  But the overwhelming number of white people believe that he was justified in killing Trayvon Martin because he was in fear for his life, intimidated by the big, Black man who clearly was not where he was supposed to be.  Lions are predators.  They are one of the most vicious animals on the planet.  They kill for food, they kill for territory, they kill for control.  Where are the tweets about how Cecil deserved to die, how he was a threat, where is the defense of Walter Palmer for killing a threat to society? 

Black lives don’t matter.  Racism is not in the past, don’t let it go.  Racism is alive, well, racism is flourishing and thriving with the help of Fox News, the anonymity of the internet, and the unabated ego of white people.  The evidence is there, as plain as day, that white people loathe Black people, they value animal life more than Black human lives.  Kid yourself if you want, delude yourself into believing that the presence of a Black President or interracial relationships symbolize the end of racism, that the playing field is level in some way but I promise you that there are white people in relationships with Black partners and people who voted for Obama who have justified and excused the murder of Black lives in this country because the victims weren’t educated enough, weren’t assimilated enough, weren’t “white” enough.  And I can promise you, that some of the loudest and most virulent and repulsive racist voices, those espousing the most heinous and prejudiced beliefs are the very same people OBSESSED with Black sexuality in secret. 

I went to an exhibition on lynching once.  It showed pictures of white people gathered around corpses of burning, dismembered Black bodies, smiling and happy like it was a day at the fair.  White people used to send out invitations to lynchings, they sent out postcards with pictures of Black people hanged like charcoal piñatas.  White people would put the severed genitalia of Black men on display in jars of the people they murdered.   If that isn’t the height of racism, if that isn’t the epitome of arrogance, I really don’t know what is.  Racism is deeply-ingrained in American culture and nothing has changed.   We are still hated, vilified, and stalked like prey, like wild game on a safari.  Am I supposed to believe that the same people who dress up like Trayvon Martin for Halloween and who troll Black websites to call Black people niggers are not the same people who would take selfies of themselves in front of the mutilated bodies of Black people today?   

I would like to conclude by saying that hunting for sport is nothing less than barbaric and should be outlawed in every corner of the planet.  Anyone who finds pleasure, entertainment, or enjoyment from killing is a sociopath and needs to be kept away from society for the collective safety of the entire animal kingdom, human beings included.  If there is one thing I’ve learned from this event, one existential question about life, death, and morality that I can now answer with certainty and authority, is that Black lives don’t mean a god damn thing in this country other than expendable entertainment for the racist, white masses.