cmcketty
22 posts Location:
Brooklyn
United States |
03.04.2012 09:25An Ode to TrayvonSeveral disturbing realities of America are being unmasked as a result of the slaying of Trayvon Martin and they should not be allowed to simmer down and recede and once again be out of mind without an earnest effort to redress the persistent plague of white supremacy which undergirds them. The killing and its aftermath serve as stark reminders that notwithstanding the emancipation proclamation, amendments to the constitution and a civil rights movement a century later, the premise of the 1857 Supreme Court Dread Scott ruling remains the American way. In too many respects, the premise that Africans in America are subject to a different standard of citizenship rights, civil rights and human rights is as vibrant today as it was before the emancipation proclamation, a reminder that the proclamation had little to do with genuine regard for the dignity of Africana life and much more to do with Americana expediency.
Among the disturbing realities are the lack of will on the part of law makers, law enforcement and other government authorities to address disparities in any meaningful and sustained way. Also disturbing is the persistent unwillingness of the dominant culture to fess-up in any holistic way to the stark reality of consequences of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the consequent unwillingness to make reparations. No less disturbing is the shameless manner in which many in high society, the media and other fora that influence the nation’s body politic stoke the simmering inferno that perpetuates the ignorance which sustains the status quo.
Perhaps most disturbing however is the seeming inability of the Africana community to respond to incident after incident until it now seems normal for the incidents to occur while we anticipate the next with fear. Perhaps as Maya Angelou has suggested, “because we have forgotten how to love, the adversary is within our gates, and holds us up to the mirror of the world, shouting, regard the loveless “and “because we have lost the path our ancestors cleared, kneeling in perilous undergrowth, our children cannot find their way.”
Now less than ever before, the words of Frederick Douglas rings true. “If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle.”
It is no less true today that, quoting Frederick Douglas once again, “power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
It is therefore imperative today then, to quote Maya Angelou “we pledge to bind ourselves again to one another” to do all good things, knowing that we are more than keepers of our brothers and sisters. We are our brothers and sisters.” In other words, not only is social living the best, today, it is also imperative.
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