White People Should be Ashamed

This is just a repost of what I wrote on Craigslist last week.

I'm appalled. I mean I am really fucking angry. It's not a surprise to me, really the way *some* white people post here on CL. I mean this is a racist, classist world and the Bay Area, with all of our talk of enlightenment is no different. Those of you who know better should be up in arms against these assholes, because it makes all of you look bad.

It's just that today, for whatever reasons, it grates on me even more than usual. I like CL, I really do, and it bothers me to my core that this is not a place that we can have intelligent and civil discussions about race and class. I mean, damn. Anyone with half a brain can look at the facts and the way that whites act as a group and see that often, in acting in their own self interest, they ignore what is good for everyone else. So many people seem to think that we as a nation are beyond racism, that it's gone. It may not be legal or socially acceptable, but a deep hatred, fear and distrust for people of African descent is thriving in the hearts of "our sick white brothers" as Dr. King called you. I know this, I always have, but I continue to try to think that someday White America will wake up and do a better job of being human beings. But that is not my job. Dr King and many of his contemporaries really tried to appeal to you dumb motherfuckers, but you didn't listen, it just didn't make sense to you. It's not my job to try and convince you of my humanity, integrity or intelligence. I don't think that those among you who are racist are going to change. I also don't think as many people do, that a mass race war is going to help.

Killing only kills people, it is not going to change anything, a lot of people will die and the polemicists and radicals on either side will be justified in their hate. I am a Christian and my faith teaches me that killing is wrong period, but not everyone feels the way I do, and you know what? Today, reading the posts I understand. I really have to dig deep today, to not feed into your hate mongering jokes and posts.

I know something that you apparently do not. We did not get here like this. African people did not leave Africa as slaves. We did not come here over 216 years of importation and human breeding a broken people. African slavery and colonialism was a united and deliberate effort by the Catholic Church the European Monarchy and mercantile class of the nations of Europe to undermine, destabilize and depopulate Africa. It is no coincidence that the most corrupt African countries today are the same regions where most of the slaves were taken from. A great number of the monarchs, scholars and skilled laborers were brought to the west in chains, and then scattered across the Americas.This has been documented by Europeans, Africans, and Americans for a long time now. Africa is in such a terrible state because of 1)European greed 2)Lack of political sophistication and 3)The greed of the African leadership. It's absolutely frustrating that the leadership of the African continent cannot get their shit together enough to unite and throw off the yoke of European imperialism. This whole debt forgiveness thing is a sham. How can the world powers pretend that the Africans owe them anything? What about the Trillions in stolen capital that people who were enslaved represent? What about all of the African wealth stolen during the colonial years. Europeans still control most of the industrial capital in Africa! Europeans and Americans are directly responsible for the situations that created so much debt and destabilization in the first place!

The contemporary state of Black America is the fault of a multi generational campaign of government sponsored, assisted and condoned white supremacy and terrorism. From the slave importers, to the Ku Klux Klan, the Black Codes, the Jim Crow laws, to COINTELPRO. This is an undeniable truth and none of you revisionist history motherfucking assholes are going to successfully argue with me about that. I know for a fact that the cultures that we came to this country with were systematically destroyed. A people cannot sustain itself without their own culture. Hip Hop is not, should not be a sustaining culture of African people. It's cool, I love it, but it is no substitute for the majesty of having your own religion, language, social codes and history-the whole toolkit of a culture. I look at the various Asians, but especially the Chinese. No matter what they went through, they were able to maintain their beautiful culture, so they survived whatever was thrown at them. The indigenous people of the US and African people our cultures were destroyed by the white man in America. This too, is undeniable. I have no land to call my own. I have no language to call my own. I have no idea by what names and concepts my ancestors called our Gods. This is not because of the natural cycle of assimilation, but because of a concerted effort by White people to break the spirits of Africans in the enslavement process.

African Americans now for the most part have completely abandoned whatever vestiges of "Africaness" we had as a community. The traditions of extended family, service, collective responsibility, self improvement-all or most of that has been forgotten, rooted out, cast to the side, and yes those of us that remember are working hard to change that, and there is some hope, but it just makes it worse that there are so many ignorant white people that sit around and point the finger at a situation that was created to benefit them in the first place.

Only a broken people can suffer like we have and not struggle and strive for wholeness. This was done to us. White America has broken the spirit of Black America, but only Black America can repair itself. It kills me to see a grown man in the street, drunk at 11am, begging for money. It kills me to see so many of our young people pursuing self destruction at breakneck speed. I hate it, but I do not hate my people. There will be redemption, but we as Black people, have to work at it consciously and diligently. Our answers, our hope, our future is definitely not in the hands or hearts of white people. Our hope lies within ourselves, but we will not find it if we keep walking around with our hands out and our heads down. That effort only assists those who hate us.

I know that a lot of you are going to email me-go ahead do whatever, but I know that none of you racists are man enough to meet me and say to my face what you feel, none of you are willing to engage someone who is not afraid of you, not intimidated by you in conversation. I don't give a fuck about you and I am not afraid of you, I am singularly dedicated to the upliftment of my people.
And before you get started, my stepmother is white, and she is one of the best human beings I have ever known. She and my father have been married for almost thirty years. But even she has struggled with the ideas that her family raised her with. White supremacy is a disease, we all suffer from the effects of it, and we would all be better off without it. I will also say this. Poor white people, poor people in general-you are not the enemies of African people. Our enemy is mutual, but like the figurative devil that he is, he hides behind lies and tries to pit us against one another. The liberation of African people is the liberation of all people. I believe this with all my heart. This is what I fight for.
This IS rants and raves, I get to say whatever the hell I want.