I became what people in the Black community like to call ‘woke’ around 2012. At first, I was apprehensive towards the movement because I, like many other people in American society, feared what I didn’t understand. I had the same mindset and mentality as others; that slavery was a long time ago, we had a Black president, if Black people would just stop being lazy, get off of welfare, stop rapping about sex, drugs, and misogyny, pull our pants up, stop having babies by low life men, then our problems would be solved. It wasn’t until I changed my major to Sociology and started learning the statistics of how disproportionately disadvantaged Blacks were and still are did I realize that it went deeper than what the media portrays to scared, White middle-class families on television.
The media wasn’t reporting that ‘Black on Black crime’ has gone down in the last decade; they weren’t reporting that Black women were enrolled in college and were graduating at higher rates. They weren’t reporting that Black children were being punished in school at a rate four times harsher than white students starting as early as kindergarten. No, the media was pushing the narrative that Black people were killing, murdering, and shooting up our neighborhoods. They were reporting that our rappers were promoting violence, we were bringing drugs into our communities, and that our women were sexually promiscuous and that all we wanted to do was live on the government. As a Black person, I saw two types of Black; the perception the media portrayed and the other no one acknowledged; the hard working, self respectful Black.
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As I begin to grow in my consciousness and began to truly study society through a sociological lens, I saw deep flaws within this system that has made us believe that we are all equal. I saw things, read details and historical facts of how my ancestors were cut open with no anesthesia and our body parts exploited. I read stories about how our women and men were raped by slave masters. I was told stories by my parents about the despicable Jim Crowe laws that denied them the rights and dreams that this country prides herself on giving everyone. The more I read and studied, the angrier I became; how dare White society hide these truths and pretend that this didn’t happen? How dare White people say ‘You weren’t a slave; you have a Black president, get over it’.
This knowledge and consciousness wasn’t a gift; it became a curse and it made me bitter and angry towards White people. I envied their cluelessness on issues that Blacks faced because of our skin tone. I felt enraged each time a White person said ‘I went through this too’. Becoming Pro Black fueled an anger within me I didn’t know existed. This knowledge made me cling to my Blackness all the more. I began to make generalizations about White people; I would say mean things about Whites when I read articles about the injustices of Blacks in America. The more America rejected, neglected, and mistreated Black people, the harder it made me shout ‘Black Lives Matter’.
Here I am, four years later and while a lot of my feelings still remain true, I find myself looking at Black America in a different light. I find myself questioning the ‘Pro Black’ movement and whether or not it’s truly uniting us as a community. The more I watch, read, and discuss Black issues with other Blacks and even some Whites, I think about whether or not I should say that I am ‘Pro Black’. Do I really want to be part of a movement that it not fully accepting of ALL Black people? Because we ALL know that Black people are NOT here for Black Women, Biracial and mixed Black people, we’re sure as hell NOT here for our Gay, Lesbian, and Trans brothers and sisters, but yet we like to use the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter. Are Black people here for my Black brother who wears a blue uniform in which he swears to “Protect and Serve”? Are Black people here for me because I am a Christian? Are we here for the Black Muslim and the Black Atheist? What about the Black Buddhists, are we here for them?
The answer? No. Black people are not here for ALL Black people.
We as a community have created a spectrum in which Blackness exists; you are either pro Black to the point where you are militant, or you are a passive Pro Black supporter. The truth dear friend is that the Black African Diaspora is so wide, so vast, so nuanced that it cannot be contained. So why is it that some Blacks feel that they control the determinants of what defines Blackness?
You see, being Black isn’t just wearing your natural hair, holding up the fist of Black power; it isn’t about going back to Africa and speaking the mother tongue. Because truth be told we are NOT African; if you live in America you are Black. You have no real ties to the motherland except slavery. True enough, you can know your ancestry but more than likely, the tribes in which you derived from are long extinct. Many of us yearn for a depiction of Africa that no longer exists. We worship a desire that can never be contained, because the Africa that we know has been colonized and re-colonized, and re-colonized to the point where it is the richest continent in the world but its resources to its own people are limited.
The more I navigate myself through this thing called Blackness and this thing call social consciousness, aka ‘being woke’, I see the flaws that make me take a step back and say:
I am not Pro Black.
I cannot be Pro Black when there is no unity amongst us, I cannot be Pro Black when each and every Black person who does not meet the proper standards and guidelines of what ‘Pro Black’ should be, can be disposed of so easily. I cannot be Pro Black because to be Pro Black is to hate the police and to hate this country that I was born into. What the Pro Black movement asks of me is to essentially hate myself. You see, I am a Woman, a Christian, a relative of men and women who have served this country, I have White friends whom I love dearly. What this Black movement asks of me is to take these things that are part of my makeup and denounce them…just to say I am ‘Pro Black’.
What this movement of Pro Blackness is asking me to do, is to essentially lie down my life for a community who constantly degrades me for being a woman, for being brown skinned or ‘not dark enough’, for having natural hair, for my faith in Jesus, for having a brother who is a cop, for having nieces who are mixed, for loving my relatives who are gay, for loving my White friends. What kind of movement would ask this of me in order to prove my loyalty to ‘the movement’? When you look at every other race of people-Whites/Europeans, Latinos, Native Americans, Asians, Middle Eastern they all exude unity. Yes, they have in house squabbles, but when it all boils down to it, they are willing to put their issues aside for the good of their ENTIRE community. Black people don’t do that; we talk about uniting but we cannot come together. How can two people come together lest they agree?
But I cannot blame us for all of our actions; I blame this system called the United States of America and Whiteness that birthed into us this mentality that we perpetuate from generation to generation. I blame it on the lack of education that we were and still are denied, I blame it on people like Willie Lynch, who wrote a manual to slave owners that told them how to keep us enslaved for up to 1,000 years. In fact, he told them that they didn’t have to do much, because we would continue to enslave ourselves, and we have.
So this is my ode to Blackness; you are a thing that I love and yet hate at the same time. My Black skin is what defines me but yet, is what keeps me bound from seeing my true potential. Oh Blackness, how I love and loathe you, how I yearn to be fully accepted by you. But I do not fit your standards and requirements. So while I no longer scream that I am ‘Pro Black’, I still long for the day to see my Blackness and the Blackness of so many others united as one.
That’s when I’ll be ‘Pro Black’ again.
