2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: I'm Black. Old Blacks have failed us. It's time for Young Blacks to make our stand on Super Tuesday [View all]johnlucas
(1,250 posts)I'm one of the old youngsters. In the last of my 30s.
They call our generation Generation X.
I never bought into these silly-ass labels for generations but I put it in there for simplicity's sake.
I may have elements of the doubting cynical mindset my generation is stereotyped with but I do NOT have that lethargic apathetic stereotype.
I don't believe in quitting & part of me wonders what happened to the folks going hard in the 1960s.
Why did people stop wearing Afros?
Why did they abandon the power of that social movement so easily?
I have wondered about this all my life.
The pain & struggle were getting too hard to bear & they needed a relief?
I feel like so much was lost from those days.
So much was lost after the 60s & 70s.
Was it because of Reagan & they were demoralized?
Whatever it was it's bullshit.
NEVER give in. Fight to the END!
And as for you being an older White woman.
THANK you for seeing our issues as your own.
That's the ultimate goal anyway.
To end the divide & conquer game.
This race thing is bullshit & we need to see ourselves as part of the same team.
But many of us are defensive & rightly so.
History has a long residue & frankly many of us are wary to trust White folks based on history AND the present.
STILL don't let that stop you from participating in the conversation.
EVEN if you're shut out or ostracized or dismissed.
Black folks walling off to themselves ain't the answer either & that's what I say to our folks all the time.
Can't get scared hiding in your safe space.
We're POWERFUL & that's not how powerful people act.
You gotta get the courage to talk to the other side regardless.
And the same goes for White folks.
You can't get intimidated by frank raw conversation.
YOU ALSO can't wall off into your safe space.
You need to hear the truth but also participate in that truth.
All of us are dealing with a multi-century year old wound.
And it ain't NEVER gonna heal if we don't put the ointment of communication on it.
There's gonna be things you simply can't relate with & there's gonna be things they can't relate with you either.
STILL stay in the conversation & participate so this old wound can heal.
I have a White friend from Virginia who after Dylann Roof murdered those people in that South Carolina church called me looking for that "outside" opinion.
I know he has relatives who fought for the Confederacy.
I know he has probably been told bullshit about that Confederate Flag before.
He NEEDS to talk to me to gain perspective.
I don't shut him down & shut him out just because he doesn't see everything in the perspective I do.
A man can't understand a woman in pregnancy. Just simply not his experience.
But he still must listen & communicate to get as close as he can.
My friend is stuck between two worlds.
A world where he was courageous enough to have Black friends & have good experiences with his Black friends (sometimes better than his experiences with his White friends).
And a world who puts out the revisionist history of the Confederacy & the Civil War.
He NEEDED to talk to me & that's exactly why he called me.
It's exactly why he called me when Baltimore happened.
I NEVER sugarcoat it for him. But I also don't beat him up for not fully understanding every detail.
He has a low opinion of rednecks & he told me that many times over the years.
I never saw him or his family parade a Confederate flag around.
And they treated me & his other Black friends as family.
If I cut off communication because he as a White man doesn't have 100% understanding of a Black man's experiences, that wound won't heal.
He asked me in 2012 who I'm voting for & I told him Obama & he obviously was not for Obama.
I know he voted for Romney.
But we can STILL be friends despite our political differences.
He won't shut ME out because we don't see everything eye to eye on every issue.
The more me & him communicate the smaller & smaller that gulf becomes.
The easier that wound heals.
When we watched pro wrestling together in the summer of 1998 he rooted for college frat-boy like D-Generation X while I rooted for the Black Panther/Nation of Islam-like Nation of Domination.
The two teams were mortal enemies at that time but we were friends.
The generations after me & my friend will have less of a gulf between themselves & so on & so forth until there's no more gulf at all.
That's why we must not wall off into our safe space.
The fact that I even HAVE a White best friend after the history of this country is amazing in itself.
That wound has healed somewhat at least.
There was something special that happened in the 1960s.
We almost came together for a little while there.
The backlash of that movement slowed things down for a good half-century or so but that time is here again.
Thanks to one of the guys who was a part of that something special.
Bernie Sanders was one of those guys.
And I'm glad that as he got old he never lost that youthful spirit to fight injustice to the very end.
It's not a coincidence that the oldest person in the race has the most young folks behind him.
Something special is happening once again & I want to be a part of it.
John Lucas