Racism is viewed as the tool used to cripple black America to a state of inferiority, but without this manifestation of hatred black society wouldn’t be as strong as it is now. Although it started with slavery, it wasn’t until the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation by Abraham Lincoln in 1873 that the dissonance of our culture from old to new began to show newly freed African Americans integrating into society. This evil was the hatred that fueled Fredrick Douglass' debates and laid the foundation for the change of the African American culture into a separate entity within itself.
Like the Chinese yin and yang, the abstract sense of what racism has done for our culture has indirectly become our greatest advocate towards civil justice and the growth of black America It is the match that lights the blaze of cultural change under us to get our attention and catapult our ambitions in the direction its needed.
It’s unquestionable that our evolution from African American to Black American simply because we’ve experienced, as a race, something our founding lineage has never encountered. Through that unique struggle to the Black American embodied a sense of pride. From our music to our clothing, to the things we say, black American has made their impression; from Negro spirituals to heavy hip hop noise, dashikis to Air Jordan's we have created our own destiny from this tragedy.
Without racism, the people Blacks view as cultural founding fathers would have never been in the position to rise to the occasion to lead our people into our own absurd adaptation of American freedom; Rev. Dr. Martian Luther King Jr. would have been nothing more but a common pastor, and Malcolm X would have been viewed as a common crook.
After the arguable “victory,” of the civil rights movement, as a culture, we never band together for the advancement of our own people unless in the face of adversity. With all the turmoil concerning the Black Lives Matter movement and the recent police brutality altercations and killings, it only seems more prominent than ever that we have been typecasted as the racial poster people of American inequality.
Do not see me as a hateful person; I detest racism extremely, however when faced with a trial, you have the power to ultimately decide to let it beat you, use it as an excuse or excel and use it as the drive to push you over the mountain. Because of adversities such as in corporate America and how it’s significantly harder to get the same respect as your counterparts of another race, we’ve taken the coal that mass media and indirect propaganda tried to present us as and created a diamond using the same heat and pressure thought to break us as a people.
Some people use that famous, “because I’m black,” as the excuse why they didn’t get a particular job or opportunity, while others use knowledge and strive even more to prove a point and say, “Yes, I’m black but I’m the best candidate for the position by far.”
Racism will be a continuous battle as long as we live in a social caste system. Hatred will come, inequality will be shown but, we must decide if it will make or break used.
