You know, after all the chaos that has been happening this past month, I’m glad to see people bring awareness to the issues in the world. Whether it is talking about the horrible police brutality attacks on innocent Black people or the shootings that happened to the police officers in Dallas, it’s good to see people show concern for the victims by using their voices to address the racial problems in America.
Now that I said that, there’s a problem of my own I want to address when it comes to people related to these topics. I call them overly pro-Black people. I know some people are thinking, “What’s pro-Black mean?” I could tell you that pro-Black is about uplifting and empowering the Black race on a spiritual, financial and psychological scale, but some people might disagree with me on that statement and that’s part of the problem. We really don’t have a narrow definition of what pro-Blackness is.
If you don’t believe me, I dare you to go outside and ask 10 different people what pro-Black means, and I bet you they’ll all give you 10 completely different answers. I think the reason why there’s not a narrowed down definition of pro-Black is because so many people have so many different approaches to it.
Let’s use the Black Lives Matter movement, for example. The Black Lives Matter movement was established a few years back after the death of Trayvon Martin to bring awareness to America about police brutality toward Blacks, and for the bad cops who kill unarmed Blacks to be brought to justice for their crime. I, for one, think this is a great message that America needs to understand, especially those who are blinded by white privilege and refuse to see race.
But although you turn on the television and see Black Lives Matter people protesting about justice in a peaceful manner, you might end up switching to another channel and see some protesters trying to protest by taking the stage of political leaders and demanding they do something in an aggressive manner.
The worst part about it is that just because what some of those protesters do, the whole movement looks bad because people who see it on TV think that the Black Lives Matter movement is aggressive and hateful towards everyone who isn’t Black. I heard on CNN that Bill O’ Reilly called the movement a terrorist group. Like, what? Just because a few protesters got out of line the whole movement is being put on the same level as the KKK or ISIS? Are you kidding me?
Another bad thing about these kinds of pro-Black people is that even though they want to do right for the Black community, they think that if you don’t see pro-Blackness in the exact same way they do then all of a sudden you are not “woke.” I swear it’s like some of them want to make being pro-Blackness a damn competition. I’ve had people try to test me with that bullsh*t a few times too. If I didn’t know the same facts as them, all of a sudden I wasn’t “woke” enough. Say what? Now I’m no Malcolm X or Martin Luther King Jr. or anything, but you better trust and believe me when I say I know what’s going on in our country when it comes to racial discrimination against people of color. I’m a minority, how could I not? I know you shouldn’t see color but as a person of color it’s damn near impossible to not see race when we live in a country that constantly reminds us of our race.
Look, I guess I’m trying to say how as a Black community we need to come together and try to find and establish a more direct definition of what pro-Blackness means. I know we’re all different people and we all think differently and stuff, but if we don’t do this then people will continue to look at the Black Lives Matter movement in the wrong way just from what a few protesters do in the media. I want the Black Lives Matter movement to get the message across so that these senseless killings against unarmed Blacks could be put to a stop, but in order to do that we all have to pitch in to show people what it really means to be pro-Black. Peace.
