Inquiring minds, really don't give a damn at this point.
Personally, I'm drained by this story. I was tired and looking for something else to occupy my mind by late afternoon yesterday, right after the “I'm sorry” press conference with Gibbs doing the presidential mea culpa.
So first thing this morning, during my search for other news, I stumble across this...Black man who has a problem with the Black National Anthem. The official title as we all know is “Lift Every Voice” written as a poem by James Weldon Johnson and set to music by his brother John Rosamond Johnson.
You can read the story here.
For the record, the poem was written in 1900 to honor the birthday of Abraham Lincoln and to introduce Booker T. Washington during a segregated school gathering of children.
This step n fetchit doesn't have a problem with the song, per se. He has a problem with calling it the Black National Anthem. Says it never refers specifically to Black people with its uplifting message. In fact, he says, you can apply it to all races and should.
He comes right out and says, the song should not be called The Black National Anthem because it prevents “racial cohesiveness.” He attacks as if something uplifting and good can't just be Black...it also has to be white, too, in order to be acceptable. He questions whether it should have been used at Obama's inauguration, where it was quoted by one of the Reverends in attendance.
He also says Martin Luther King would not be happy with calling it The Black National Anthem, either.
Obama himself doesn't know the words to the song...saw him and his wife attempt to sing it one time on TV...... most Blacks living today don't know it either..They recognize the music...but nobody knows the words anymore...
Yet, for some reason, CNN chooses to put this story on its online front page today...Why?
Is this some not so subtle coded message to screen our songs and gospels hymns because they might scare white people some more and therefore make them less amenable to “racial cohesiveness?”
My questions is...what DON'T we do that doesn't scare white people?
Why all the attacks on Blackness?.... to make it look like we're the ones who have the problem...you know...that “racism” problem....like we invented that “racism” problem....It's our music...it's our hair..it's the way we dress...it's the way we talk....it's the way we do our jobs when dealing with white people......or the neighborhoods where we choose to live....or the way we interpret the bible...on and on and on....
We may have a “reactionary” problem.. an inbred genetic tic, so to speak....as in we are forced to live our lives “reacting” to whatever white people throw at us and fear from us....We've grown up learning how to literally dodge bullets, mentally and physically...
You know what I'm tired of.....I'm tired of having to neuter my blackness to make white people feel more comfortable in their own skin....I'm tired of having to be the one to change within a system not of my making, that was stacked against me at inception...
I'm tired of being told that I'm the broken one inside that system....I'm tired of being told this is not my country....
I'm tired of being told that my attitude is bad, because I don't accept my place in second place, ten paces behind.....
I'm tired of being told to wait for it, because racial cohesiveness is just around the corner, and the proof of that is because “we put a Black man in the White House.”
What's this “we” shit kemo-sabe? White people elected Obama...let's get that out....And yes, 90% of Black people voted for him, too. Me, included.
But 90% of all the Black people in this country don't amount to enough votes to send Obama to DC..
So we have the Black man in the White House that white America wanted, and given his current track record with Black America...ya'll should be dancing a happy jig with the job he is doing on us....
Black-a-phobes...both Black and White versions.....are busy running away from Blackness in fear...that it will change their world....
But then again...isn't that what they said they wanted when they elected Obama?
Change?
Still waiting....
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