THE BLADE OF INEQUITY CUTS BOTH WAYS
The Blade of Inequity Cuts Both Ways
Juneteenth, a newly recognized national holiday, much like Kwanzaa, represents an inch along the road to freedom for African Americans. Though I recognize this as a milestone and a lessening of the hammer on the knee-jerk reaction of oppression of Black folks in America, two things come to mind. Freedom is not something one can give. It’s for every individual to take on their own terms — freedom of mind, body, and spirit, no matter how conditioned, it is yours to take. We talk about freedom as though in America, only black folks are not free. The blade of inequity cuts both ways, and as we all learned, to balance the equation, to reach homeostasis and racial neutrality, all sides of the equation must be balanced.
White folk’s equation is completely out of balance. The so-called white privilege is as much a noose around white folks’ neck as is the perception Black folks hold of being less than, a noose around their necks. White privilege, which comes from white injustice and maybe white inferiority, breeds hate and vitriol that consumes white folks, and I will argue, is even more destructive. For white folks to get to racial neutrality, they have to be honest with their past. Face the skeletons buried in the backyard and man up!
A past that has pillaged and enslaved and one that has rewritten the history books is no badge of honor. To understand the ‘why’ of the actions that drive them to the lengths to which they would go to oppress and attempt to destroy those who created the world economy they could not, yet, enjoy with little or no apology, is a step toward bravery. I’m not just talking about fire hoses and attack dogs or lynching and burnings. I am talking about voter oppression and the prison industrial complex, and the unapologetic attack on people of colour that is very much the same today as the lynching of the past. I am talking about your black sister or brother from the very same father or mother.
For interstitial, integrated, and disempowering racism to restore America’s democracy, it must reckon with its past of white racial hatred for all races other than itself — Jews, Blacks. Latinos, Asians, Indians, Arabs. For a country built on immigration, it is foolhardy to think white privilege is an advantage — It is a bomb waiting to explode unless we defuse it now. Basking in white privilege is nothing to be proud of, no more than people of colour accepting the nonsense that they are inferior. If white folks could have built rather than exploit world economies, they wouldn’t be so afraid.
So, the blade of inequity sharpened on both sides will destroy humanity… unless we put it down now and use that which makes us human and not animals and think and speaking brain. It’s time to talk. While doing so we can use the blade to create a clearing…a place sacred enough to hold our true history and reconciliation.
