A month or so ago the National Museum of African American History & Culture opened in Washington DC. I haven’t been honored to go yet due to the fact that you need to have a ticket to be able to enter the building. I’m interested to see what they cover in this three story building but I can wait until the hype comes down so that I can walk around leisurely and take my time viewing pieces of my history. I have heard about the layout of the museum and how it starts you off at slavery with all of the slavery artifacts. I also have been told that you can hear the sound of weeping from all that walk thru out the museum. A week ago A Birth of a Nation came out, they say that the movie is a flop even though it made 9.1 million dollars it’s first weekend. Although shy of it’s 10 million dollar budget doesn’t sound too bad to me. Although some people don’t want to see it due to it’s director’s allegedly shady past. It’s been a month of more of reminding of our past.
My homeboy sent me a link to a show on Netflix, and like most things he recommends I watched it. The movie is called 13th, and after watching it in it’s entirety I am mad. Like I don’t even know where to begin on how I feel because it was so many emotions that I felt. I went from sad to angry to befuddled to lost to informed to enlightened back to befuddled and then back to angry and sad. The history of African Americans is so fucked up shit. From slavery to mass incarceration. Not to take away from the fucked up history of other people but to watch that movie … it just broke me down.
I’m not going to tell you what happens in this documentary because I feel that you should watch it for yourself and gather your own opinion of it. But what I will share with you is my thoughts on how I feel about it after watching it. I’m pissed. I’m hurt, disgusted and angry. Not knowing completely what I was in for I begin to watch it at work on my lunch break. Unlike Bob’s Burger or Family Guy which are shows that I normally watch this one was a bit intense. As I may have mentioned before I am a crier. I cry in times of frustration and in sadness, it doesn’t make me weak, because I’m not in denial with who I am and what I do. And although I am fr peace and blessings, I will slap fire out of a person if need be. Anywho, I found tears falling down my face as I viewed the images on my phone screen. I couldn’t have stopped them if I tried, because I did and they just came on. I had to press the square indicating stop once I felt my inside starting to get hot. It wasn’t because of the rotisserie chicken I just eaten have made me feel this way it was because of what I was watching. I begin to learn about things that I thought I knew that I found out was lies to me. It’s all lies, the media, the government, lies.
It has always been taught to me in history classes throughout my schooling that the government was made for the people by the people. But as I have realized as I became an adult that saying wasn’t referring to MY people. Although I’m a light skin female whose brown skin father had green eyes and curly hair and whose mother is the color of a peanut with curly hair I can’t tell you who my people really are. But I can tell you who they aren’t. If I were to be stopped by authorities I know what race I would be identified as and what race I wouldn’t. At the time that saying was made “for the people by the people” my people was in shackles, my people was in cotton fields doing hard labor and in houses getting used for sex. So those words don’t apply to me.
America has and will always be a business. It will always take from the poor and give to the rich. They will always oppress and take whatever it wants and if you don’t do what it tells you do to it will shut you up. No one speaks too loudly to America because America will silence you. America says that you have a freedom of speech but only if you are fair skinned. They don’t want you to educate yourself or your community they want you to be the second class citizens that we was 300 plus years ago. Slavery was a business and once it ended the South’s business was on the brink of ending too. So what do they do? They think of a way to get free labor without it being slavery. Let’s call it prison they say. SMH. Not to say that some people who do foul shit shouldn’t be locked up and put away. But the boy who was caught outside on the block talking to his friend on his way home shouldn’t have to be locked up for 3-5 years when he didn’t have no drugs on him, he was just in a high crime area. Jail isn’t cheap.For 10 years I sent money to the Feds to help someone do his bid comfortably or at least as comfortably as my pockets would allow. Let’s say I sent him $75 every two weeks, that’s $150 every month, $1650 a year and after 10 years that’s $14,850. I didn’t send him $75 every two weeks sometimes it was more sometimes it was less none the less after 10 years I have sent damn near $15,000 to the feds. No wonder they want to build more jails, so that they can make more money. Opposed to making rehab facilities that could ,I don’t know, actually help rehabiliate the criminals that they are so press to have locked up.
With the more jails that they build, the more inmates that they need to fill them, the more Black and Brown people that they can put in these jails. The more Black and Brown children are raised by their grandma or Aunties because the child’s parents are gone Upstate or Down the Road.The child begins to get into trouble, and that’s where the cycle begins to repeat itself. That’s all it is, is one big cycle repeating itself. I see that with the police killings that have happened all over this country and have been happening for centuries. But now with social media and the technology to be able to record and instantly send things to the internet we are viewing more and more of these killings. it has gotten to a point where I personally have gotten numb to it. Because nothing changes, a black or brown man or woman gets shot & killed and this cop’s biggest punishment is a slap on a wrist. I have never read or heard of a police officer who has killed a person on camera or other wise being locked up for taking a person’s life. But let Cracker Ass Billy Bob shoot up a movie theatre and kill nine people and not only is he able to walk away from the crime scene but he is able to stand in court and plead insanity and live out the rest of his days in an asylum.
I can hear a person saying “But we have a Black president.” And I say to you, “So?” Yes we have a Black POTUS, who is educated and handsome and funny and doesn’t have 3 baby mothers, plays ball, use to smoke the wacky tabacky and is an exemplary guy. BUTTTTTTT he is just one man, yes he has “power” but its no good when his subordinates fight him every step of the way. And him being black and in charge doesn’t change the fact that white people still treat Black and Brown people like shit! This country prided itself on being the land of the free… while owning slaves. The home of the brave…that shoot and kill black women, men and children. This country’s foundation is fucked up and I don’t ever know if I’ll see a time where things will be different. I was told that we should be happy that we don’t have to live how our ancestors did. I am happy that I don’t have to live like that because with my light skin and “good” hair I would def be in the “Big” house doing domestic work and hiding some of Master’s nigga babies. I don’t think that our ancestors fought for freedom and the rights we have today for our generations to end up how it is. Being uneducated bad bitches and men having women give birth to children that they don’t want is not what’s popping even though the media says it is. Ths just shows the uneducation of our people. Man, something needs to change and it starts with the laws, it starts with rewriting the Constitution. Times have changed and we can’t be a Nation that still holds it’s value on a hackneyed system. The government needs to remove itself from Big Businesses that have control over the bills and laws that are passed in this country. It starts with the people stop hating other people because they are different than us. Cuz they talk or walk or even look different. Black people hate our own people sometimes. We are scared of ourselves because we don’t know the power we possess. We act like crabs in a barrel, not letting one up. And if one of us do get up we try to find ways to bring us down. My English teacher told me long ago that “If “they” find you threatening “they” will try to find a way to get rid of you. They will try to defame you or kill you.” That’s what happened with Nate Parker, he was in that stupid ass bodyguard movie and mums the word on this alleged rape but let this man want to make a movie about Nate Turner and now all of this stuff comes out. When you fly to close to the sun you will get burned.
At the end of the day I have to do my part to break the cycle, I have to do it not only for my sanity but for my children’s sanity as well. The history taught in school is one sided and I will make sure that my children know both sides. Some people look at movies like A Birth of a Nation which was also a 1915 silent movie of the same name (Do your googles) and groan like “Another slave movie?” But how else would we know what we came from? By watching the trash that is ratchet tv? I think not. We are descendants of Kings and Queens not slaves, Trap Queens and trap boys. Like Lawrence said on the end of School Daze… WAKE UP!!!!!!!
Peace & Blessings.
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