A Question to People Like Myself (People who are white and/or grew up in the middle or upper classes):
This is one issue I believe many people from the communities I grew up in (communities of white people) are usually very hypocritical on. So, for starters, many always talk about the need for people to "pull themselves up by their own bootstraps," or some variation of that idea (yes liberals use the ideology of choice all the time too, just a different variation of it), which of course I don't really believe in as a real thing everyone can do within this system in the first place. On the contrary, most of those same people who advocate for that are more threatened by the philosophies that would allow people of color to do that than anything else in the whole world.
As Malcolm X said "The political philosophy of Black Nationalism only means that the black man should control the politics and the politicians in his own community.... But the political and economic philosophy of Black Nationalism - the economic philosophy of Black Nationalism shows our people the importance of setting up these little stores and deve-loping them and expanding them into larger operations.... We need a self-help program, a do-it-your-self philosophy, a do-it-right-now philosophy, a it’s-already-too-late philosophy. This is what you and I need to get with, and the only way we are going to solve our problem is with a self-help program. Before we can get a self-help program started we have to have a self-help philosophy. Black nationalism is a self-help philosophy...."
**FYI: The year after he said this, he was killed. The FBI could have stopped it, but they wanted him dead too.**
Yet, it seems there is NOTHING more that scares the communities I grew up in, middle to upper class white communities, more than ideas such as Black Nationalism. Why? If you want so badly for people to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps." Meanwhile you denounce them and demonize them when they do. Not to mention a constant stream of situations such as this; in the 1920's, when the black community in Tusla, Oklahoma created what became known as Black Wall Street, it was blown up, because it was looked at as a threat. I get it, subconsciously, or consciously, we (people who are white) look at it as a threat to our privilege, and it absolutely is.
But if that is the case, if it is not a hate ideology, if it is a real opportunity for people of color to have equality and justice, then we need to step back and look ourselves in the mirror. Are we really listening to what people of color are saying? Are we distorting what they are saying? Why are we distorting what they are saying? Why are we not willing to listen to them and what their struggles in the US are and have been? Why are we so afraid to face and dismantle our privilege? And arguably most importantly, what are we going to do about it?
As Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) roughly asked once, 'Will white liberals be willing to join hands with people of color to dismantle this system of racism? So far the answer is no. And if not, will those white liberals be willing to join hands with communities of color to build a new system?'
Will you be an ally or an enemy? There are only two options. There is no standing still on a moving train....
