Let The Baby Cry

Not feeling well today. In fact I am writing this in bed. Such a shitty way to feel on such a nice day. “Mass Media in Black America” yesterday despite my splitting headache, was just great. But you know what’s not great? This class has begun to reveal to me an explicit tendency I have to indirectly coddle the conscience of whites or to in effect protect them from themselves, even at an unconscious level. I had never really confronted that before. And reading the “Isis Papers” by F. Welsing, a book with some admittedly far out theories about the pervasive symbolism of white supremacy through media, religion and many other modes of society which are common to us, has really made me step back and take a look at my role in all this in a way I never have before. It’s not cool. It doesn’t feel good. It feels weird, really weird, and kind of sad. All the time I’ve wasted is what bothers me. It’s not to say that I mean to run out and become a Black Nationalist or join a separatist movement. It just means that I can no longer allow myself to worry over how white people receive the plethora of information, which reveals to them the deep and heinous nature of their historically bloody, and politically corrupt past and present. And I have. Whenever a black person, writer, performer, artist has sought to illuminate in detail the full responsibility of whites in creating the system of racism, I cringe, agree, look at the other white people in the room and wonder, “Man, how are they dealing with this?” Why do I care? I’ve really had to think a lot about that recently, and listen to myself closely when I answer and take into account the effect of hundreds of years of mental and physical slavery and oppression, which is still taking place. What am I afraid of? Facing yourself and your roots, your culture, your identity, is the only path to being truly liberated, to the possibility of any true “freedom.” I have always felt that I believed that.

This realization feels to me like what I imagine it feels like for a mother to let her baby cry out and not rush to its aid every single time. It’s the process of letting an infant understand that if they cannot survive without being rocked to sleep by someone else all the time, that they will never survive in this world. I have felt like this about certain white people. Don’t let them see that. Let them see this. That’s exactly what the media does. That’s what it has to do in order to maintain a white power structure. It explains the sharp imbalance in the amount of positive examples of blacks seen in film, television, magazines that aren’t filling the role they have filled for whites since slavery. Buck, Uncle Tom, Mammy, Coon. They’re all still there, subtle as they may be. The mammy complex is still clearly alive in me.

For the record, as a movie lover, I count only seven movies I own where Blacks play the main role. “Set it Off,” Mo’Betta Blues,” “The Best Man,” “Daddy’s Little Girls,” “Paris Blues,” “Under The Cherry Moon,” and “The Huey P. Newton Story.” I don’t have the time to list all the other movies I own but if you hit my “Cine Verde” blog link in the upper right corner, you will see that the movies in the list of my favorites are comprised of predominantly white casts. No surprise right? What else is there? What’s the problem?

The problem is huge. It lives around me. It lives inside of me and all over the world. Being aware of that is only half the battle. Lately, I’m just beginning to battle with the other half.