Black lives matter, but to whom?

I got some shit I’ve gotta get off my chest. Over the past several weeks I’ve been in several heated conversations with police, friends, activist etc.. About the movement, of the moment. I liken my self to being an activist! When I see injustice I like to believe I respond, I like to believe I’m a voice for the voiceless, I like to believe that in matters of race and racial conflict I’m fairly informed. To my surprise though, these days it seems as if everyone is an expert in a conversation that I’ve been trying to have for years. Back then though; I couldn’t pay a person to listen to me. I was a conspiracy theorist, I was a buzz kill, I annoyed people when I said things like, lookout for white supremacist ideologies because they invade your brain waves and infect or at least influence every decision you make. (OK im still called a conspiracy theorist for that one ) But fuck it I’ll be that! I’ll be whatever it takes to alert you to what I’ve been able to see.

What’s happening in the streets today with Black folks is ab-so-fucking-lute-ly beautiful! In my 38 years of life on this planet I’ve only personally witnessed a feeling like this one other time in my life; October 16, 1995! 9/16/95 was the date of the Million Man March on Washington DC. My father, Godfather, god brother and I all drove from Chicago to DC to bask in the experience. I’m not sure what I expected. what I received couldn’t have been measured by any measurement scale invented to date. What’s happening in the streets today is reflective of that movement. What’s happening today is reflective of that spirit!

That spirit encourages me. I am encouraged that my children may have an opportunity to live a life that I have only imagined. Now let me add some context because if you’ve read this far you may think this is a slave narrative and I’ve been living under a system of oppression that beats me if my cotton bail isn’t brimming with overflow. That is not the case; I am a child of privilege! I was born into a two-parent household with a mother and father that were both capable; I was born above the scratch line. My mother read to me before I could read to myself. My father taught me the intricacies of math before I ever stepped foot in a classroom. I was showered with love from everyone in my circle. I lived in a home, when I arrived I had my own room, the house was clean, my mother cooked nearly every meal we ate, my sister protected me and taught me things that further prepared me to face the world. My father was an entrepreneur and made a living that supported my entire family. Most certainly I am a child of privilege.

Even with all that privilege, even with all that going for me just by the mere fact of my birth, “life hasn’t been no crystal stair!” I was 10 years old when my first friend was murdered; he was shot in the back of the head execution style on the playground or our neighborhood school. He lived less than two blocks from me and he had just turned 13. There were crack heads and crack houses throughout my neighborhood. One of my friend’s mothers had been prostituting herself for drugs for as long as I could remember. Before I turned 16 several of my friends had been lost to gun violence, several more were already survivors of gun shot wounds. Several were on a path to addiction others on a path to the penitentiary. This was all before I turned 17! I bring this all to the forefront because through all of this I knew then, as I know today I am a product of privilege.

How does this relate you ask to the present movement in the streets? Simple! My privilege was a reflection of the life that my parents were able to provide me, that privilege included attending what was largely considered the best schools and the opportunity to grow up in what was considered the best living environment for the time. In the 80’s that neighborhood that saw youth being murdered at 13, that housed many drug infested rest heavens, had notorious prostitutes turning tricks in back of schools and nearly ruined the possibilities of a future for every young man that came out of it was also considered the wealthiest all black community in America at the time.

That neighborhood-touted residents like R. Eugene Pincham , John H. Johnson (Johnson Publishing ) The president of the Chicago Urban League, the Eaton’s ( of Eaton shoe shine ) one of the largest shoe shine chains in the Midwest and a handful of other respected Black Chicagoans. Their wealth balance out the extreme poverty that surrounded them, hence I had the unique position of seeing how the dynamics of what the Black experience must have looked like before desegregation. You essentially had the elite, and the downtrodden all in the same fish bowl something you would be hard pressed to find in any American neighborhood today. I too count this as part of my privilege. That experience gave me something to aspire to without loosing sight or still being able to remain empathetic to the plight of the less fortunate. All shades of Black in real time!

This observation is relevant because white supremacy is in an ongoing romantic relationship with capitalism; they are dependent on one another to exist. Since those formative years of my youth I’ve seen that neighborhood deteriorate, I’ve seen those once powerful businesses fall from grace and cease to exist. I’ve seen what should have been benefactors of those legacies turn to the streets as a means for survival. There in lies the difference in the black experience in this country, and everybody else’s experience. Other communities build wealth; they build financial infrastructures that operate outside of the dominant culture. They do this because they continually support those that look like them. They support those that have a vested interest in their needs and desires. We don’t! Via supremacy, via slavery, via Jim Crow, via lack of educational resources, via programming, via conditioning, via black complacency we lose! We continually lose.

The narrative should be black lives matter, but to whom? Whom should they matter the most too? Who do you think Hispanic lives matter the most too? How about Jewish Lives? Koreans? What the spirit in the streets represents to me is UNITY, through unity we can build and through building is the only possible way gain true freedom. There has never been a time in the history of man that those in power have been morally obligated or pressured into morality by chanting and symbolic protest. The million-man march as impactful as it was on my young impressionable mind it’s impact on the larger experience of blackness was minimal. Black lives matter has an opportunity today to leverage that momentum into something larger than symbolic change. You want true freedom from oppression study Garvey. Build build build !!! Change the narrative! Imagine the impact if all those that marched just this past week donated $5 dollars to build a school, or real media outlet hell a website! a website that rivaled worldstar that infiltrated the minds of black youth with real information, with feasible opportunities, maybe taught a trade,

How many marchers stopped to get coffee? How many had to get gas to travel to the march? How many jumped on the train? How many times did you open your wallet and empower someone Black via these protests? So in love I ask a simple question how much do black lives really matter to you?

As of now #blacklivesmatter is an integrationist ideology still begging to be accepted, we must realize we have the power within us to not need the acceptance of anyone and still achieve the goal.

Tou