Have We Failed or Ancestors

Since the election there has been a lot of discussion regarding what the current generation is going to do to save the black community. People are wondering when the next Martin Luther King Jr. or Angela Davis will make their appearance. Most of us have begun to lose faith because we don’t know who is going to save us. With a president in office who believes in the 1960’s ideology of freedom, we have people scared because we don’t know who is going to get us through this tough time.

Honestly, I don’t know if we have any future Martin’s, Malcolm’s, or even Assata’s. But I do know we have a reason to fight. We have unarmed black men dying by the hands of police like WATER, we have a bigot who was just elected into office who isn’t trying to protect anyone, we have black women being killed just as much as black men. I don’t know if we have any Assata’s but we do have Patrisse Cullors, Opal Tometi, Alicia Graza and the Black Lives Matter Movement as a whole. We do have aspiring lawyers, judges, journalists, and doctors. This generation has the technology, and educational ability to start a war in this country.

But no, we won’t have a Black Panther Party, or participate in bus boycotts, because we lack the key things that our ancestors survived on: love and loyalty. Our ancestors loved one another and loved being black even though slave masters tried to divide them by color, that didn’t stop them from rising together to protect one another. They believed in sacrifice and loyalty, if one didn’t ride the bus no one rode the bus, if one marched everyone marched, if one person was placed in jail people were already planning for ways to bail them out. We don’t fight like our ancestors, we complain and tweet about the catastrophes and never speak on it again until another body drops in cold blood. In August 2016, 4 black men died in one week by the hands of police. That wouldn’t have even been forgotten about it, we move on from tragedy so quick because we don’t possess the true emotion of love. It doesn’t kill us when our brothers and sisters die. Yes, it makes for a deep status and Instagram caption but we still sleep peaceful at night KNOWING, that our father, our son, or even us personally can be next.

I don’t know if we have any Assata Shakur’s or Booker T. Washington’s, but we do have a reason to save our community. It’s not that we don’t want to care, and protest it’s the fact that we weren’t taught to. We grew up thinking we no longer needed any Martin’s or Malcolm’s because we integrated schools, and got to ride in the front of the bus. We thought because we now mix our kids, and that there are white rappers we have reached what Martin talked about in his speech.

But we are more behind than ever, we are losing our lives, having our future education money given to prison pipelines because at age 6 they can tell whether or not we will end up in jail. They have committed the ultimate perjury which is getting us to divide and hate on one another and think for only ourselves. They knew how powerful we were as a unit, so the first order of service was to eliminate that bond and they have. We don’t love our sisters and brothers how we used to. We don’t fight for one another anymore we fight each other, talk about one another and examine a murder from the standpoint of, ‘he was a thug, he shouldn’t have been there, he shouldn’t have talked back’, INSTEAD OF HE WAS 12 HE SHOULDN’T HAVE BEEN KILLED. When it comes to us, I don’t know why we have resulted in killing one another, and hating one another.

But to answer your question, NO I don’t think we have any future Martin’s or Malcolm’s because we lack love for being black and all that it comes with. Not just when it’s Melanin Monday’s or when it looks good, but through the adversity, the job struggle, the prison pipeline, stop and frisk, stand your ground, not being considered a full person just ⅗’s, we don’t have enough love to come together and because of that, we will always be inferior.