Bridging the Racial Divide......

Bridging the Racial Divide…….

 

A while back The National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People advanced the idea of doing away with the word ``NIGGER’’ and we all started using the term ``The N Word’’ instead.  

 

This was to squash the indignities, vileness, racism, hatred and abusiveness of that term so readily used for Black People, especially during the height of the Civil Rights struggles of the 1950’s, 1960’s and 1970’s before part of the struggle also took on the more radical edge of Black Power as termed by Kwame Ture and others like Angela Davis.

 

There was not only racial hatred connected to the word, but also racial attacks such as the murder of Malcolm X’s father; the bombing and murder of four Little Girls Down South [See Spike Lee’s film ``Four Little Girls’’]; the murder of our National Leader Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4^th, 1968; the murder of Emmitt Till; and the murder later in Chicago especially of Black Panthers who were fighting to implement an effective program to feed and educate the Black community and Black children.  The ruthless FBI agents carrying out orders from FBI Head J. Edgar Hoover did some really dastardly things to our Brothers and Sisters back in the 1970’s,that many of us still haven’t forgotten.

 

But violence didn’t only happen to people who were leaders in the political and economic struggles of those early days.  It also happened to thousands of Black activists who took part in the Freedom Rides Down South or who were just trying to go to school on a desegregated bus; or who risked their lives in other Ways up South like in Philadelphia where several school children were harassed and beaten at a demonstration for better education  as Philly police officers under Frank Rizzo who was Police Commissioner cracked down on the protesters—many of them children and women. 

 

 Many of these people, known and unknown, will be remembered at the Civil Rights Museum Down South/ [Research needed}!!! And or at the New Smithsonian Institute’s African American Historical and Cultural Museum slated to open in 2014 in Washington, D.C. on the Great Mall, near the African Museum.   

 

But the NAACP only did part of the job.  They get a ``C.’’ We should have also banned—if banning was or is our purpose—we should have also banned the term ``White Trash,’’ also.  And symbolically buried the term also, right along with the Big ``N’’ word like they did.  No People, in my opinion, are trash.  I don’t think GOD made them—White Folk, that is—to be trash nor for them to be treated like TRASH…..  The NAACP should have also banned the word ``White Trash.’’

 

When we call White humans ``White Trash’’ we give them verbally at least, the Green Light to act like trash and the Green Light to treat us, as Black People, like trash as Well.  This, I don’t think, is what we want.  

 

Europeans and people of European decent living in North America are still holding a large portion of the ownership of property and wealth in our North American country.  We still have to come to them for whatever reasons, for some of the jobs, some of the housing and for some of our improved living standard.  We are making progress as Black people, but we have to control greater proportions of the means of production to really get a much better foothold on improving our own situations and circumstances.   

 

This is still true and still a reality today.  Many Whites may have used unscrupulous ways and unscrupulous tactics to attain wealth and they may Well have victimized us, as Black People, to attain that wealth.  We should see ourselves as New Ruling Class because we are determining our futures more; we are building our infrastructures more and supporting our own people and our own Black businesses and Black Progressive individuals more.  We are reading the Books written by Black authors more and taking care of each other more—even if it is only our families and neighbors.  This is a great advancement and a great step forward.  Opportunities are finally beginning to abound and open up from within our communities and from outside our communities.  But being cruel in how we treat the very ancestors or Great Grand Children of those who enslaved us, is never going to help matters. 

 

So I publically ask for the NAACP to start the ball rolling by burying and de-legitimizing the term ``White Trash’’ as WELL!!!