As a race, Black people tend to be socially conservative. There is no shortage of adults within our communities that partake in casual slut-shaming, victim blaming, or otherwise loudly (or secretly) support R. Kelly and Bill Cosby along with all the other celebrity men who we know have sexually assaulted women and children. Similarly, there is no shortage of “kids these days” ideology despite the fact that history has shown us that raunchiness, explicit sexuality, and vying for attention are certainly not new phenomena by any means. We also have extensive research and data that proves the disastrous effects every aspect of white supremacy and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade has wreaked on our race’s collective psyche. We have Black people that still proudly bleach their skin and denounce their natural hair as “too hard” or “ unmanageable.” Yet many Black people (often conservatives or Christians) proudly exclaim “I’M NOT A VICTIM!!!!!!” “NOT EVERYTHING IS BLACK AND WHITE!!!!” These Black people seem to think that acknowledging the traumas of the past that continue to haunt us in the present means submitting to a life of perpetual pity and victimhood. I detest these types of people. I’ve never had much patience for grown adults who cover their eyes and plug their ears to the realities of the horrors of life under racial capitalism. The truth of the matter is many of us are victims no matter what country you travel to Black people are often treated as lesser. Often times it is our people who are servants, maids, slaves, caretakers, doctors, nurses, farmers, teachers, miners, factory workers, etc. Most societies are structured in a way that rely on a constant influx of never-ending Black labor and servitude. Nearly every single language contains a derogatory term for Black or dark-skinned individuals. “Abeed” (an Arabic word that translates to slave) “Mayate” (Spanish for dung beetle) “Akata” (a West African term for wild cat/animal although this one is more directed specifically towards African-Americans often from continental Africans, I digress.) A man was lynched in Central Park in 2020. A Black woman in Long Island who had moved into a house with her daughter began to receive near-constant death threats, racial slurs, and other targeted bigotry against her by her white neighbors in 2020. Police brutality, the school to prison pipeline, gerrymandering, and racist microaggressions in the workplace and medical field. It never ends. To quote James Baldwin, “To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.” I am a victim. Of many things. But obviously like most people I am much more than that. Why must we shy away from the many ways in which the world forces Blackness and Black people to be brutalized? Do we not bleed? Do we not hurt? When you hit me am I not allowed to cry out in shock or pain? When I would cry as a child my abusive father would tell me “Shut up before I REALLY give you sumn fi cry about.” That sums up how many Black conservatives in the States feel. Be quiet. Shrink yourself. Don’t let em see you cry. Work twice as hard just to get fucking half. They denounce socialism and communism as a fantasy despite the fact Martin Luther King Jr was a socialist. Assata, Afeni, and Tupac Shakur were proudly communists. Angela Davis is a Marxist Leninist. Fidel Castro unabashedly supported the Black Power movement and allowed Assata Shakur asylum hence why Malcolm X once fondly referred to him as “The only white man I like.” Conservatism is only good for those who wish to climb the ranks and social ladder that grant them access to wealth and privilege. They point and laugh at Black activists, organizers, and leftists, mocking them. “I’m not a victim” they sneer. Interestingly enough these types fail to consider that closed mouths don’t get fed. Your pride will not alleviate the burdens of structural racism. Your pride will not dismantle racial capitalism. Your pride is so insidious it causes you to mock and hate your own race as if you were any better. You can be called a nigger like anyone else. You can be a victim of a racial hate crime or bullying like anyone else. White supremacists can dispose of you like anyone else. No, you are not too well educated, too smart, too monied, too classed, too bougie, or too “high value” to be demeaned for your skin color like the rest of us. In fact, if recent history or politics has shown us anything it’s that the more educated and monied you are the more non-Black people will go out of their way to belittle you in order to “humble” your uppity ass. But I suppose you wouldn’t care, would you? After all, you don’t subscribe to victim mentality.
