Blackamazon is too much: The heart of the matter
I think what is bothering most about the hell yeah they don’t like an educated black man part of the Obama response is the age old chesnut that beats around the black community
Respectability.
It says something to me about myself deeply that I am somewhat unmoved by the tears of ” I am never…
I wonder if part of this isn’t generational. I was born in the early 60s, when I was in grade school there was so much hope for the future. The message was that skin color doesn’t matter anymore, there was inequality in the past, but equality is coming. Not in those words, but that message was everywhere. “America is a melting pot…blah blah”
There were other messages contradicting this, like when I asked my mother to teach me her language and she refused. She said I wouldn’t need that. She wanted me to fit in with everyone else. She didn’t want them making fun of me or harassing me. So yeah, give up your heritage, assimilate, if you act white enough then you can be an American too. Except that was a lie.
The older I get the more I understand that they always move the goal posts and that there is always a backlash. One step forward means two steps back.
Even understanding that this country was built on the blood of my ancestors, there was hope in the ideals that Americans say they believe in. Sometimes it takes some of us awhile before we realize that those ideals of equality and freedom and rights are only meant for white people and we will never be white enough to qualify as Americans.
I don’t know maybe it’s not generational after all. Maybe just my experience of it was but other generations still have that hope and then have it crushed.
