"Get Back...Get Back...Get Back to where you once belong," sang the Beatles in '69. For me those lyrics conjure up Sly & the Family Stone's way back in the day utterance that most young folk (unless your like Gracie and studying the deep roots of Hip Hop) have no idea what the lyrics, "Don't call me nigga, whitey," and the call's remix , "Don't call me whitey, nigga" mean. A '69 verbal standoff of racial epitaphs during a time of political and social upchuck in a' merica and, by extension, the world. Music was major and moved minds and derrieres from L.A. to Nigeria to act-- to change individual, community, environmental or politics du jure.
Why in the world are y'all black folks so angry? Still? Or to quote the Incredible Hulk before he transmutes into the chartreuse creature who unleashes unbridled anger to the brink of raging fury, "Don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry." But the Hulk, although green, represents whiteness, and if you're white and male (or in Hillary's case female) it's alright--even healthy to express your anger. But for young black men such as my grandson, Shaequawn Nagee, and for the generations of young black men and women that came before him, who were forced to bite their tongues and supress their emotions until the birth of Hip Hop, it's time to speak.
After the dust settles from the recent presidential nomination of Barack Obama (can you believe it?), take a moment and study history (in the case of black folks), the history of the African Diaspora. Inherent in the literature, lyrics and music--you'll hear and perhaps begin to understand the deep well containing our emotional conundrum or divided soul that WEB Dubois speaks of describing our love/hate relationship with a'merica. Within the deep cool of our wellness a kaleidoscope of faces, (riffing off Derek Bell) exists. Our emotions including anger, love, forgiveness, and humor help us, not only survive in the diaspora, but, moreover, to transcend it. We play the dozens aka snaps--or verbal sparring, which is our cultural inheritance from Africa, using it in order to contain our anger in the face of American and European terrorism in the form of colonization, Jim Crow laws, debt peonage, racial apartheid, neo-colonialism, rape and lynching for crimes such as "bumping into a white man's horse" or "standing in the way of a cool breeze." But to get to that level of consciousness is to get to the blackness of our human nature. And who wants to do that? It's easier to continue to stereotype us as angry black brutes or hyper-sexed hoes. For whites to fight against their invisible privilege it helps to think of this visual metaphor--walking against a forward moving airport tram. The media pundits, who swerve all over the rainbow forewarn us, including future president Obama to chill...on the anger tip. Better to stay yellow-mellow, like Tiger Woods, who vacillates between his Afro-Asian identity, even when Golf magazine features a noose on the front cover in an article about the golfer after it was suggested by a journalist that the only way for less gifted players to best him was to beat him up in a back alley and lynch Woods. Say What? White America swore it was just kidding...and that blacks are simply too sensitive. It's important to remember that slave masters once rubbed salt in open wounds after applying up to 200 lashes to black backsides. Some died. Some healed and continued to repress their anger.
I must direct you to read Audre Lorde's (former poet laureate of NY) "The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism" (published in 1984). Lorde interrogates the notion of black anger, discussing its progressive use along with a critique of inherited privileges bestowed by a racialized culture upon white women (particularly in the university arena) and white folks in general. This information is necessary intellectual ammo and is also helpful before your emotional barometer accelerates past O.C.
On the real yo...we're not nearly angry enough, seduced by crumbs like the so-called "economic stimulus check" I received in the mail yesterday (this is not reparations yo), which is one reason why we aren't raising our voices about soaring gas prices
reported by AAA today @ a nationwide average of $4.04 per gallon, while speculative oil companies such as Exxon made over 40 billion thus far in 2008. And the 5.5% unemployment rate--the highest in twenty years, and the continual deployment of young people in Bush's falsified war aka Iraq in order to establish an ongoing military presence in the middle east to keep oil prices inflated (it costs $2 a barrel to produce yet it's hovering at $134 a barrel on the NYSE) tricking our over-amped minds into red-orange-yellow alerts so we believe the current government is protecting us from terrorism.
How you livin'?
If you're white, you're right
If you're yellow, you're mellow
If you're brown, stick around
If you're black, get back
get back,
get back to where you once belonged....
