liberation

thisshitisallracist:

herb-iv-ore:

So, yesterday in my music survey class, my teacher Mr. Jackson handed out a paper to us. He asked us to also get out a piece of notebook paper. We were told not to turn the paper he had handed out over until he said to. On the side facing up, there was a picture of a boy. Emmett Till was the boy, and his birth and death dates were under the picture. Mr. Jackson told us the story of Emmett, how he was a 15 year old black boy, during a time that blacks were still treated as inferiors. Mr. Jackson told us how Emmett was brutally beaten and killed for an act that today, would have just been considered childish. 

(All of the following information about Emmett is what I’m pulling from my memory of what Mr. Jackson told us. If I stop to Google it and get more information now, I’ll lose my inspiration and get writers block and not be able to say all I want to say in this post.) 

Emmett went down south to visit family. He was from the north, and things were different up there. African Americans weren’t treated as badly up north, and he was used to just being a teenage boy. Before he went down south, his mother warned him. She told him to act like his cousins, to be respectful, to be careful. As anyone could guess, being a 15 year old boy, he brushed off the warning. He was in a store or a gas station, one or the other, with his cousin. A very attractive white woman walked bye, and Emmett turned and whistled at her behind. Just being a child, just being a kid. Doing something that probably would just get laughed off or simply a soft spoken reprimand in response today. The woman was appalled. She went home and told her husband, she told him that some black boy made a pass at her. Her husband was angry, he got his brother-in-law and some friends, and they found where Emmett was staying. They beat the boy senseless. They castrated him, they cut off one or both of his ears (I’m not sure), they killed him. They dumped him in the river. When his body was found, his mother was insistent on having an open casket funeral. She wanted the world to see what had been done to her baby, for no real reason at all.

After Mr. Jackson told us this story, he told us to turn the paper over. On the other side was the picture of Emmett’s face in his casket. Although the picture was in black and white, and the details were blurry, I didn’t want to see anymore. I turned the picture back over and looked at his young, handsome face from before any of that happened to him. Mr. Jackson asked us to write, he said to write whatever we were thinking. A poem, an essay, anything. I wrote my thoughts, they were scattered, and in no apparent order. I just wrote them as they flowed through my mind. In the middle of my writing, I was disturbed. I heard laughing, I looked up. Nobody was taking it seriously. Almost none of the other girls in my class were still writing (it’s an all girl class, as the boys have lunch that period. Also, don’t ask why we’re learning about Emmett Till in a music class. I don’t know, we learn about everything but music in that class, it seems).

How could nobody be moved by this story? By these two pictures alone, how could you not have anything to say? Especially the black girls sitting up in the front row. They’re the typical high school, fashion-ista, obnoxious, black girls (that’s not racist at all, because it’s just the type of girls they are. Their color would have nothing to do with it normally, I would just say they were the typical, high school, fashion-istas. But the color of their skin is important in this case). These girls were laughing, talking about something completely off topic, acting obnoxious. Not caring. Then I heard the boys out in the hallway, at their lockers, going into/exiting the gym. I heard the familiar sound of a few black boys from my Spanish class. I became even more angry. These boys are constantly making racial jokes, slurs, just being completely disrespectful to themselves and their ancestors. Normally, I don’t pay any attention to them. Sometimes I even laugh at their jokes, because they are funny. They’re in bad taste, but they’re comical. But hearing them out in the hallway, looking at them, how they dress; then looking back at the girls in my class. I thought, did Emmett’s death mean nothing? 

Obviously at the time, it made an impact. Two or so months later Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus, and I can’t help but wonder if her decision was influenced by Emmett Till. But now, look around you. The typical thoughts of black men are . . ? Dead beat fathers, drug dealers, gang bangers. Is this what Martin Luther King Jr. fought for? What are you people doing? Do you not respect your ancestors, your history? Slavery was such a dark time in American history in my opinion, it makes me sick when I think of it.

Why does the color of anyone’s skin matter? It shouldn’t. It should have never mattered. And even after slavery was abolished, it’s like it never really stopped. There were different bathrooms, water fountains, different restaurants, different entrances to restaurants for god’s sake. It’s like white people thought being black was a disease, one that they could catch through any kind of contact what so ever. I just don’t understand. How could grown men kill a 15 year old boy, a child, for such a frivolous act? Those men were what I consider to be the true definition of evil. I don’t believe in heaven or hell, god or the devil (however I do say things like oh my god, because shit, it’s how I always talked even before I formed my opinion on religion), but if there is such a place as hell; I hope those men are burning for all eternity. 

I almost think that black teenagers, and even some black adults, need to go back in time just for one day. They would turn their act around so fast, I know it. And the world would probably be a better place if they understood their history better. I feel like that sounds so harsh, and I probably sound like a stupid white girl that has an opinion on everything, and I know I’m probably gonna get a lot of hate on this if anyone actually reads it; but I appreciate everything I get. I appreciate my education. I do skip some classes now and again, but when I go to class, I don’t give my teachers a hard time (this boy, Ibby - his nickname, I’m not sure of his real name - is literally from Africa. He’s in two of my classes, and in both classes he does nothing but fuck with the teachers. You’d think that he would be glad to have a chance at living somewhere where he is guaranteed to have a roof of over his head, food in his mouth, and an education. But no, he just fucks around and acts ignorant). I do my work, I get my points. And I’m not saying that all white kids are like that either, there’s a lot of white boys and girls that act just as badly as anyone, everyone has the ability to be ignorant (don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying one race is better than the other, I swear). Maybe if everyone that disrespected their history and ancestors on a daily basis went back in time, not just black boys and girls, maybe then the world would be better.  

It just makes me so angry that nobody in my class cared about Emmett Till. My ginger friend wrote more than most people, but only half a page. She cared, but she also has a lot on her mind. So, kudos to you, Haleigh, for writing what you did write. And kudos to the select few people in that class that did care, but just didn’t put it on paper. This one girl, I’m not sure of her name, she said she didn’t want to write what she was really thinking. That was the assignment!

I think that most of the people that didn’t really write were just afraid of the response they would get. Expressing opinions in this day and age is a dangerous thing. Everything gets ridiculed, criticized.

But, Mr. Jackson didn’t want to criticize you, he just wanted to know your thoughts. He pulled me aside after class and told me that my paper was one of the most insightful and provocative things that he had read all day. He said it was provocative, because I turned everything over, and I looked at how teenage African American’s act today. He said that it was insightful, because I had more than one point of view. Mr. Jackson is an African American man, he graduated with my uncle’s class in 1973. He has seen the world slowly change from not accepting blacks, and black people trying to gain respect, to this world where we now have an African American president, and we also have people like Lil’ Wayne (don’t get me wrong, I like a lot of his music, but he’s an ignorant son of a bitch). I can only image what he thinks of this generation, and especially this generation of African Americans. 

I think that everyone is just trying to find themselves. And I think that young black men in my school think that the lower your pants are, and the more vulgar your vocabulary, the more grown up you seem, and the more respected you will become. It’s just the opposite, I wish they would see that. And I think that what the young black women in my school think is that, the skinnier you are, the better your weave, and the louder you laugh, the more boys will notice you. Girls, you are being noticed. But not by the kind of boys/men you want to notice you. 

The girls in my class that I mentioned before, they’re not juniors or seniors. They’re freshman and sophomores, as well as the boys from my Spanish class. So they have some time to grow up and mature before they enter the real world, they have some time to earn the respect that Emmett Till and Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks deserved/fought for. But there are some juniors and seniors that act just as childish, just as ignorant. I hope that for their sake, and for the sake of the children that they are bound to have, that they grow up. And soon. 

I don’t know, this post is going all over the place. It was supposed to just be about Emmett, and how I felt about the pictures Mr. Jackson showed us.

I’m kind of sad right now. No, I’m really sad. Emmett was a young man. No, not even that, he was just a boy, a child. He would have grown into an attractive and, I’m sure, successful man. He probably would have had a wife, children, a pet. A house of his own, a car. An education, a dream. And none of that came to be, he never got to go to a senior prom. Get his first job, buy his firs car. And what’s even sadder is, even if he hadn’t been murdered, he might not have experienced any of those things any way. Just because he was black. 

My grandfather told me about the first time he saw a black boy. He as a boy himself, down south in West Virginia or somewhere like that, it was probably the 30’s or maybe early 40’s. My grandfather told me that when he first saw the boy, he was swimming in a lake/stream. He got out of the water, and my grandfather saw that his skin was dark. My grandfather was scared, he thought that the water did it to the boys skin, and he wouldn’t get into the water. To me, that’s just incredible. How could someone have never seen a black person? I know that then it was a different time, but when he told me the story, the memory seemed so vivid in his mind. I don’t remember the first time I saw a black person. I remember being in third or fourth grade and having a crush on a black boy, I told my mom and she didn’t really react (probably because I was so young, and I really didn’t know what having a crush on someone was or what it meant). Then I remember the summer before freshman year. I had a black friend, named Isaiah. I liked him, a lot. My mom let me go to the movies with him, and of course being the horny teenagers we were, I ended up with a hickey on my neck (I’ve only ever had two hickeys. The first one I got, I thought I was so grown up. Look at me, I have a boyfriend, and he sucks on my neck. I don’t know why I was so proud of it, I took pictures of it and sent them to my friends. I was so ignorant… But that’s what being young is about I guess. The hickey I got from Isaiah was my second one, it wasn’t as big as the first, and I tried to hide it much more than I tried to hide my first one). My mom saw the hickey the next day, and she went the fuck off. She took my phone, she took my laptop, she grounded me. I don’t think she was as upset about the hickey being from a black boy, as she was that there was a hickey at all. Thankfully, she didn’t tell my dad, and as far as I know he never saw it. He is a racist bastard, I know he would have been more upset about the fact that I was alone with a black man (a black man, as he would have seen it. Nevermind the fact that Isaiah was my age, in my dad’s eyes he would have been a 30 year old black man, preying upon me), than anything. Really.

My father doesn’t like anyone that - wait, saying it this way will be easier; My father only likes white people with the same views, ideas, and personality as his. Also, they have to be the alpha-male of their own household, but not too much of an alpha-male to out do my father. So obviously, with all these conditions, you could have guessed it; my father has absolutely no friends. His brother and his father (my grandfather that told me the story from when he was younger), and maybe his neighbor Lloyd, are the only people my dad talks to. Lloyd is a racist redneck, just a typical man from the country. My uncle and grandfather are just like my dad, but my grandfather is a little more accepting, I think. My dad’s other daughter from his first marriage, Heather, had two children with a black man. After my father found out that she was pregnant with her first child, he started to swear up and down that Heather wasn’t his daughter. And that her mother was unfaithful to him during their marriage. I haven’t seen Heather in four or so years, and I think that it’s because my father basically disowned her. He loved her at one time, I know he did. 

Heather used to come around for Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, birthdays, all that. That was when we were younger, of course (she’s six years older than I am). When she started to become a teenager, she was a little more rebellious than anyone would have liked. Tattoos, piercings, drugs. My dad still claimed her, even with all of that. Even when she promised to come over and see us, and then four hours later she would call (probably on something, drugs or alcohol) and say something came up, and she would come some other day. Even after she only came around on Christmas and her birthday to claim presents and money, he still loved her and stuck up for her when other family members tried to talk down about her. But as soon as he had confirmation that she was pregnant by a black man, he stopped. He didn’t call her anymore, he stopped mentioning her. My grandmother, his mother (who is weird as shit, can I just say… ), brought a picture of Heather’s first baby one day (I never even saw a picture of the second baby, who was about a year after the first). It was thanksgiving or something, and she pulled out this picture. I don’t even remember what the baby looked like. I remember thinking it was ugly, but I think that all newborn (like fresh out of the vagina new born) babies aren’t that cute. It was a boy, I remember that. And his name was written on the back of the picture, I don’t even remember his name. He had two or three middle names, I do remember that because I was thinking that was an odd thing. I’d never known someone to have more than one middle name. My dad? He didn’t even look at the picture as far as I know. My grandma didn’t leave a copy, it probably would have gotten thrown away anyway. 

It makes me sad that I don’t have a relationship with my sister, my real, blood relative sister. And it makes me even sadder to know that my father probably played a role in preventing our relationship, just because she had a half African American baby. He didn’t want the baby to have our last name (Heather wasn’t marrying the man she had the baby with and she wanted to give the baby her last name), he thought that having a black person with our last name was a terrible thing. I can imagine what he might have been thinking… 

That baby won’t have my last name. I don’t care if I let Heather have my name, and I don’t care that I treated her like my daughter all these years.. She didn’t have a real father, Abby (Heather’s mother) probably doesn’t even know who her father is. I was Abby’s husband, and I was the only father Heather knew. I did what was right, I raised her as my own. But now that she’s done this, I’m done pretending. 

Honestly, that probably wasn’t even close to what his thoughts were when he found out Heather was pregnant and started saying she wasn’t biologically his daughter. There was probably a lot of curse words, a lot of derogatory slang towards the babies father, and probably a lot of hate towards himself. I don’t understand why he hates black people so much, and if you asked him today he would probably say he didn’t hate them. Maybe he doesn’t hate them, maybe he just doesn’t like any of the black people he’s met so far… But as far as I know, he doesn’t like, trust, or respect most black people. When Obama was elected, I know he was angry. He kept saying that he would be assassinated. Well, lookie here, no assassinations. No attempts on assassination, nothing. 

I’m glad that we have an African American President, honestly. I mean, I don’t like Obama, I wouldn’t have voted for him, and this election I’m not voting for him (I can vote for the first time this election! I’m so excited). I’m not a democrat, I’m not really a republican either, I don’t know what I am. But I don’t like Obama, I don’t think that he made much of a difference, for better or worse. But he’s a black man. And that is such an achievement for black people, and for America in general. Frederick Douglass was the first black man (and former slave) to write and have an autobiography published. Imagine then if someone told Frederick that one day a black man would run the whole country. He probably wouldn’t have believed us. Martin Luther King Jr. is looking down upon us in heaven (again, if there is such a place … ), rejoicing that we have achieved so much. 

But when Obama was elected, did the young black men and women realize what it meant? I’m sure that the adults, both black and white, comprehended how incredible it was. Do young black men and women, specifically ones in high school, realize even now how much of an achievement electing the first black president was, now that his term is nearly over? No, I don’t think that they do understand. I don’t think that most people really understand. And that makes me sad, it makes me sad for my generation. It makes me sad for Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks, and especially for Emmett Till. 

Emmett till wasn’t a civil rights activist or anything, he probably didn’t even think about civil rights. However, his death impacted the world severely, and it also (in my opinion) inspired Rosa Parks not to give up her seat on the bus. Frederick Douglass was born into slavery, and died a free man. He wrote an autobiography that is now studied in schools all over the world, and perhaps without his words, Martin Luther King Jr. wouldn’t have been inspired. He may not have had that dream, that so many other African Americans had, but didn’t know how to go about bringing it to life themselves. 

I don’t think that the color of your skin should matter, ever. I don’t think that where you come from or where you live, or what you look like or what you sound like should ever matter. 

This Black History Month, I’m inspired to learn more. I’m inspired to write and express my feelings, and I’m glad that I have my tumblr to do so. 

To everyone that reads this;

Nothing in this post was meant to be racially offensive, rude, or mean. Please don’t hate on me for simply expressing my thoughts on the subject of race and prejudice.

Thank you.  

While not exactly racist…very um…white normative. 

Can we talk? Like, please? This won’t fit into an ask and honestly I’m not trying to be mean or call you out per say. I’m trying to help.

Let’s got through what I’ve bolded here, shall we?

1. Thank you for telling us about the Black Girls? 
2. How do you know exactly what goes through the minds of young black men? Are you one? Or are you making assumptions based on the media and what you’ve seen?
3. To insinuate that these people are not respecting their ancestors is…well…wow. Just because they don’t necessarily act the way you think they should does not mean anything. Your standards are the white standards, tell me, why should they try to fit them?
4. …I…did you just say you want people to go back in time so they can experience oppression so they act the way you want them to act? ???
5. DID YOU JUST SAY IBBY SHOULD BE GRATEFUL FOR A HOME AND EDUCATION? WOMAN, THEY HAVE HOUSES AND SCHOOLS IN AFRICA, YOU DON’T KNOW WHY HIS FAMILY IMMIGRATED HERE. AND EDUCATION/HOME SECURITY IS NOT GUARANTEED ANYWHERE, NEVER MIND IN AMERICA.

You are not a Person Of Color, which means you are in no position to tell PoC’s how to feel and how to act ever. You don’t know what those black girls are thinking about, maybe they aren’t taking it seriously. Maybe they don’t understand.

Or maybe they do. Maybe they’re just zoning out right now because, lbr, that’s serious shit. Whenever I’ve had to have a discussion about Emmet Till I zone out a bit because it’s heavy, it pulls me down. Doesn’t mean I don’t respect his mothers choice, don’t understand what his death meant, it just means I’m having trouble dealing/don’t want to deal. 

Let me explain something to you and please don’t think I’m being mean to you, the world is shaped through a white lens, you are trying to put everyone in a white space, they’re not acting like white people, therefore their behavior is wrong and should be discouraged. 

That’s essentially what you’re saying. And it’s not really a good thing…

this is the longest, racist post on tumblr i’ve seen to date.

but who are you to decide what is proper?

good fucking lord.