An article was posted to a group I belong to as a tool to help white people shed less tears in the presence of black activists because black activists are turned off by "white tears" and "white emotions". This is what I have to say about that:
Living in black households I have observed the intense intolerance of tears from the children. Hatred, ridicule, violent responses....to cry in a black household is too often to be terrorized and emasculated. Tears are NOT black or white. There ARE no "white emotions"! There is only the habit of feeling terror at the presence of a child crying and the immediate, intense stifling of it passed on from parents who were slaves whose child would have been taken or killed because the master was disturbed by the noise of a crying child. To accommodate intolerance of "white emotions" is to tolerate, condone, contribute to the continued oppression of the humanity within black people and their communities. Our greatest freedoms are most often found OUTSIDE our comfort zones. The right to our own emotions should NOT be just another white privilege if we want to truly heal the dysfunction we witness. YES, a slow introduction to normal HUMAN emotions may help ease it's becoming a familiarity in replacement of the stark void of denied humanity black people are familiar with already, but a complete accommodation of this self prejudice amongst black people is only a perpetuation of the prejudice within them being reflected back at them from the rest of the community.
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