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Solving America’s Race Crisis According to James Baldwin
I believe the solution to America’s problem of race is somewhere in between Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and James Baldwin—Suns of [the] movements—and what white people must finally acknowledge and ultimately accept.
Today in 2015, America is at a racial crossroads. As I type this entry, Black churches are up in flames in different places throughout South Carolina, less than one week before this post, President Barack Obama eulogized the pastor of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Pastor Clementa Pinckney, as he and 8 other parishioners lost their lives as a result of a racist, 21-year old gunman who opened fire during a Wednesday night prayer circle in Charleston, South Carolina. In a little less than two weeks from the time of this post, members of the Ku Klux Klan will march in solidarity against the removal of the Confederate Flag from South Carolina’s State Capitol Building.
It’s 2015.
On June 24th, 1963, City College Psychology Professor Dr. Kenneth Clark, in separate interviews, brought three of the most brilliant contempory minds the world has ever seen to discuss the race crisis in America. This one-hour special program was called, “The Negro and the American Promise.”
When opening the program, Dr. Clark offered the following to stimulate the viewers’ minds for the intellectual treats of Malcolm X, King, and Baldwin:
“By all meaningful indices, the Negro is still, and unquestionably, the downtrodden, disparaged group, and for a long time was systematically deprived of his dignity as a human being. The major indictment of our democracy is that this is being done with the knowledge and at times with the connivance of responsible, moderate people who are not overtly bigots or segregationists.
We have now come to the point where there are only two ways that America can avoid the continued racial explosions. One would be total oppression. The other, total equality. There is no compromise.”
Both Dr. Clark and Baldwin believed the future of Blacks and the future of America were linked–Baldwin said they were, “indissoluble.” When asked whether he was pessimistic or optimistic about this future, this is in part how James Baldwin responded.
“But the future of the Negro in this country is precisely as bright or as dark as the future of the country. It is entirely up to the American people and our representatives — it is entirely up to the American people whether or not they are going to face, and deal with, and embrace this stranger whom they maligned so long.
What white people have to do, is try and find out in their own hearts why it was necessary to have a nigger in the first place, because I’m not a nigger, I’m a man, but if you think I’m a nigger, it means you need it.
The question you have got to ask yourself–the white population of this country has got to ask itself — North and South, because it’s one country, and for a Negro, there’s no difference between the North and South. There’s just a difference in the way they castrate you. But the fact of the castration is the American fact. If I’m not a nigger here and you invented him, you, the white people, invented him, then you’ve got to find out why. And the future of the country depends on that. Whether or not it’s able to ask that question.”
For the full text and footage of James Baldwin’s interview with Dr. Kenneth Clark, click here.
Is America Being Black-Maled?
July 17th. August 5th. August 9th.
Eric Garner. John Crawford III. Michael Brown.
All Black. All dead by the hands of Police Officers.
None of their killers were indicted.
Since these killings occurred (and even before), more Black men and other non-white men (and women) have been killed by police officers. The institution of policing has decided it is just too risky to “apply the law” to the fate and futures of Black men and the others it reportedly fears. Instead, this institution has opted to rely on antiquated, non-transparent justice. In each of the aforementioned cases, there has been widespread departmental and institutional cover-up, the mishandling of evidence, discrepancies in witness testimony, and convenient, in-house remixing of policies and procedures. The institutional accomplice absolving killer cops of criminality is the Grand Jury–a clandestine and ubiquitous entity that has netted a zero and three return for justice.
Repeatedly, these secret jurors have decided that in the midst of the evidence collected by state’s prosecutors and District Attorneys, none of the evidence has even been strong enough to charge the officers involved with a crime. In each of the Grand Jury proceedings, none of the jurors have been able to hear all of the evidence because the defendants, now made to look like the perpetrators, are all defenseless and dead.
Why is America being Black-Maled?
Black men, no more perfect or flawed than any other men in the United States of America, are the nucleus of America’s fears and the targets of police officers’ guns. It’s as if Black men are to blame for everything wrong with America and white men are the reason for all of its rights…even when these white men, acting as police officers, are in the legal and moral wrong, indicted or not.
The latest police shootings have been committed by young, mostly white officers not fully vested in their careers, and who all seem to use the same two excuses for shooting Black men–“accidental” and “fear.” But, we know fear is not accidental; rather, it is a learned emotion under which to hide after being taught a particular racial and gender demographic is not valued and is prone to criminality. America is Black-Maled today for the same yesteryear and historical reason–systemic, institutional and structural racism.
It is rampant, metastasizing, and stifling.
And, America’s future will not survive unless we make urgent changes now.
Black men, killed every 28 hours, are being forced to pay a debt to society they owe no more than the rest of us; and, they are hunted down like “hogs…in an inglorious spot” by bullets they cannot outrun in order to settle this mounting tab.
They are also young, like 18-year old Michael Brown and 12-year old Tamir Rice, who never had opportunities to declare careers. But, regrettably they were both given the equal opportunity of death from a police officer’s bullet.
We can no longer continue Black Male-ing America because when we do, we fail terribly.
This nation, my nation, through the use of grand juries that will not indict killer cops, is attempting to manipulate the feelings of our society by presenting killing as the the only lawful solution for indifference when one is Black and male. Morbidly, the message also being communicated is that Black men are not suited to walk this Earth and breathe its air. America incites us to hate and fear them and justify why justice should elude them. The overall verdict forced upon us is that Black men are not even worthy of justice. Therefore, I appeal on the basis that, when regarding Black men, there is but one truth I hold to be self-evident, #BlackLivesMatter!
Remembering W.E.B. DuBois
One of the best and brightest minds to ever walk the Earth, W.E.B DuBois, died today in 1963 at the sage age of 95, the night before the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, August 28th, 1963.
With his thinking cultivated in his family’s experiences and formally in the trailblazing HBCU, Fisk University, DuBois was later able to attend Harvard University where he earned another bachelors degree and became the first African American to receive a PhD from this school.
As a sociologist, Dr. DuBois dedicated his life to Black excellence through education. While he was certain that freedoms could be limited, suppressed and even taken away, one thing he knew that could never be taken was a person’s education.
He knew what he knew.
He knew Black people in the United States of America lived and navigated two worlds–a Black and questionable America and a White, less-forgiven one, too. He said so in his book, The Souls of Black Folk. In fact, it’s as if incidences like the shooting death of teen Michael Brown by Police Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri and all of the other acts of unjustifiable crime committed against Blacks by others, is DuBois’ research coming back to haunt us.
In his scholarship, he knew Black people were capable of doing whatever our minds could fathom, and college degrees were our manumission papers.
He knew what he knew.
As the Crisis Magazine editor, founder of the Niagara Movement, and co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), DuBois was determined to show America that education was the equalizer of all other man-made inequities.
After a relentless pursuit, Dr. DuBois gave up his American citizenship in 1961 for the remainder of his life to be lived in Ghana. He became friends with similar brilliant minds and was honored at his funeral by Ghana’s First President, Kwame Nkrumah.
May the soul of W.E.B. DuBois forever rest in eternal peace and paradise.
For more information go to:
http://www.blackpast.org/aah/dubois-william-edward-burghardt-1868-1963
President Obama Makes History All the Time!
Tuesday night, June 10th, 2014 I hopped into a cab. As part of my cab riding ritual, I always make it a point to find out the country from which my driver comes. On this particular ride, my driver was Sindhi and when I asked him where he was from, he responded, “Sindh.” I was confused.
Initially, I believed he was from Pakistan so I asked him if he spoke Urdu. He replied, “No. I speak Sindhi.”
He proceeded to explain the Sindhi’s journey to sovereignty to me and even handed me his iPhone 5 to show me a picture of his daughter wearing a traditional Sindhi cape. My driver informed me that he was an anesthesiologist in his country, but what gave him a huge inflection in his voice was when he reflected that one day his country would be a sovereign nation again with its own leader.
“If America can elect Obama as its President, there is hope for Sindhi people, too.” NYC Sindhi cab driver
Beyond the fact that our 44th President, Barack Obama, will forever go down in history as America’s first African American president, he is still inspiring others with hope and making more history.
This Friday, June 13th, 2014, President Obama became only the fourth sitting American President to visit a Native American Reservation–The Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation in North Dakota. Former Presidents Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929, 30th
Official White House photo by Pete Souza
President), Franklin D. Roosevelt (1932-1945, 32nd President), and William “Bill” Jefferson Clinton (1992-2000, 42nd President) all made visits to Pine Ridge or the Cherokee Nation.
America’s relationship with Native Americans has been very little of beautiful and a whole lot of ugly: through the displacements and massacres and simply not acknowledging the existence of Native Americans through unequal treaties and the American Constitution, it is great that President Obama’s visit can represent a sign of the times to come.
There is so much prophecy in the fact that President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama are visiting this reservation as the leaders of our nation considering Black America’s sordid past of being enslaved by Native Americans in the United States of America.
In these changing times it is great to see President Obama serve as a bridge linking our past, present and future. President Obama’s presence is the beginning of a long overdue conversation, a much-needed intervention of two marginalized groups that need a whole lot of healing, and a nation in need of reckoning.
It is always great to see good history being made–the kind that has the potential to heal old wounds. Way to go President Obama!
Check out the MSNBC article below written by Trymaine Lee as he further explains President Obama’s Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation trip.
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/obama-makes-historic-trip-indian-country
The Media and the Making of Malcolm X
“The media’s the most powerful entity on Earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses.” Malcolm X
Today, May 19th, 2014 we say Happy Birthday to Brother Malcolm X, one of the world’s “brightest hopes” as he is “extinguished now, and gone from us forever…unconquered still. (Ossie Davis–Malcolm X’s Eulogy).”
As is the case with hindsight, we never really understand the blessing of a treasure until it has seeped from within our
grasp, been moved from within our reach, or taken away from us too soon. We often refer to this as missed opportunity. In regards to man, we really only know of their value in death. Such is the case with Malcolm X.
So much of Malcolm X, “our living Black manhood” was lost in the media’s coverage of him as a controversial figure. In the media, Malcolm X is militant, angry, and violent. And, he is never a man.
In the media he is also an agitator rather than a self-help guru–today I suppose even Oprah Winfrey and OWN TV would be doing a Master Class on him because of his ability to help each of us to live our best lives. He is the soul of our Sundays as we reflect on the true meaning of life, but he is also the weekend fever that makes us active, involved and responsive.
In the media, soundbites are used to express the totality of his life, but beyond the camera lens, Malcolm’s total life is an example of transformation, introspection, resilience and the full human experience.
Malcolm X is a mountain.
The media has hijacked his image and taken his words to create him as polarizing to the success of human excellence. But we must know and project him differently. We must know that although Malcolm X did not have the formal education that we revere in our leaders, the invaluable education of accountability and service he taught is as priceless as his precious life.
Today on his birth, Google chose to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of the Rubic’s Cube–a three-dimensional combination puzzle by its Hungarian namesake used to challenge our brains on the myriad ways in which to get all of the same colors on one side of this movable block.
The most puzzling thing to me, however, is how we can continue to deny Malcolm X–this “black shining prince” Ossie Davis described as a man “who didn’t hesitate to die, because he loved us so.”
As long as we have access to smartphones and social media and pens and paper, we are the media. We have the power to shape our heroes in the ways in which they should be viewed–we have the ability to tell their truths; and, we also have the power to write them back into places in which they have been erased. After all, it was Malcolm X who said:
“If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”
If we choose to hate Malcolm X, we choose to hate an everyday man with the extraordinary courage to stand up to white supremacy, institutional racism and maintain / assert his manhood with the best of integrity–something that each of us is equipped to do.
I choose to celebrate this sphinx of a man.
He is love.
He is light.
And, I love him so.
Read Ossie Davis’ full eulogy below:
“Here–at this final hour, in this quiet place–Harlem has come to bid farewell to one of its brightest hopes–extinguished now, and gone from us forever. For Harlem is where he worked and where he struggled and fought–his home of homes, where his heart was, and where his people are–and it is, therefore, most fitting that we meet once again–in Harlem–to share these last moments with him. For Harlem has ever been gracious to those who have loved her, have fought for her, and have defended her honor even to the death.
There are those who will consider it their duty, as friends of the Negro people, to tell us to revile him, to flee, even from the presence of his memory, to save ourselves by writing him out of the history of our turbulent times. Many will ask what Harlem finds to honor in this stormy, controversial and bold young captain–and we will smile. Many will say turn away from this man, for he is a demon, a monster, a subverter and an enemy of the Black man–and we will smile. They will say that he is of hate–a fanatic, a racist–who can only bring evil to the cause for which you struggle! And we will answer and say to them: Did you ever talk to Brother Malcolm? Did you ever touch him, or have him smile at you? Did you ever really listen to him? Did he ever do a mean thing? Was he ever himself associated with violence or any public disturbance? For if you did you would know him. And if you knew him you would know why we must honor him.It is not in the memory of man that this beleaguered, unfortunate, but nonetheless proud community has found a braver, more gallant young champion than this Afro-American who lies before us–unconquered still. Afro-American Malcolm was most meticulous in his use of words. Nobody knew better than he the power words have over minds of men. Malcolm had stopped being a “Negro” years ago. It had become too weak a word for him. Malcolm was bigger than that. Malcolm had become an Afro-American and he wanted–so desperately–that all his people would become Afro-Americans too.
Malcolm was our living, black manhood! This was his meaning to his people. And, in honoring him, we honor the best in ourselves. Last year, from Africa, he wrote these words to a friend: “My journey,” he says, “is almost ended, and I have a much broader scope than when I started out, which I believe will add new life and dimension to our struggle for freedom and dignity in the States. I am writing these things so that you will know for a fact the tremendous sympathy and support we have among the African States for our Human Rights struggle. The main thing is that we keep a United Front wherein our most valuable time and energy will not be wasted fighting each other.” However we may have differed with him–or with each other about him–let his going from us serve only to bring us together, now.
Consigning these mortal remains to earth, the common mother of all, secure in the knowledge that what we place in the ground is no more now a man–but a seed–which, after the winter of our discontent, will come forth again to meet us. And we will know him then for what he was and is, our own black shining Prince!–who didn’t hesitate to die, because he loved us so.” ~Mr. Ossie Davis, February 27th, 1965 delivered at the Faith Temple Church of God.
For more information on Ossie Davis feelings toward Malcolm X, go to: Ossie Davis and Democracy Now
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Mr. Stevie Wonder!
ThePoliDayReport would like to send an extra special Happy Birthday wish to Mr. Stevie Wonder!
You are music, love, light, and life all rolled into one fantastic person.
Were it not for your artistry, some of us would never see humanity. Were it not for your lyrics, some of us would never feel beauty. Were it not for your compositions, some of us would never hear the Creator…
You, Mr. Wonder, are a Cosmic Delight!
Check out this post that I wrote earlier in the year in tribute to you, my favorite songwriter, composer, and humanitarian:
https://thepolidayreport.com/2014/01/30/stevie-wonder-the-cosmic-delight/
Student Activism? CONGRATULATIONS Dream Defenders!
Exactly one week and a day ago, I asked the question, Why have our students become so silent?
I attributed some of our students’ silence to the fear of being wrongfully targeted and killed, but I also suggested that our students are silent because they also fear success.
Two students specifically referenced, however, that are certainly not afraid of activism are UCLA Bruin Sy Stokes and Brooke Kimbrough, a young activist rejected from the University of Michigan (See my post: Life and Death: The National Guard and Student Activism here: http://wp.me/p1uzq3-qs).
I was reminded by my good friend Elizabeth Bishop (@BishopDigital) that student activism is still very much alive and well as I ran the post on my twitter (@polidayreport / @DoItGurl) accounts.
During commencement season, some campuses’ students have used their voices to protest their school’s selection of commencement speakers: Rutgers students denied former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice the honor because of her position on the War in Iraq while serving under 43rd president, George W. Bush. Students at Smith College recently protested International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Managing Director Christine Lagarde as its speaker leading to her cancellation, and Somali-born women’s rights activist and author of Infidel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, was disinvited as a result of student protests at Brandeis University. See Students Protest Commencement Speakers! for more information.
And then there are The Dream Defenders, a young group of activists and students in the state of Florida. They have risen to prominence under the leadership of the very young and astute Executive Director Phillip Agnew in protest of Florida’s Stand Your Ground Law and the killing of 17 year-old Trayvon Martin at the hands of the self-appointed Neighborhood Watch captain, George Zimmerman in 2012. The Dream Defenders have altered what student activism looks like, but they have remained true to the guiding principles of non-violence demonstrated by students of the 1960’s such as The Greensboro Four of North Carolina A & T University. They have attracted a new wave of listeners and activists through the calculated use of technology and social media–we like them!
While covering the The National Action Network’s August 2013 March on Washington in Washington, DC, I had the distinct pleasure of engaging in a very meaningful conversation with Mr. Phillip Agnew (phillip@dreamdefenders.org) and the Dream Defender’s Co-Director of Communications Steven Pargett (pargett@dreamdefenders.org). And of course, I snapped a pic.
The Dream Defenders
Today I am very proud to announce their victory as they have shared it with the thousands of us that subscribe to and support their efforts.
Check out their victory below!
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Life and Death: The National Guard and [Student] Activism
Update: For the past 10 days, the citizens of Ferguson, Missouri have been at odds with local Ferguson Police Department after a six-year officer, Darren Wilson, shot and killed 18 year-old Michael Brown in a barrage of at least six bullets on Saturday August 9th, 2014. In the aftermath of the death of Michael Brown, the citizens–many of them students– have taken to the street to mostly peaceful protest against police brutality, and the local police has been anything but understanding of the citizens’ frustrations. The police has not been forthcoming with information, it has launched an excessive use of force and intimidation on the people to include the use of military tanks, assault rifles, and tear gas in the midst of claims of citizens throwing molovtov cocktails, shooting, and looting. Missouri’s Governor Jay Nixon has had to intervene by first, holding a press conference 
to announce his appointment of Missouri Highway Patrol Captain, Ron Johnson, and now he had deployed the use of the National Guard. In America’s most volatile times, the National Guard has been sought as the solution. Some times it has worked and other times, it has further exacerbated the problems.
On May 4th, 2014, we remember the horrendous killing of four students and the wounding of nine by the bullets of the National Guard on the campus of Kent State University on May 4th, 1970.
Students at Kent State protested President Nixon’s announcement that the United States would invade Cambodia in the midst of America’s already unfavorable Vietnam War. In an attempt to stop the students from protesting and rallying, Kent State University’s administrators decided to cancel the students’ rally so they began passing out flyers saying that the rally was canceled. To no avail students showed up anyway. Some of Kent State’s faculty appealed to the students to abandon the rally upon realizing the Ohio National Guard had been called to disband the student assembly and knowing that eventually these students could become victims of the National Guard’s aggression. As the National Guard began closing in, the students maintained their position and continued rallying. Before anyone knew what happened, one of the officers opened fire which resulted in other National Guard officers opening fire on unarmed students.
We remember the students of Kent State that lost their lives. We also reflect on the role the National Guard has served in protecting and escorting our most vulnerable groups for the past 378 years. Lastly, we are called to question the price of student activism or lack thereof in America’s schools today.
Check out CNN’s photo slide show here: Kent State Shooting in Photos
In the 1950s and 1960s, the National Guard was used by President Eisenhower in 1957 to help admit nine African American students into Little Rock Arkansas’ Central High School–The Little Rock Nine. When the state of Arkansas refused to comply with the Supreme Court’s decision in the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education ruling to integrate schools “with all deliberate speed,” the final resort for President Eisenhower was to enforce the ruling through the use of the Arkansas National Guard, a symbol of protection and an escort for nine young people attempting to be educated and bravely walking into the pit of racism’s hell for it to happen.
Check out the Eyes on the Prize segment here:
In 1963 President John F. Kennedy also used the National Guard to escort and protect two students into the University of Alabama, Vivian Malone Jones and James Hood, when the notoriously defiant and racist Alabama Governor George Wallace denied them entry into the school.
Click on this 2003 NPR link to hear Vivian Jones’ words about this time period here:
NPR and the University of Alabama, 1963
As the decade of the 60s progressed, the National Guard intervened in even more campus conflicts, but they no longer appeared to serve, protect, and escort maligned groups in our nation. As America changed presidents and became embroiled in more international conflicts such as the Vietnam War and Cambodia invasions, a commitment to Civil Rights became a thorn in the side of our nation, and the National Guard seemingly became the escort of the nation’s resentment. And, its purpose became riddled in contradictory aggression and death.
On the campus of the renowned HBCU North Carolina A & T University, the National Guard, in reaction to the idea of Black Power, used deadly force to quell student protests in May of 1969. The students of the local James B. Dudley High School turned to the college students of NC A & T to assist them in the issues they faced in electing the student of their choice to represent their student body. As a result of the students of Dudley High School not feeling their demands were being met, and as a result of the superintendent’s decision to remove the Black principal and replace him with a white one, the students protested and picketed. During the student protest, the police used tear gas to stop it. The police presence and actions exacerbated the students’ behavior resulting in nine student arrests and rioting. Dudley High School students further enlisted the help of North Carolina A & T’s Student Organization for Black Unity, a group feared to be operating under the Black Power Movement. Some of the student activists organized a march to support the students of Dudley High School, but in the midst of the march, a group of young white youth orchestrated a drive-by shooting into the crowd of the A & T students; and, in response, the A & T students began defending themselves. How they defended themselves has long been a source of debate. The National Guard was called in to suppress the reactions, and once again the situation was exacerbated. As result of the National Guard’s presence, student Willie Grimes, 22, was shot and killed. The campus erupted and what ensued was the declaration of a state of emergency,
Willie Grimes
the raiding of Scott Hall, a male dormitory, approximately 300 students were held in prison for the day, more than 60 rounds of ammunition were shot into the dorm’s walls by the National Guard, a campus-wide curfew was put into effect, and ultimately 3 operable firearms were located.
In the aftermath of the Dudley High School / A & T fiasco, students lost their lives, had their college experiences marred, and came face to face with the brutality of the National Guard, an entity that 12 years prior had served to extend civil rights to vulnerable African American students looking to be educated in a racist, forced-integration system in Arkansas.
The National Guard’s motto is “Always there, Always ready.” There are countless men and women that serve in the National Guard every day, assisting America in its time of need and we appreciate them. In America’s most volatile, racist times the National Guard has been there, and in the most tumultuous decade of the 20th Century, the 60s, the National Guard was there, but we have to live with the record of knowing that it also executed some very poor and deadly decisions. The lives of the students in the schools mentioned in this post have forever been changed–some for the good and some in the worst ways imaginable.
Today, we live in a time where very little activism takes place on our college campuses and within our schools; students’ rights are violated on a continual basis, their voices are silenced in almost every regard, and yet we persistently wonder why younger people are so silent. There is a history not too far into the past that has frowned on students’ activism more than it has protected their rights. There has been no real major sustainable movement of young people protesting injustices on college campuses in recent years. Perhaps the greatest amount of noise in recent years has come from African American students like Sy Stokes on UCLA’s campus upset about the school’s lack of diversity, the seeming abandonment of affirmative action, and feelings that Black Male student athletes are only regarded because of their athleticism.
Check out his video here:
And, we cannot forget Brooke Kimbrough and her rally against the University of Michigan for not being accepted and the subsequent US Supreme Court ban on affirmative in Schuette vs. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action.
Maybe our students are worried that their First Amendment right to assemble will be compromised by the National Guard if it is called to suppress their protests; or, maybe our students are afraid to chance that the National Guard’s motto will actually work in their favor like it did with the Little Rock Nine. So, students remain silent.
Either way, student activism in our institutions will always come down to a matter of life and death.
[Colored] Girls Just Wanna Have Fun!
“I feel a little guilty saying how much fun I had being a colored girl in the 20th Century.” Anita Reynolds, American Cocktail: A ‘Colored Girl’ in the World
First thing this morning, l read an article called the Wild Adventures of a ‘Colored Girl’ in the Early 20th Century. It had been published on the The Root by Teresa Wiltz, nearly a week ago, about the recently found memoir of a young Black woman named Anita Reynolds, a flapper of sorts traveling the world, schmoozing with VIPs and having some very important familial (Langston Hughes was a distant cousin) and romantic (W.E.B. Dubois was her first lover) connections.
Anita Reynolds
MOORLAND-SPRINGARN RESEARCH CENTER AT HOWARD UNIVERSITY
I learned she had come from a prominent well-to-do family of mixed race heritage, but during those days, being multicultural was hardly anything to celebrate the way we celebrate it today. Anita’s mother was a Black woman, labeled “blond” because of her “passing” (pretending to be White or another ‘race’ because you look like that ‘race’) ability; and, indeed “passing” was a coping mechanism Ms. Reynolds was able to use to her advantage (people thought she was Mexican, Native American, etc–she never corrected them).
“Passing” in the Black community was anything but acceptable–it was blasphemous! Writers like Charles Chesnutt knew, first-hand, the lure of “passing” but chose not to do it because it created an even more difficult existence for anymore “caught” in between races. The “one drop rule” gave Black people a different ethnic appeal and imprisoned them at the same time. The “passable” Black women from places like Louisiana deemed octoroon (1/8th Black ancestry), quadroon (1/4 Black ancestry), and mulatto (having one Black parent and one White parent) were often lauded as the prettiest women on the planet, yet they lived the same lives as any other ‘colored girl’ and sometimes lives that were marred in too-frequent sexual advances from men salivating over their beauty and needing to experience just a little bit of it. Alex Haley explored this topic in his novel Queen: The Story of an American Family that was later adapted into a movie starring Halle Berry.
Courtesy of http://www.reginaldflewis.com
As long as American identity remained Black and White, on the Black side is where these mixed-race Blacks stood and where they were expected to stay. I completely understand why Anita Reynolds professed her guilt for having fun because she lived a life that ‘colored’ girls did not have access to and were not supposed to live–a life filled with adventure, the finest clothes, admirable company, gawking eyes, and the chance to laugh from all the fun she was having.
Virginia State University graduate, attorney and billionaire, Mr. Reginald Lewis, wrote a book decades later entitled Why Should White Guys Have all the Fun? It seems to me that he responded to Ms. Reynolds’ confession of guilt by living his ‘Colored’ life without any guilt, unapologetically, and by terms not completely determined by his race, rather his hard work and success.
Courtesy of http://www.TamiaWorld.com
Today ‘Colored Girls’ like singers Alicia Keys and Tamia leave Anita Reynolds’ shadow of guilt to dissipate into the sunlight; thus, they are Black women living life to the fullest and impacting the lives of others through philanthropic efforts.
Patsey’s Prayer, Lupita’s Purpose
“No matter where you’re from your dreams are valid.” Lupita Nyong’o, Academy Award Winner, Best Supporting Actress
We will ever know Patsey’s real image, but through the work of Solomon Northup, a Freedman from Saratoga Springs, NY kidnapped in 1841 and forced to endure Louisiana slavery for 12 years, her prayer for a Homegoing was answered by helping Lupita to fulfill her purpose–to teach us lessons in empathy and resilience in the Oscar-winning role of Patsey. Congratulations Ms. Nyong’o!
Patsey was indeed one of many supporting ladies to endure slavery on America’s soil and she will forever be a class act.
Through Steve McQueen’s direction, John Ridley’s screenplay, Lupita Nyong’o’s portrayal, and Solomon Northup’s words we came to know Patsey as a resilient and compromising woman despite being horribly abused. She worked hard because work was escapism. She desired greatly because yearning gave her a reason to live beyond the putrid reality of her existence. She endured and I suspect that she never stopped dreaming, even in death. As we witnessed in
Photo by Kevin Winter / Getty Images
the 86th Annual Academy Awards, Patsey walked across the Oscar stage with a message for each of us that we all represent the question of “what if?”
What if we gave up on our dreams because of some of the rancorous roles in which we have been casted–they don’t always appear to be fair or even humanly just, but those are our parts and we must deliver our lines?
Lupita was Patsey’s vessel so that Patsey’s spirit could soar and infect each of us with the amazing power of empathy and
an example of what it means to remain steadfast to a dream. Too often we don’t know another person’s journey, but we must understand that just as we dream, so do others. Solomon Northup wrote that Patsey was the “enslaved victim of lust and hate.” And through it all, Patsey still shines as an artery of love and strength.
While Lupita Nyong’o is classically trained as a thespian from the Yale School of Drama, and while she was cast in this role over more than 1000 other women, she needed Patsey’s love and blessings to do more than act–she needed to become Patsey, and she did indeed. We witnessed Patsey’s spirit on the big screen of Hollywood. While it took more than 10 years for 12 Years a Slave to be made, this was the moment in which Patsey chose to take Ms. Nyong’o, a Kenyan woman, by the hand in this role so that Patsey’s spirit could be transported back to the Motherland and so that Lupita could be victorious in her acting pursuits. There are no coincidences in life. Patsey’s resurrection as the embodiment of a woman descended nearest to what has long been considered the cradle of
courtesy of BBC-UK
mankind is prophetic to say the least. And, after more than 170 years, Patsey has finally found her ancestral resting place in the beautiful face of Lupita Nyong’o.
Dreams do come true.
ThePoliDay Report 