Jesse Williams made some very profound comments at the BET Awards show. Kudos to him for making a strong statement. But his comments about racism were like picking low-hanging fruit.
Criticizing racism will get a black person a standing ovation 24/7/365. But if we only focus on what others have done, and are doing to us, we aren't dealing with our complete reality.
For example, the greatest threat to Black life is coming from other Blacks; not the police as Williams intimated, or racists. When you get down to it, if your life has been taken, nothing else really matters.
There have been about 10 major police shootings in the last two years. By contrast, during that same time period, there have been 5000 incidents of Blacks killing Blacks. Guess which one got the most attention and generated the most outrage and protests?
We don’t hear angry speeches about what we are doing to each other, every day, in nearly every urban city. But we fixate on police shootings as if they pose the greatest threat to black life. We shouldn't ignore the actions of the police, and we should protest the actions of rogue police officers. But shouldn’t we devote more attention to the greatest threat to black life?
If we really want to make meaningful progress as a group, we can do that by focusing more on our internal issues than devoting over 90 percent of our outrage,energy and protests to racism. Many Blacks who’ve been taught to think like victims, don’t realize we earn a trillion dollars each year. What if we made speeches on the need to unite economically? We bad mouth Hollywood, but what if the black actors, producers, writers and skilled talent formed movie and television studios and produced programs that cast Blacks in a more favorable light?
One more time with feeling, talking about racism and racists is like picking the low-hanging fruit. Racists don’t mind us talking about racism, but what really scares them is black economic unity.
Criticizing racism will get a black person a standing ovation 24/7/365. But if we only focus on what others have done, and are doing to us, we aren't dealing with our complete reality.
For example, the greatest threat to Black life is coming from other Blacks; not the police as Williams intimated, or racists. When you get down to it, if your life has been taken, nothing else really matters.
There have been about 10 major police shootings in the last two years. By contrast, during that same time period, there have been 5000 incidents of Blacks killing Blacks. Guess which one got the most attention and generated the most outrage and protests?
We don’t hear angry speeches about what we are doing to each other, every day, in nearly every urban city. But we fixate on police shootings as if they pose the greatest threat to black life. We shouldn't ignore the actions of the police, and we should protest the actions of rogue police officers. But shouldn’t we devote more attention to the greatest threat to black life?
If we really want to make meaningful progress as a group, we can do that by focusing more on our internal issues than devoting over 90 percent of our outrage,energy and protests to racism. Many Blacks who’ve been taught to think like victims, don’t realize we earn a trillion dollars each year. What if we made speeches on the need to unite economically? We bad mouth Hollywood, but what if the black actors, producers, writers and skilled talent formed movie and television studios and produced programs that cast Blacks in a more favorable light?
One more time with feeling, talking about racism and racists is like picking the low-hanging fruit. Racists don’t mind us talking about racism, but what really scares them is black economic unity.