“Is it about me or about us?” – Excerpts from a Passionate Black Intellectual

Excerpts and Thoughts on the Black Power movement

What does Black power mean for Black people?  

I began writing this commentary after a journal entry I wrote after the protests settled down and I picked up The New Jim Crow for the first time. I cannot describe my rage while reading it, only can I know that everything she said gave me the ammo – in the form of knowledge, facts and stories – to solidify the position of Black people in society and find ways to counter it and rise. Excerpts from this entry are bold. 

What I’m interested in is finding our power as Black people.

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It’s so easy to be a thinker sometimes; to understand the ideas behind what needs to be done to be a liberated Black American in this country. If ever to be truly American at all, some would say. Some people – like myself – are thinkers, philosophers and artists with concrete plans and capacity for leadership and inspiration. But should I be more of a do-er? 

I’ve been trying to wrap my mind around how we go from knowing the knowledge to applying it. I want us to understand our power. This can be done through the understanding of the power of our dollar and economics. It can be through access to education beyond public schools and the arts in every form. It can be through opportunities for travel and experiences beyond our own neighborhoods. Or it can be ownership, control of our narrative and stories, and ultimately ownership of our culture as ours and not someone else’s (i.e. pop culture, which is inspired directly from Black people) and a sense of community. Our power is all these things – and more – integrated into a complicated framework that no one political leader or movement has been able to capture in its entirety.  

As I’ve said, some of us are more artistic and philosophical, able to tell a story, inspire and educate, but unable to contribute to protests or city council meetings for Black people as effectively. Some are political and cultural – concerned with Blacks finding their voices within legislation and against anti-Black police sentiment and at every protest. Others are public speakers and theologists. Some are business owners. Others are criminal lawyers and accountants. Some are teachers and community organizers and nonprofit founders. Uncomfortable and maddening wokeness. 

Then there are some who are embedded into the system: within gangs, foster care, prison, the rat race of working a 9-5, this so-called American dream, self-hate and self-deprecation, Black police officers and government workers. Blissful and toxic ignorance. 

Not one Black person can be one or the other. We are a mix of our own ignorance and wokeness. Some simply don’t acknowledge that they can be both, but we all are. It’s a matter of coming to terms with both is where the true knowledge begins to form. I’ve been wondering to myself: how do we get our power back? How do we come to terms with being both ignorant and woke?

And how can the Black thinkers and Black do-ers come together in harmony to understand one another to help all Black people – and meet them wherever they are? It reminds me subtly of W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington, to Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, from the NAACP  and the Black Panthers. There has always been a separation within the Black American community. It’s most simplistic symbol is the “Black bourgeoisie” and “Black ghettos.” 

This is more than a inter-racial difference, but a major class difference. America was built on economic principles. Slavery was originally intended on making the most money for the least possible price. Hating Black people became a derivative of that decision by the wealthy. With wealth being spread differently now – with more Blacks gaining generational wealth that was not normally attainable during slavery unless you owned slaves yourself – there’s a lot more opportunities for Black people to become wealthy. We have Black billionaires – from musicians, owning make-up lines, clothing lines, to schools, to investments, etc. We have a higher number of college-educated Blacks within the middle class that are fairly comfortable financially. The divide between the Black rich and poor seems almost fateful. Why shouldn’t more Black people pursue higher earnings to create better lives for themselves? What separates the people that seem to think (of course they work too, but they work smarter, not harder) their way into a financially comfortable position and for some – financial freedom – from the people that work two jobs in some run down neighborhood while they’re harassed by the police on their way to work? What are we missing? 

It’s a complicated issue. Some people will obtain a certain amount of wealth and want to “give back” to the community in which they grew up in. However, to the people already living there, it can come off as “captain-save-a-hoe” syndrome. You’re not doing it for the people that need it, and it shows. You help a cause that you’re passionate about with the amount of money you decide (not what they could possibly really need), with people you already are connected to. Your resources are not helping the root of the problem in any given lower-funded neighborhood. But these wealthy Black people are not the government, so it’s logical not to put that heavy responsibility and burden on wealthy or middle-class Blacks, especially when all they are trying to do is help. It’s not their job to help people. Why does it sometimes bother us though when they don’t give more though? Should they feel some sort of obligation to help others, or themselves?

On the other hand, the Blacks that have stayed in their neighborhood want to help themselves, if not for better resources then for pride of where you come from. But more often than not, they don’t have the resources nor capital – or even the opportunity – for it. However, it’s been shown time and time again that if you want something done right, it’s best to do it yourself. What would happen to these underfunded Black communities if we all pooled together our time, resources, and energy and revitalized our own neighborhoods? 

I’m from Oakland which has about 400,000 people. If those people all gave $5 at some fundraiser, that would be $2,000,000. Let’s break it in a quarter, that’s $500,000. If a fourth of Oakland showed up and gave $5, we’d have half a million dollars to fund the community. 

The problem is partially leadership. Everyone thinks their method and beliefs are the best. No one can see that we need all of those methods. We need everyone. The Black Power movement needs a chameleon for a leader that’s firm in their convictions but flexible with the details and rhetoric. We just need a leader to bring us all together and a system on how we’ll do it.

Another issue is the egocentric existence of human life. In addition to that, we Americans aren’t conditioned to look out for others in the first place, but for ourselves. So what happens when one Black person achieves this miraculous wealth status from seemingly nothing at all but faith and “thinking?” What if they love their life and who they are and don’t want to give a dime of their money they earned for people that won’t appreciate it. Let’s be real, most work is never enough. There’s always going to be someone shouting: “But they make way more than that, they can give more.” Yeah, and maybe you can make more, too, but you won’t. 

Is it about me, or about us? 

Maybe the solution is easier than we think when it comes to obtaining our Black power as a collective.

Note: Journal entry is bold, additional commentary is not.

My current read – The New Jim Crow – has been filling me with a renowned rage I thought I had put to rest. Simply enjoying the nirvana of being and being Black becoming supplemental. Connecting my sense of value to uplifting myself, not to my Blackness (or any race). Not from a social movement, but from my soul. Through dancing my soul’s story, and loving harder than I thought possible. 

In this regard, I have started questioning my value as a Black woman if I’m not at protests or rallying with my Black people. I believed at the time that spreading my light through teaching at a dance nonprofit at public schools was my lane to fill. I also felt weird about not being at protests; but at the time I stayed with my grandparents, so becoming exposed was not an option for me. Was I doing enough? 

Sometimes I think I can be too intelligent for my own good. I have all of this dope and necessary information in me, skills, knowledge with money, and yet I’m just “being”. Because “Black Girl Magic” should be supplemental to my existence, not the existence itself. Nor my identity. 

I love being a Black woman, and I do believe our essence is unmatched. Whether we be the Black American woman, the Black Jamaican woman, or the Black Nigerian woman and so many more. We have a certain magical essence, but is that all we are? An essence? 

Our culture is our own, this is something to be proud of and identify with, but I still do not believe it is our identity itself. I humbly believe we are a soul, a mind and a body, then everything else. 

As I read this work, I realized that we need each other, and if it weren’t for joining together, we’d still be in Jim Crow….so is being the best Black soul I can be actually enough, or pure selfishness? Or is it simply self-preservation so one day I can put all of my ideas for the Black American race in motion? But you can’t have both, can you? 

Is it about me or about us? 

Tags: Black power, Black power movement

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