My love for my people serves as the fuel that fortifies my mission. And it is the people’s unbroken love for themselves that motivates me, even when faced with the dehumanizing norms of a system that can lead to the loss of one’s life over simply being Black. History has proven that there has never been a period in the history of America where Anti-Blackness has not been an ever-present terror. Racialized oppression and dehumanization is woven into the very fabric of our nation--the effects of which can be seen in the lawful lynching of Black and brown people by the police, and the mass incarceration of Black and brown lives in the prison industrial complex.
While America bills itself as the land of the free, the receipts show that the U.S. has incarcerated approximately 2.2 million people, the largest prison population in the history of humankind. As police officers continue to terrorize Black and brown communities, abusing their power, and then hiding behind their blue wall of silence, and laws that allow for them to kill us with virtual impunity, I have realized that our love, that sometimes manifests as Black-rage, is a beautiful form of defiance against a system that seeks to suppress our humanity--A system that wants us to hate ourselves. I remind you that love is at the root of our resistance.
It is our love for 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was gunned down by the police in less than two seconds that will not allow us to bury our anger. It is our love for Philando Castille, who was executed in front of his partner and his daughter, that keeps the people fighting back. It is our love for Stephon Clark, who was lynched in his grandma’s backyard that will not allow us to stop until we achieve liberation for our people. Our love is not an individualized love—it is a collective love. A collective love that is constantly combating collective forms of racialized hate.
Chattel slavery, Jim Crow, New Jim Crow, massive plantations, mass incarcerations, slave patrols, police patrols, we as a collective, since the colonization of the Americas have been combating collective forms of systemic racialized hate and oppression. But I am hopeful. I am inspired. This is why we have to protest.
This is why we are so passionate. We protest because we love ourselves, and our people. It was James Baldwin who said, to be Black in America, “and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.” My question is, why aren’t all people?
How can you stand for the national anthem of a nation that preaches and propagates, “freedom and justice for all,” that is so unjust to so many of the people living there? (bobbeethehater.blogspot.com) (fouls & fumbles with Patrick Williams and Eric D. Graham)
