Category: Discussions (Page 2 of 10)

“You were born into a society which spelled out with brutal clarity and in as many ways as possible that you were a worthless human being. You were not expected to aspire to excellence: you were expected to make peace with mediocrity”.

While I was reading this letter “A letter to My Nephew” and watching “Between the world and me” it really opened my eyes to see how hard it was and what it was like to live throughout the 20th century as an African American in this country. In this letter by James Baldwin, Baldwin expresses the how hard it was to be African American growing up in America. This quote Baldwin explains the harsh reality of being African American. That no matter what you do in life you will always be judged, useless, and will be treated terribly just because of the color of your skin. Since you are of different color you can not and will not accomplish anything in life and you will not get the same opportunities as everyone else. You are expected to deal with all the unruliness and unfairness that life offers you. From the moment that you are born you will not have a fair chance at life and that was the reality of it.

Daniel Conenna

I cant say if it was refreshing reading both of these articles, or tiring.  As a Afro-Caribbean women, I speak from experience that my feelings of the hatred, had been a cause of my long battle of redefining myself. For the most part, from feeling the hatred from my own at something that we had no control over, it sure uses our energy. Now, I have the sense of urgency when we’re together, to hug everyone, It’s just the natural instinct from this year. I’ve been shocked, and there’s no possible other direction we can go. In his letter to his son, “Between the World and Me,” Coates takes on an argument of both sides, the racial world that’s been capitalizing off of Hatred towards our people, and what seems to me hope, then also of what it is, that we need to use both. I’ve definitely kept this hope, it keeps me going, because where else can we go? In “A Letter to My Nephew,” Baldwin takes both directions indeed tying hope, and freedom. So if our directions is just that, who is anyone to tell us how to express which direction of our natural born instincts is right? if that’s the case that we seem to be clearly facing, what’s right or wrong, he questions compared to whom? in this world created on racial decapitation, Our oppressors face no responsibility to feel they could assume that position. From this foundation we fought to fight against, Mental Abuse and Isolation, where lies the strength of our hope? Do we abandons what we knew, survival, or do we continue to move on in this “New” America as if from sense somehow, it will always remain the same behind the little white line.

Coates stated, “The enslaved were not bricks in your road, and their lives were not chapters in your redemptive history. They were people, turned to fuel for the American Machine.” I love this sentence. This is memory that can be used for our everyday fight, least when I wake up in the morning that is my first awakening instinct, though unconscious. From my first mindful breath, my eyes wide to my ceiling, I’m aware of a dreadful feeling. Obviously I didn’t wake up and say I want to feel like this, then who?  When the birds chirp, to remind us they’re able to fly high, “What is my purpose?‘ Then I think, how do I feel? this should not be normal. NO, I state, how do I feel? Is this my strength moment, I’m up and thankful, foremost I think I am aware. OR, will this become one of those days, a bad one, we all get those? do I say that this is my weak point. Oh my god, do I feel mentally weak? That’s is my usual conclusion Right after I’ve ignored those feelings. On flight, those birds -but no I was told I cant fly, so what do I Do?  In that single moment off of my wake up, my pain caused me to jump up, I feel alive. Life is definitely not waking up, fighting a mental feeling. Because life just started this morning, the birds are chirping again, so why this my ritual? A common morning ritual breaker, I speak also on behalf of my close associates that It’s becoming comfortable being uncomfortable for us.  So nicely he binds his thoughts, “You have to make peace with the chaos, but you cannot lie. You cannot forget how much they took from us, and how they transfigure our very bodies into sugar, tobacco, cotton, and gold.” My ritual is chaotic, yet I Keep going and living with not a mind of the next day , till sleep takes, I wake up and feel like maybe I was born for this.

The question, “How do I feel?” Hold so much weight. Just like the world keeps turning, I stepped into a solution and that’s if I want to become aware of my eyebrow crease. Stubborn question it is, I relax because at this state I’ll never know. Then heavy burden, why you had to have me tripping? Do I wanna know? Maybe. One day that I woke up, filled with my conscious connections of taking in the events leading us this far, it pondered on me “how far did we come?” My world shook. Baldwin stated powerfully, “Any upheaval in the universe is terrifying because it so profoundly attacks one’s sense of ones own reality. Well, the black man has functioned in the white mans world as a fixed star, as an immovable pillar and as he moves out of his place, heaven and Earth are shaken to their foundation.” How about we shake the room?