Up Next
Music is the weapon …
How it ends is up to you
They say the greatest trick ever played on mankind was when the devil convinced them that he didn’t exist. Well, the truth is that the greatest trick ever to bedazzle the ways of man was convincing an entire race of brown-skinned people that they were to be classified as black and that they should be proud of it. I imagine the mind that conjured up this amazing scheme was one that truly despised these beautiful beings, because the word “black” is rarely ever used to describe anything beautiful …
You get blacklisted because you’ve been blackballed by someone with a black heart. You’re stuck under this black cloud while slipping on black ice and smoke fills your black lungs as you drown in black water alongside the lost souls of those who died on any given black Sunday … or you can just get blackmailed into submission.
So when we say things like black people, black pride, black family, black history, black lives, black love … What are we really speaking into existence?
After all this celebration of our blackness, we’re still left with generations of black fathers who left behind lost black daughters and black sons who scream wildly while firing guns … at other little black boys. Disheartened black mothers who depend on black leaders and look to black teachers and black preachers or some make-believe black Jesus … Trying to make things real again.
The reality is we are not black! We are not that which “they” created to trick us into defining ourselves as less than human. It was all just a game of deception, a mere sleight of hand. They fed us this word “Nigger” to ensure that “black” is what we’d demand.
I mean their plot was so perfectly executed, and radiating with this hate-filled brilliance. Their web was so wickedly spun, that it swallowed us before we ever noticed what had been done. No way to escape its grasp or know its reasons … like black magic. We didn’t stand a chance.
So, hey! Let’s all come together and embrace it. Let’s all march and shout things like; black is beautiful and black power! Let’s say it loud, I’m black and I’m proud! Always bet on black, blacker, blackest … blackish?
I don’t think so.
What we didn’t realize is that our acceptance of this word “black,” was and continues to be our ultimate weakness, and as a result we are viewed worldwide as nothing more than the spineless, soul forsaken, helpless niggers who fell for it.
It begs the questions; Is Tiger Woods wrong for wanting to be called Cablinasian? Were RGIII’s parents wrong for raising him not to look at race or color? Did Steph Curry get the first unanimous MVP vote because he is so fair-skinned … and why didn’t that same unanimity apply to Allen Iverson, Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, or King James in any of the off-the-charts seasons they gave us?
Something is definitely off (black) about that.
What we need to do is take a look at our amazing brown skin through new eyes. We need to fall in love with it again. Realize that no matter how dark our pigmentation is … it is not black. Look at your high yella, honey golden, caramel-coated, mahogany dream, dark chocolate-creamed complexions. Look at your beautiful brown skin, and treasure it as passionately as “they” seek to destroy your passion for it and your knowledge of it.
Do you have a preference on how others refer to your race?
Does it make a difference if you’re called black, African-American, melanated or any other term?
I propose that we can never remember who we truly are, until we forget who we truly are not. We cannot begin to heal our communities if we still refer to ourselves as that which we never were. Until we decide to make this seemingly minor adjustment, we will never be anything more than “the blacks.”
Never forget that your skin is brown because you are filled with one of our planet’s most valued resources, melanin. Tell yourselves this …
“I have brown skin, brown hair, and brown eyes because I am blessed with the gift of melanin. If it lives and has any kind of color in the spectrum, it contains melanin. Melanin gives me better eyesight, a more naturally muscular physique, and a more youthful elasticity to my skin. I am MELANATED and unapologetic.”