I attended a protest the other day that was organized by the
Black Lives Matter Alliance of Broward County. It was such a well-organized and
peaceful event. The organizers told the attendees to not engage with the police
who were present and had selected volunteers placed in the crowds to keep everyone
calm and peaceful. There were people from all backgrounds and nationalities
present with their signs showing support to the black lives matter movement. I
was touched to see a white woman with a wagon filled with free snacks, water,
and masks that she was giving to the protestors. Honestly, the protest was a
beautiful experience. That was the first time in my life that I felt so much
support from people who didn’t look like me.
While I was chanting at the protest, I had this overwhelming
feeling of confusion. I’ve been hearing about protests and riots taking place
all over the world, but I don’t know what exactly we are protesting about
anymore. It feels like there is no direction and some people are joining
because that is the thing to do. We don’t hear much about Covid-19 anymore either.
Initially, the protests started because of the murder of George Floyd and the
delayed arrests of the perpetrators. The police officers involved have been
fired and one of them has been charged and arrested. Of course, we are awaiting the
arrests of the other perpetrators, but it doesn’t appear to be the reason for
the continuous protests. The last thing I want is for all of the protesting and
rioting to turn into a trendy thing to do and dismantle the movement. Yes, black
people are exhausted and want to be treated equally in this country but it
appears that we’ve gotten off-track. There is no direction. There is no leader
to guide and keep us on track. What exactly are we protesting about right now? What
are our specific demands? What is the plan? Who is our leader? These are the questions
that no one seems to have the answer to or rather the same answer to. It doesn’t
appear that everyone is on the same page. How can we effect change in this
country without the answers to these questions? When Dr. Martin Luther King led
the people to march and boycott in the 1950s and 60s, there was a clear plan of
action and everyone stuck to it. The outcome was the Civil Rights Act of 1964
and other positive changes in this country. We’ve done this same
protesting/rioting after the death of a black person killed by a white cop many
times, but what has that changed? Nothing.
This morning I woke
up to a bunch of black squares posted on my timeline on social media with the
hashtag #blackouttuesday. I was confused and started to question my peers who
were posting these things. What does the black square mean? Who started this
trend? How is this constructive? No one knew who started it or what exactly it
meant. I was told that it was a way to black out social media to show we stand
strong against racism and oppression. I was also told that it was a way for
non-blacks to listen, read, and educate themselves. I felt frustrated by this
because I feel like that’s what we have been doing all week long. Why do we
need to post a black square to show that? How is posting a black square more
effective than posting visuals and text aided information on current events and
social justice? It was also interesting to see some of my non-black peers come
out of the woodwork posting a black square but had been silent for the entire
week. Hmm.
Don’t get me wrong, I think the sharing of information on
social media has been great and has sparked much needed conversations. Yes,
there are some offensive things being posted but that’s nothing new. I believe
in order to spark a change in this country there needs to be a clear plan of
action. We need to have specific demands. We have to take drastic measures economically to make them listen. The black dollar is more powerful than you think. Hit them where it hurts. Instead of posting a
black square on social media how about we organize ourselves to only support
black businesses for a set amount of time or better yet forever. We have a lot of work to do but I do believe it’s possible to effect change if we are organized, consistent, and
persistent. We can do this.
What are your feelings about the protests? Do you share the same sentiments?
Hey Jalisa! Thank you so much for your vulnerability and your participation and support of the cause. I have some thoughts:
ReplyDelete1. I don’t see us all agreeing on *one* charismatic leader. Great leaders like Dr. MLK Jr., Malcolm X, and many others led in a time without social media, and with way more sociological stipulations at play. Some of these include leaning into respectability and more strict gender roles. Today, everyone has the power of a platform through social media, and with that power comes the ability for critiques to come in thicker and faster from all sides. I don’t see *one* leader emerging to unify people. Another example has been President Obama—he means so much to a lot of Black people, but many others don’t think he is any better than our current President in terms of policies. In essence, I think he was one of the last potential charismatic leaders that could’ve “unified us all”...but I don’t think that’s going to happen.
2. For me, the good news is that I don’t think we need one charismatic leader. Because we have our own platforms, we can have impacts on our ever smaller spheres of influence, and move toward a common goal(s) as a community. That being said, in response to your question about what we are fighting for, I think the Black community is hungering to be self-empowered. Yes, we want to agitate for justice of specific cases like in case of the current protests, but we ultimately want to be free. For me, self-empowerment for the Black community looks like spiritual, political, financial, educational, economical, mental, psychological, and physical (health and wellness wise) freedom. This can be accomplished by creating, producing, and supporting our own businesses, schools, and goods. We need to have an ecosystem that is totally separate and specific to our needs.
3. All of that being said, it may seem as if a charismatic leader is needed to bring all this together—but I don’t think so. I think these wider goals must be articulated, and then as a community we continue to ideate on how to work toward them. I think that the unfortunate thing that has happened is that these goals have been articulated for a very long time, and plans have been put into action by various “smaller” leaders than the MLKs and Malcolm Xs, but the wider Black community has not been long-suffering in their execution of these plans. The Montgomery Bus Boycott *alone* took more than a full year, and that was a concerted effort by thousands in one city in one state for a very specific purpose of desegregation. It will take the concerted effort and groundswell of these protests a *much longer time* to reach our goals. I think individually we have a responsibility to move according to our skill set, personalities, and circumstances toward our common goals, and this is a pain-staking process that requires lifetimes, not months.
These are my thoughts as I thought them, and I welcome dialogue! Blessings! ����