Dark Fog

“It’s in the American DNA. Everything, every institution from legal system to finance to law enforcement to education was built in antithesis of us.” - Kenneth Montgomery

This system has been in direct opposition of our life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. There’s so much that has been done by design to keep us mentally captive and in fear of reprisal. However, we’ve been lulled into a false sense of security and complacency. We’ve come to accept age-old adages like “Black men need to work 2x as hard and black women need to work 3x as hard” as normal. We accepted the legal, educational and  financial institutions’ actions for a long time because that’s all we’ve known . We accepted that institutions have now changed for the better from the way they were in the 1960s and earlier.

Our sense of reality has been a farce. The racism is covert, deep and engrained. No matter what institution you look at the systemic and sometimes overt racism  is there. Masked in an immaculate designer suit to seem equitable to hide its evil and ugliness. These institutions raise their green fists in the air at select moments in time when there is civil unrest. Then they place a foot on our necks during times of “negative peace” and lack of tension because there isn’t accountability for taking a black life or robbing a black mind. And in fact, keeping black and brown people subjugated has always been been profitable for the American empire.

We’ve often times been accomplices whether knowingly or unknowingly. And we need to stop and wake up. I am not of the belief that all white people are against me. But I am a believer in the fact that most large institutions in America are predominantly white male controlled and don’t inherently care about my life or struggle. They will do business and comfort me because they care about my dollar. For years, I have been shrouded in the fog. 

When I walk outside, walk the streets and go to my place of work, I actually live in a place that has been systematically segregated  with a large disenfranchised population. We seek the acceptance of the oppressor when we should demand and give each other our just due with every word, action and dollar spent. Because capitalism perpetuates this systemic racism that holds us down. 

As an educator, role models for my students can no longer meaningless token celebrities that are often admired because they’ve massive amounts of accumulated wealth. Our current form of capitalism uses tokenism to instill in the black population that those with success amongst us in the entertainment and sport arenas of society PROVE that we are post-racism. Capitalism in its current form is a tool that perpetuates institutional racism because it promotes a false sense of closure that nothing about this system needs to change.

Where are the other successful black people that media often portray? There’s no problem about having a passion for these fields but by design those fields are widely broadcasted as the options for success through our TVs and internet. Those are the fields that are celebrated. Passion for civics, arts, sciences, engineering, business, health, technology and others are struggling to thrive in the black community when the larger portion of the youth doesn’t even know some of these options exist to black men and women or how to access them. What representations of themselves do our kids ever see on a consistent basis in non entertainment fields that aren’t with dead or Barack Obama, another token used by certain sections of the media to say America is post-racism? 

Education should be at the center of every movement. Without that piece, it’s difficult to know what to concrete steps to take and demand to fulfilling our dreams of thriving community. There is a war going on our lives which we are currently rising up against after the spilling of so much blood. There has also been a 400 year war on our minds that we haven’t even begun to truly fight. Without the proper education, we do our kids a disservice of continuing the indoctrination that has plagued us and our parents before us. We work hard. We pay taxes. We are American.  Our American educational curriculum currently cannot and should not apply to the kids in this country. And it should not be the sole job of parents to teach certain truths about society and history to the students because curriculum was designed not to reflect it. 

As a black educator, I have been complicit to “normal”. And I will no longer choose to be.

As a black man, I have been complicit to “normal.” And I will no longer choose to be.

Time and unlearning has taught me that “normal” hasn’t been good, just or kind.

Normalcy has been preserved to keep me in check and hinder the unification of my community.

We will break the fog machine. We will unify our community. 

#besafetho