Towards the middle of the movie the main character, Sam White, tells her friend Reggie to stop stereotyping himself because he was rolling a jay that wasn’t a foreign thing to hear or anything, black people are told that and things along that line all the time by all people. The thing is though our stereotypes are instilled into our minds, we see it in the media, in entertainment and in our communities — we know it exists but that does not mean it is okay to belittle and dehumanize us because some of us do them or are them. We are those stereotypes or do them because that’s what we were able to do and that’s what so many of us living now were born into. Stereotypes date back to slavery times, just think of the stereotypes that come to mind when you think of black people — “why are black people afraid of water?” because acid was dumped in water when we decided to go swimming, because when we were brought to America it was horrendous “living” conditions on a boat with countless others or jumping into the clear blue ocean with the sharks. “why do black people talk so ‘black’? because when we were enslaved it was criminal to know how to read but we found a way meaning we found a way to communicate, a way not exactly proportionate to how our lighter counterparts communicated and that language developed into AAVE (African-American Vernacular English), and for the record it does not mean that we lack intelligence.
Now at the end of the movie there is a Halloween party, an African American themed party hosted and attended by white University students. At the party you see the white students gather to do what they do frequently on any normal day which is take from other cultures because you know “everyone wants to be black but nobody wants to be black”. White people envy us at the same time as they hate us, they wanna be us but they don’t want to coexist with us. Each student is seen wearing a hip hop costume, wearing dreads, in black face, or looking like “a criminal.” The party is broken up by the students of color and the movie ends on a bit good note for the main characters & secondary characters and a bit of a cliffhanger for the fate of the finances and media attention for the school.
Last night and this morning I finally watched 13th, the Netflix original by Ava DuVernay.
Now race and racism are tricky subjects I look at them as paradoxical enigmas really; race is a concept, a concept that has unfolded itself onto the world. It’s hard for me to articulate and fathom thoughts and beliefs I have with the two because on one hand it’s like race does not exist but in this world it’s a factor and with race has come racism which has ruled America from the time Columbus “discovered” America.
The 13th Amendment declared that “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” but there is a loophole within the amendment which no longer surprises me because I have realized America was built off of loopholes (as well as crime).
Slavery: Slavery was not and is not right but it was seen as universally acceptable because black people were not seen as human. Loophole. Black people were seen as dirty and filthy while white people were seen as pure and holy so killing, enslaving, and abusing black people was no different from killing other animals like lions and monkeys.
Convict Leasing: Less heard of, but still very real… Convicts were leased out to work for railway contractors, mining companies and large plantations. This was established after the 13th Amendment (14th and 15th). They were partakers in cheap labor so that the companies could pay the states a nice revenue for their labor.
Then you have Jim Crow and Segregation.
People tend to think and are taught that it went slavery, civil rights and ‘freedom’ or mass incarceration. That’s not the truth, there are many key aspects in Black History that are left out, I want for my people especially but also everyone else to be aware of our history and all the other histories that are left out and supposed to be “gotten over.”
