“Framing the Moment”
The killing of any Black person is an attempt to murder us all. Echoing in my mind is Bob Marley and Marvin Gaye’s refrain, “fighting on arrival and fighting for survival.” “What’s going on.”
The answer requires deep thought. In the beginning of the human experience, Africa stood up and was the first place to declare beings to be divinely human. During every era of discord and disharmony, it was the African spirit that called for the restoration of righteousness. Keep this in mind
Every generation must meet the challenges of its generation or betray it. Black people, as the primary target and victim, have always met the challenge of human inhumanity. This has not been a start and stop and start again experience. Nor have we experienced total success and completion of the task of restoring humanity to human relationships and engagements. It has been no less than a continuous and constant struggle to restore humanity to the world. Systemic racism as the face of white supremacy and privilege feeds police brutality, high Black unemployment, lack of access to quality education, healthcare and housing, and the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breona Taylor, Tony McCade, George Floyd, and many, many other named and unnamed others. Their loss is too high a price to pay.
Please Frame this Moment Correctly
From the devastating disruptions of ancient Africa in Egypt, Mali, Ghana, Songhay, and Timbuktu to the colonial rearrangement of the African mind to the kidnapping, killing, dispersal, and enslavement of African bodies, to the struggle for civil rights, to the imposition of worldwide ideology of white supremacy and privilege to institutional oppression and domination to neo-colonialism and political disenfranchisement, to cultural denigration and appropriation, to tribalism and classism, to ideas of elitism and genetic inferiority, to economic exploitation and western educational hegemony, to patriarchal domination and nation state and border divisions, we have always fought back in the name of restoring humanity.
Protest is essential and our voice and narrative must be heard. We can no longer be silent about inhumanity. We will continue not to be silent. None of us can be on the sidelines; self-preservation is not a spectator sport. We are all in it as perpetrators or as victors. However, be clear, in this time, we are not just engaging in protest or civil unrest, and we cannot let the correctness of this struggle be hijacked by the agents of evil and savagery. This Is Us doing what we do. We are doing what we do, again. We are shining the light on the dirt and dust of racism’s evil pathology and struggling to make the world well again. We are leading the struggle to make the place where humans live and love Humanely. Like Mother Earth who is cleansing herself, we are fighting to reclaim humanity for ourselves and for the betterment us all.
As one family, the Black Therapy Central; ABPsi and its chapters; Black elected officials; other Black organizations and everyday ordinary people are ready and able to assist in this great moment of healing and transformation.