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I am only human don’t put the blame on me. I admit I am a privileged black man compared to many people of color, women, and children within the chains of modern bondage. I still feel the chains of slavery. It is just another version of the power structure that has prevailed for thousands of years. I am a well dressed human, privileged, compared to most. I am living within the limits of my power of privilege, looking for the good within the limitations. I am still privileged to be able to speak my voice and share my story.
I had an interesting conversation with a white male friend of mine. We were discussing the privileged societal positioning of the NFL ballplayers, calling them bourgeois to continue their protest during the playing of the national anthem. He continued to try and school me on their arrogance and disrespect they were giving the American flag, especially with them having nice homes and cars to come home to. He told me America had been good to them because they had been given so much. I told him, with the reality of institutionalized slavery, “you might have the cash but you can’t cash in your face.” You can’t buy your way out of racism, no matter how light your skin may be or how much money you may have. You are judged and positioned in a “less than” place of power. I brought up the point of “white privilege” in America.
Don’t blame me I am only human, doing the best I can, even as a white man in America.
I don’t think he understands the struggle of being “black in America.” It is a hard found fact to realize that no matter how hard you work, you can be called a “nigger” without a blink of an eye, causing your sense of privilege to become ineffective as a man, a human being, and a citizen of the United States of America. In that moment you are reduced to a place of being in the bondage of not having the “right of safe passage” or “ticket of free movement”, not being within the sense of freedom you thought you were guaranteed as an American living within the liberty bell of our constitution or the truth our American flag symbolizes.
What is the real power source of being privileged and how should it be used, white or black?
Would you use your money, power, and prestige to enable justice to be expressed in the story of America, as a citizen of America?
Is it proper to be silenced and labeled? Is that good for America?
Our conversation was an exchange, a debate with a little anger shared, but ended up opening the door of the ignorance of white males not realizing their power source is one of being at the top of the food chain, being privileged by birth. What they take for granted is the power everyone wants to achieve. That is what we call equal opportunity. To them, it is an expected relationship of being, just like breathing and going to the bathroom to eliminate or some say living as royalty. I told him I am not angry, I just want to share the wealth across the board.
He thought I was calling him a racist because I was in agreement with the protesting and at the same time calling him out about being “privileged” by merely being a white man in America, his place of being within the power structure, just facts. I wanted him to understand my point of view as a black man of sixty plus years who had to struggle living with these realities.
Don’t blame me, I am doing the best I can. I am only human in the midst of being black in America.
I attempted to explain to him how I felt there was a modern version of “sitting in the back of the bus” in place in our modern world. He told me he was not a racist and he had a friend who was black and drove a BMW 740 with aV12 engine who he worked for with pride. I told him I was glad that his experience was positive, but I was trying to have a conversation to talk about the unspoken conversation of inequality and frustration of a person of color’s daily life, the frustration of having put in the sweat and the tears and still come up “less than.” It was an attempt of have dialogue, an exchange of ideas, to ignite a needed conversation of compassion and sanity.
Can we have a simple, open-minded conversation about inequality, rip open the bell of shame and let it be?
He told me he understood my side, but he thought they had nothing to protest, they had money and power and why on American television?
I told him this was a cry for the liberation of our young black men locked into the modern slavery of our prison systems, the allowed devaluing of our lives in a historical and modern sense in America.There are people dying in America solely due to the color of their skin. I told him I have to exercise my American citizen’s right to protest as a human being, a sacred artist in order not to be an angry, self-hating and non-functional citizen of America. So I respect the protest rights of the NFL players. This was a cry for real secure, human power and dignity, a possibility of a perfect world.
I respect your personal struggle, please respect mine.
There theoretically should not be a “struggle” as a citizen of America and if there is, we supposedly have the right to protest to bring attention to the problem. So when you feel you are living in the “dream deferred” state of being, I believe it is your American right of free speech to peacefully protest. It should not be a problem to be positioned in a prayer stance to protest. It is a cry out for the love guaranteed to every American by our American constitution, in the freedom of democracy.
We are respecting the principles of the flag when we protest the failure in attaining equal power, the loss of power of the principals of freedom. It is a calling for a conversation to create change, remove the discrepancies standing in the way of truly achieving the American Dream.
Protesting the lack of freedom from sitting and riding in the back of the bus or sitting at a lunch counter demanding to be served like every other citizen of America does not always have “an appropriate time” for it to be executed for everyone’s personal comfort level. If we wait until it is comfortable for Modern America to digest this truth we will be waiting until the “cows come home,” so to speak. The time is now for the long-awaited promise of equality, the privilege of being an American not living in a state of limitations, but breathing freedom as the “cows come home.”
The “power of privilege” should be used to uphold the rights and dignity of all citizens of this United States of America, so the American flag can truly fly free.
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Photo Credit: Getty Images