The Black Excuse: Leette Eaton White
“They call this war a cloud over the land. But they made the weather and then they stand in the rain and say ‘Sh*t, it’s raining!’ Ruby as played by Rene Zellweger “Cold Mountain†(2003)
I am Black. I am from African decent on both sides of my family with my mom being half – black and my dad Caribbean. But not once in my life have I blamed my position the world on (living in a single parent low income home in the projects of New York City) on my skin color. My color has nothing to do with it. I never blamed my tough job hunt on being black. My skin color has nothing to do with it. I never blamed a teacher for disliking me due to my skin color, or giving me a bad grade because of my skin color. My skin color has nothing to do with it. Any hardship I have faced had to do with a circumstance I was born into or my own actions. My skin never had anything to do with it.
But so often in the urban black community folks will say things like “The white man is keeping me down.†Or “Its cause I’m black.†And even “We ain’t got no role models.†And even “My kid ain’t no basketball star or rapper he ain’t gonna get out of here.†These words truly do, and on a frequent level, come out of people’s mouths. But they have no value. Because they are not even the slightest bit true. My father once said to me “Every problem I ever had was because of a white man.†I call B.S. That’s not true. Most of his problems were causes by no one but him. And it’s the same for any other person. Blaming a whole group people for a whole slew of problems affecting one community is a completely ridiculous notion. That definitely is no longer the case. And really if we look back in time, it never was. Fredrick Douglas had plenty of white folks to resent, and hate with a passion. But he didn’t just sit back and complain. He educated himself, got up and fought back and became a premier leader for blacks in this country and paved the way to freedom. If he lived in our times he would never have the audacity to blame a whole group of people for his own personal failures. Neither would Sojourner Truth, she ran away from slavery started up a grassroots mission to educate people on the true evil of it and was later invited to the White House by Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, and served with the National Freedman’s Relief Association. Booker T. Washington, a controversial figure, wanted blacks to succeed through the economy. He also believed education was the key to success and thus started the Tuskegee Normal School in Alabama. And that was in 1881. And Harriet Tubman, perhaps on of the single greatest Americans, knew of the struggle of a person truly disenfranchised. She also knew that one who was under enslavement may not have known it, “I freed a thousand slaves I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.†There are so many blacks throughout the pages of American history books that could have and should have inspired us long before Barack Obama.
Now I agree blacks in this country are still under the white man’s thumb. But its not because it was forced there. Blacks have now lowered it there over themselves, saying the thumb hides the cold, keeps them warm and at the same time say “The white man is keeping me down.†Its raining folks, and we made the weather. We make the weather when we don’t encourage family values and present fathers. We make the weather when we don’t push our young people to get an education and tell them it’s a waste of time. We make the weather when we are racist by making claims that infer all whites are evil, and then complain about racism. We make the weather when don’t educate our kids about sex and pregnancy. We make the weather when we don’t build stable communities for our kids so they don’t feel the need to join gangs. We make the weather when we push away all ideas of the psychological benefits of therapy, say its for crazy people, and then wonder why drug use plagued people in the eighties, and gave us crack babies. We vote for politicians that stifle the economy and then wonder why more jobs don’t come into our communities.
I am not a slave on a plantation. I never was. Nor were my parents, or grandparents, or my great grandparents. But if we really look we can see so many that still are, in the their minds. But it is all a worthless excuse when we have always been in perfect control of our destinies. And now because we have the physical manifestation of what we all always complained was never there, a black president, the excuses must end. There is no excuse. Not when it is so obvious that anything is possible (even if set off by the most single racist movement I have ever seen in my life) that a black man can get ahead. People went out and gave Obama a landslide victory, because he is “blackâ€ÂÂ. If that one can do it, anyone can do it. There is no single excuse. Now that we have our symbol, our crutch to not succeed is gone. And now that it is gone, if we don’t succeed we only have ourselves to blame, then again… it was always that way. I just hope the rest of the world sees what I do.
