A Letter to Dez Bryant
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Should have quoted him |
Dez, I couldn't help but pause when I read your Instagram quotes. You start by saying you usually mind your own business. You then say that it is not our job to carry the burden, but to lead by example. I am trying to understand what compelled you to now be a spokesperson for your people by echoing the sentiments of a retired basketball player? For your statement to hold court it would have to be substantiated by facts versus a very popular, tired trope that all of the ills indigenous, but not exclusive, to the black community lie singularly in the choices that they have made and any convo to the contrary is simply parroting the victim culture that in some people's minds is unmerited or exaggerated. Let me be clear, I BELIEVE in personal responsibility
The closing line of venerated television broadcaster Walter
Cronkite was “and that’s the way it is” to conclude the major network’s evening
news program. It seems that the specious
argument that the occurrence of racism has subsided to the point of being relegated
to the margins of our culture has become the new trending topic. I know you meant well in your pronouncement,
and the Conservatives have been reposting your “blurb” with impunity but let me
give you a little context Mr.”I Quote Charles Barkley” for history.
If one speaks of micro aggression or racially-tinged
innuendo, articles or codified pejoratives being used in business or leisure
communication there is now a backlash of charges of race baiting or the more
ominous phrase “pulling the race card.”
Revisionists now have expunged any narrative that gives context to why
this social cancer is not only still present, but is palpably metastasizing.
The question becomes in what form has this societal ill
morphed? The rabidly racist had become
pariahs, ( well at least until the last Presidential election) hiding in the digital underbelly of social media and ostensibly
banished as outliers and aberrations or relics of the days gone by. The pundits would assuage that any voicing of
inequity, injustice or discrimination is predicated on a “culture of
complaint”, victimization or whining in which plaintiffs are simply seeking
concessions versus being required to meet the established criteria like
everyone else. Even worse, the mere suggestion that an individual or
organization is a purveyor of racist ideations, practices, policies or
procedures is asinine and replete with an ulterior motive of getting over.
So, in this post-racial era there is a national mandate to
absolutely forget the past and its incendiary parts. Give no context to oppression, terrorism,
injustice and de jure and de facto practices that at a minimum were affronts to
the Constitution. The retort has become
life is about choices. You can’t
reasonably expect people to continue to give latitude to decisions that you
make as justification for your cause be it Black Lives Matter, anti-police
brutality rallies or
protest against discriminatory lending and housing
practices.
Racism as a social construct has intrinsically been about
control and oppression of a targeted people group. Its insidious outcroppings have been the
extralegal practice of lynching, racial profiling, disparate sentencing
guidelines, redlining, higher interest rates on everything from cars to
mortgages and restrictive covenants and deeds.
It also spawned eugenics which advocated egregious pseudo-scientific
experiments that included everything from deliberately infecting participants
with highly contagious diseases to medical experimentation that was fatal. Remember, all of this is post slavery! But,
you seem to have limited your historical narrative to the stalwart verbal
musings of Mr. “Turrible” who is well versed in the turpitude of American
history?!
Legions of successful blacks are highlighted as proof
positive that the wealth, education and class disparity rest singularly with
the choices of those on the margins. The
70 percent of households that are without fathers, the black-on-black crime,
the unemployment rate, the recidivism rate, the over representation in social
metrics that are negative are all because of choices of the identified group.
The penchant to ascribe many of the disparities to systemic
racism doesn’t pass muster. William
Ernest Henley’s humanist poem “Invictus” declares that we are the captains of
our fate, the masters of our soul, so this dribble about inequity and injustice
tied to race is a dissonant chorus of reckless irresponsibility. So, we will
continue to disagree on this topic even with a mountain of empirical data to
show the nexus between the past and the present. Black people, the message is clear: Shut up,
get up, pull your boot straps up, own up, get your hustle up, pull your pants
up,(you know something about that) clean your neighborhoods up, put your guns up, get your grades up, get your
representation up, build your wealth up, get your home ownership up, get your
business ownership up, get your identity as an American up,……. wake-up this is
a new era and your pandering usage of this tired trope of racism will no longer
be tolerated. And that, is still, just
the way it is!!!