A Letter to Dez Bryant

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!!!