It Wasn't a Choice

Angela Davis, fighter, activist,
feminist in 1972

Kanye West and Bill Cosby, two black men who are part of the conversation that black people are responsible for our own oppression. Yesterday Kanye West set Twitter aflame with his TMZ interview stating that 400 years of slavery was a choice. This argument isn't new. Bill Cosby, who was convicted of aggravated  indecent assault, repeatedly blamed blacks lack of education and lifestyle choices as the cause of our plight, in his now infamous pound cake speech.

It's the same argument that we often hear around public assistance, health insurance and diversity and inclusion in the workplace. The idea of, if we just pick ourselves up by the bootstraps, like everyone else then everyone can achieve the American dream. When the American dream is stated, the speaker conveniently leaves out the part about needing twenty years of absolutely nothing going wrong in order to elevate your socioeconomic status so it's more than getting a degree and being hired at a high paying job or simply wanting it.

While Black Panther dominated the box office, Shonda Rhimes is responsible for the leading shows in prime time and we had a black president there is still racism in the United States which is a byproduct of the enslavement of Africans.

Systemic, institutionalized racism still impacts the lives of people of color. Until 1996 the scientific community was still under the belief that race was a biological marker. This was adopted to justify buying and selling human beings. Race medicine still functions to provide people of color with less pain medication when undergoing procedures. Race still impacts who gets into colleges, who gets a callback after an interview and who gets recognized in society as exceptional. How many black actors have won an Academy award? How many black artists have won a Pulitzer Prize? How may black students have full scholarships to ivy league schools, unrelated to sports?

We celebrate these things because they are worth celebrating but also because they are exceptions. To say that an entire people is lagging behind the rest of society because they choose to be in a state of "mental slavery" is ignorant and dangerous.

I get mad at Taylor Swift for not using her platform to denounce the Nazis who hail her as their Aryan princess but Kanye West how dare  you use your platform, which was largely built by black youth. Who believed your message that Jesus walks, who related to your experience in Late Registration and followed you to College Drop Out Graduation and beyond. Who listened to you rap about your jaw being wired shut, how dare you spit on us and act like you could have accomplished that without any of us. We thought a boy from Chicago understood what we are up agaisnt for simply existing.

When you said Trump was your boy I didn't bat an eye, you've said things to sell records in the past, lots of celebrities have. But that statement doesn't make you a Republican, that statement makes you a person who believes that DACA should have been rescinded. Someone who thinks grabbing a woman by the pussy, against her will, is fair. A person who thinks Haiti is a shit hole country. That's who you stand by? Fine, there's lots of other records I'd prefer to spend my money on. And honestly it's my fault for being surprised that you are a slavery denier.

You imply that slavery was escapable. That we had the numbers, don't you think the slave revolts were unsuccessful due to the very nature of the system? Keeping weapons away from enslaved people, making sure they couldn't read or write so they couldn't organize, lack of transportation, the very literal lock and key, the physical and psychological beatings they endured so masters could ensure they were too terrified to even think about leaving, the fact that even if you escaped to a free state you could be brought back because of the fugitive slave act which was literally written into law. Mr. West your history is lacking. Your statements have too great a reach but we've heard your tune before.

Bill Cosby did many atrocious things and during his rise to fame he made it his legacy to harp on the black community much like West's tweets are doing now. This isn't a new argument, many of us were raised by someone or had a grandparent who believed similarly. The idea that if we code switched, relaxed our hair, and went to school we would be exceptional, more importantly we would be acceptable. Free to live out the American dream, well guess what, black women are the most educated group in the US and we are still paid less than any other group.

And hey Kanye that's because of slavery.
The transatlantic slave trade brought Africans to this country as free labor and when the law deemed that unconstitutional we were terrorized with lynchings. We weren't allowed into the workforce or the school system. We came from nothing and we still fight to have the same opportunities. We didn't choose that, we have fought with slave revolts, some that happened on the very ships where we were housed as cargo. Fixing our way to be left with the only choice, to jump into the eh ocean. We fought with Loving vs. Loving, Brown vs the Board of Education, the Civil Rights Movement, Freedom Riders, the Black Panthers, Black Liberation Army, the Watts and LA riots, until even today with Black Lives Matter. We are not a powerless people that has been mentally enslaved we are a strong resilient, exhausted people who cannot understand how so much has been taken from us and still we continue to lose even more.

Our children still go to segregated schools, we see the push-back from white parents when we enroll our kids in their kids school. We know textbooks refuse to show our history or any other marginalized group member as anything other than the alternative but rarely, if ever, the dominating narrative. We know that even when we do everything right we can still be passed over, shot at or killed and no justice will be served. So tell me again how this is a choice - or better yet just be quiet.

Any group that was brought to a country as less than human is going to face an uphill battle to be accepted. Period. Other groups that immigrated to the US, by choice, may have faced persecution and racism but they were still labeled as hardworking and wanting to improve on their situation. Blacks did the same thing that the Irish, English, German and Asian immigrants did to build generational wealth and assimilate  and yet blacks are still incarcerated disproportionately and denied home loans for their ethnic sounding names. We cannot separate ourselves from our history, racism makes sure of that. We have a scarlet letter for slavery.