“Our nation is moving towards two societies: one white, one black — separate and unequal.”
- Kerner Commission 1968
And this statement was made 4 years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which was supposed to ‘correct’ the separate and unequal.
What we gained from that era is essential: the right to vote, the right to use the same facilities including bathrooms, water fountains, restaurants, libraries and schools.
But during that same time, we lost our media and its narrative. Black reporters were needed to report on the Black experience and the white papers paid much better.
And when the Black papers went defunct, the Black reporters (in their previous numbers) were no longer necessary.
So we had no narrative to guide us into the new era. White establishments were ‘better’ so we abandoned the Black ones.
And most of our businesses dried up along with our ability to employ one another.
So now we had to inordinately seek out white establishments (that we helped to establish with OUR patronage) for a job.
I know what you’re thinking. ‘How specifically could having our own media change this situation?’
And you’d be right to think that. The psychological, emotional and physical damage done to us back then was a horror!
It’s intolerable today and back then it was much worse! So it’s not surprising how we
abandoned our theaters, stores, newspapers and what not for theirs since
the denial of their businesses and facilities made us want them all the more.
But there were those who foresaw the consequences and even THE KERNER COMMISSION - a bunch of mostly white men - were able to relay the devastating effects through their study.
Of course their findings were given little weight and later buried.
The same modus operandi would be applied to every study after. Hence the 88% stop n
frisk study given little weight or the Ferguson study where 16,000 of the 21,000
residents have arrest warrants out on them, yet firing ALL of the white cops from
elsewheres patrolling and brutalizing Black spaces (to the tune of 95%) is NEVER part of any solution.
So the question again is how could having our own media, both then and now, have changed what was and what is today?
Did you know that the lifespan in Cuba is the same as that of the US at 1/8th the cost?
A huge part of the reason why they need to survive and thrive on less is the sanctions we place on them.
But their narrative is so strong that now we fly to them for cancer medications.
Now don’t get me wrong. The reason why the US was unable to bomb nations like Cuba and Korea back into the Stone Age for their ‘insolence’ is because they were both backed by the other superpowers, Russia and China respectively.
Don’t believe me? Just ask Saddam and Kaddafi or ANY Black African nation you can name.
But imagine if we all had the narrative back then of working together to build and maintain what we had while leveraging our vote? That’s the Shirley Chisholm way.
Back when Obama stood up against the obvious profiling, we had so-called Black media calling it cronyism.
If we had taken that one opportunity and united behind him then, we could have prevented many of the hashtags that followed.
Which brings me to my next point: not every media that calls itself Black is BLACK.
They’re just more uppity versions of the white liberal gaze, probably funded by them
as well; at least initially. Scratch the surface of this so-called radical media and you’ll find, ‘Just comply’, ‘police reforms’, ‘not all...’ and ‘pull you pants up’.
It’s like there’s some sort of spell preventing folk from seeing the obvious. Either we break the spell or the spell breaks us.
And social media and blogs is not gonna cut it. We’ve been fed a steady diet of oppression and our minds are now geared to accept this as sustenance. An occasional dose of actual food would turn our stomachs.
Can’t wait ‘til we have our own media. Everything changes.
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