One of our most beloved civil rights icons on Capitol Hill, Congressman John Lewis, was recently transported all the way back to the humiliating incident on the Edmund Pettus bridge where he was beaten on Bloody Sunday in Selma, Ala. He was called the N-word by angry tea partiers, while our black majority whip, James clyburn, was spat at as they made their way to their destinations on the Hill. The surprise is not that racism still exists, it’s that it’s coming to such an ugly public head again.
The nearly impassable bridge, from inequality to equality, that we thought our tireless civil rights heros crossed for good some 46 years ago, when President Lyndon B. Johhson signed the John F. Kennedy-initiated civil rights bill into law, is still intact. In fact, there seems to be a concerted effort to march us right back to the other side, reclaiming the N-word label and being spat upon while we’re on our way. It’s obvious that a major racial battle is being spawned from all the political “passion.”
It’s obvious that there is yet work to do, but who’s gonna do the fighting this time? Those that had the passion and the guts to stand against racism in those tumultuous days gone by are aged and near irrelevant — or so we thought. The generations that have come after them have been lulled into a false sense of peace with the “progress” that’s been made and don’t have the fire, nor the wisdom to spark any kind of movement.
Hip-hop generation, where are you? Are you too busy having Twitter wars and MC beefs with one another to notice that the battle is not within your own race?
Where are you? Are you too caught up in bling and YouTube to understand that your very respect as human beings is being called into question again, after all these years?
Where are you? Are you too bogged down with text messaging and sexting to understand that your counterparts are growing inflamed simply because there’s an intellgent black man that’s civilly yet strategically calling the shots now?
Where are you? Are you too caught up into watching otherwise normal people live their lives on-screen through reality TV instead of enriching your own and reading venomous blogs that daily snipe others within your race to notice that a foot is still on your neck because you won’t remove it?
Do you see how easy it is go from being “tolerated” to being “N-words,” again? It’s time to engage, but will the call fall on deaf or otherwise occupied ears? Our weary civils rights leaders need you. –gerald radford
