The world does not revolve around straight black women and straight black men
It is not my job to make excuses for flaws in the black community. I don’t work for free and my emotional labour is not free. I do not get paid to become a public defendant for issues within the black community. The first step is admitting that you have a problem. There are divisions in the black community. There are black men, there are black women, and there are gender fluid black people. There are fat and slim black people; there are poor and rich black people. There are short and tall black people. There are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, queer, intersex and asexual black people. There are many different factors that affect the way that black people move the world. This flimsy one-sided dialogue that splits the black community down the middle: black woman and men, is damaging. Individual identities are important and once we accept that fact, it will be much easier to have strength as a community. Strength as a community is important. Trump’s election, Brexit and the minuscule action on police brutality in both the UK and the US, demonstrate that black people are not an important political stronghold; economic stronghold nor a social stronghold. In spite of the numbers, it is clear that politicians have no supply for black demands.
Mawuna Remarque asserted that “Your oppressor has no morals, no shame, and believe me, he is not ignorant.” These are the methods that are used in Nazi Germany, the government will deny any awareness or knowledge of the injustices that are happening across the road or next door and those who benefit from such regimes can thus put their hands up and deny oppression’s existence. I am very aware that we are not living in Nazi Germany, I am also not afraid of relating current situations to past ones because that is the only way we can prevent them from happening again. We have the symptoms of the disease of large-scale and blatant oppression.
“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” I am aware of the fact that there is strength in numbers but we do not deny issues in the black community in order to do so. Even if we did deny these issues, the oppressor would not care. The oppressor has no conscience and has no logic. Tobi, producer at Apples and Snakes, tweeted succinctly about “requests to be coddled; to have “not all black men” disclaimers, suggesting it will give racist people ‘ammo’”. To be frank, I couldn’t care less where racist find their ammo. It is not my concern, it is not my responsibility. Even if it was, if we follow that thin line of argument through, then all it shows is that there is reasoning behind racism. I don’t have to disprove racism because there is no reasoning behind racism.
There is an epidemic of homophobia, transphobia, misogynoir, colourism within the black community and we must address this, we must solve this and we must cure this. I am not willing to pretend as if oppression within the black community does not exist for the sake of anyone, let alone, a racist. How can you address oppression outside the black community whilst there are issues inside of the black community? A false sense of security serves no purpose.
