By R. Preston Clark
Within all of the discourse between blacks and whites throughout the centuries that black people have lived in this country, there seems to be a question that nobody has asked. There is an elephant in the room that could put racism and its executioners in a corner with sealed lips and slashed vocal chords. Look all racists and their sickening, destructive ideologies in the eye and simply ask.
What have we done to you?
What is it about our existence has made your lives so difficult? What is it about us being black has caused you such pain and suffering that you have had to lash out at us – both literally and figuratively – for all these years? What crosses have you had to carry simply due to us being in your presence?
That list is empty. There is nothing to put on it. There is nothing in the history of black and white interaction that can adequately explain the centuries-long temper-tantrum white people have had in this country.
You really don’t want to ask us, black people, that same question. What have white people done to us? How has their existence made our lives so difficult? What crosses have we had to carry simply due to them being in our presence?
What is it about them being white has caused us such pain and suffering that we have had to lash out at them for all these years?
Oh wait. We haven’t. And that’s the biggest fear of all.
Our reasoning for a response akin to what has been done to us is rich and pure. There would be no sugarcoating necessary to provide an extensive list of why it is perfectly in our right to retaliate against the inhumane actions done towards us for centuries. The lengths those who call themselves white have gone to impart anguish and pain upon black people stretches far and wide across a globe they wrongfully think belongs to them.
Slavery. The raping of our women. The castration of our men. Lynchings. Mass murders. Jim Crow. Segregation. Mass incarceration. The stealing of land. The destruction and massacre of Black Wall Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Gentrification. The creation of ghettos. The crack epidemic. The war on drugs. The erasure of our history both in this country and abroad. The dismissing of our language. Religious control. The criminal justice system. Disproportionate incarceration rates. Racial profiling. The continual acquittal of cops who have murdered us. Appropriation. Prison-industrial complex. The school-to-prison pipeline. Police brutality. Selling of black men to private prisons. Inconsistent and unfair sentencing practices for crimes similar to whites. Discriminatory practices within healthcare, life insurance, housing and bank loans. The Tuskegee experiments. COINTELPRO.
There are conscious black people reading this and adding to the list. I know there is more. And the list continues to grow by day. Continues to strengthen itself in both subtle and blatant ways. The biggest fear those who call themselves white have is the recognizing of these transgressions and the measures it would take to retaliate. What would it take for this to even itself out?
No one is asking for this to happen. What black people have asked for centuries is simply to be able to live our lives without the constant interference of those who call themselves white. We have never declared war. We have never sought revenge. We have never looked to return the centuries-long favor. We have simply wanted to be treated like you treat yourselves. We have clearly shown ourselves to be a forgiving people. We have – and many might say unfortunately – been forgiving for a long time.
But everyone has their limits. Even us.
