so i was checking my twitter feed on my phone, trying to prevent my laptop from overheating, when i stumble across an article written by Marc Lamont Hill entitled “Black America needs to take responsibility” {http://www.philly.com/philly/columnists/marc_lamont_hill/167772005.html}.
now anybody who has followed this blog long enough knows i immediately rolled my eyes at the title without even having read it, because i’m not the one for “do right negros” getting on soap boxes and shaming every black person with their recent brand of respectibility politics. But in the wake of all the chicago shootings, this article takes the cake!
DEAR BLACK PEOPLE:
I’m writing you because I am worried. Around the country, our people are dying at a disturbing rate. Last weekend in Chicago, nine people were killed and 37 injured in an unconscionable but not uncommon bout of violence. Here in Philadelphia, the numbers aren’t much better. Nearly every night, we witness acts of violence in our most vulnerable communities.
But it’s not just violence. Every year, we receive reports that our children are dropping out of school at alarming rates. On top of that, suicide, HIV infection, drug addiction, joblessness and homelessness continue to undermine our life chances.
It’s time we take responsibility.
Relax, I’m not becoming a Republican. In fact, that type of thinking is part of the problem. No political party, but especially not the Republican Party, has the market cornered on taking responsibility. And we certainly don’t have to buy into right-wing notions of responsibility, which require us to take full blame for the hell we’ve caught in America. That’s not what I’m talking about.
Responsibility is not the same as blame.
Despite the dominant narratives of our people, most of us aren’t lazy, irresponsible or bad people. Most of us are simply trying to respond to a variety of factors that create social misery, like unchecked capitalism, structural racism, deeply ingrained sexism and a national culture of violence.
As an activist, I’ve spent nearly all of my life pushing back against these forces to make the world more humane and livable. Taking responsibility doesn’t mean we have to choose between taking action and having a smart and sober analysis of what’s wrong with the world.
But that’s not enough. Responsibility turns analysis into action.
Responsibility forces us to be diligent activists, organizers, politicians, lobbyists, voters and jurors. How can we complain about bad politicians if we don’t vote for the right ones? How can we complain about the lack of right ones if we don’t run? How can we complain about unresponsive politicians if we don’t create demands for them? Some of the most profound examples of black people taking responsibility have come when we fought to change the fundamental structure of society.
We must join organizations. We must build organizations. We must change the rules and logic of the day. We must take responsibility by taking action.
But that’s not enough. Responsibility isn’t just about big-scale activism.
A real politics of responsibility must also focus on the local. Of course, we need radical change in our schools. As a school-reform advocate, I will fight to the death for more money, revolutionary curriculum and school-discipline policies that decriminalize our children. But every study ever conducted shows that our students also have better outcomes when we read to them, help them with their homework and have regular communication with their teachers. How can we complain about the lack of support for our students if we don’t volunteer? How can we complain about the links between literacy and incarceration if we don’t read to our children?
We all know that crime and violence are reduced when people have access to quality employment and educational opportunities and when access to illegal weapons is reduced. By all means, we must keep fighting for those things. But crime and violence also are reduced when we actively parent our own children, mentor other young people and establish a strong presence in our own neighborhoods. Sure, we need more resources for youth, but why can’t we start a basketball league, chess club, book circle?
Yes, we need new books, but we can read the old ones. Yes, we need quality supermarkets in our neighborhoods, but we can build community gardens. Yes, it’s criminal that our people are hungry in the richest nation in the world, but we can feed them. We cannot become prisoners to misery, hopelessness or inaction.
Simply put, the biggest problem with the world is that there are too many people who don’t do anything.
And it must stop. Now.
By the time i got to the end of it i was fucking livid, asking myself “is this fool serious? he really is serious? he doesn’t even live in Chicago but thinks he has the right to tell people who do and have been recently been affected by gun violence ‘hey, this is really sad what happened to y’all, but if y’all had been more productive then things like this wouldn’t have happened in the first place’.”
sit down and shut up please!
i want to know what world he lives in where he doesn’t see black people being pro-active around issues of gun violence already, specifically Chicago.
because there are organizations and community leaders that have been concerned about this very issue long before his daddy even spilled the unfortunate seed that wrought him, and continue in the traditions of that history to end violence against POCs in Chicago. and to ignore that and say “get off your ass and do something” slaps all that history of activism straight in the face and makes an unrealistic parallel between increasing gun violence and black people supposedly not doing nothing to stop it.
funny how we barely have our feet in the door when it comes to existing arguments about the right to bare arms and the ability of NRA lobbyists to thwart every fucking gun control effort just to keep pistols in the hands of every white person, tea partier, and klansmens for miles. yet we’re the ones who chronically get blamed for gun violence. okay then!
i want to know what world he lives in where people in chicago HAVENT tried voting for the politicans or becoming the teachers or becoming the whatever to solve social ills but keep running up against the same problem, too little government money and not enough real concern for the lives of POCs to go around
does he really think the likes of rahm emmanuel or pretty much any white politician who holds a major office in Chicago really gives two shits about POCs enough to take a stance against gun violence in a way that doesn’t pathologize POCs as being the problem and not the victims who are trying to create solutions.
i mean, when the budgets of programs that many POCs in chicago benefit from are chronically being cut by those so called “right politicians”- such as public housing and health care and public schools and public transportation, in favour of that privatizing, gentrifying almighty white dollar. gee colour me crazy but voting kinda becomes a game of who is going to screw you over the least.
i’m so done with people who are supposed to be “our own” blaming us for our own demise
i’m so done with people who shove “its easier said than done” solutions down the throats of the people who they are seeking to shame
i’m so done with people saying we are not parenting our kids. last time i checked leave it to beaver was allowed to play with toy guns. when are we going to hop down white america’s throat for normalizing the perception that white people carrying loaded firearms is A-OKAY!
the day black people stop being critical of the ways in which white supremacy perpetuates gun violence and normalizes the belief that white folks have the right to bear arms, be the majority in government agencies that arm themselves, and are subsequently justified in using them against people of colour without consequence is the day i’ll officially say black people are not taking responsibility.
