Dear Reader,
I was inspired to write this post as I was listening to “Black Man” off of Stevie Wonder’s “Songs in the Key of Life” LP record – yes, as in vinyl. Currently, I am infatuated with the tales of the ’60s and ’70s including the musical geniuses that flourished throughout these two decades, the movements, the need to make things happen – to bring about change.
The reason I bring this up is because of electoral statistics from the just recent midterm elections. According to CBS News’ national exit polls, only 10% of us voted this year – a 3% decline from black voter turnout during the 2008 Presidential election. Black folks make up about 12% of the US population which is estimated to be about 37 million. Of course not all 37 million are of voting age; and this fact only lowers the black voter turnout number further. Heck, CBS’s numbers may even be skewed but we all know that the figure is low. My point is what the hell is the problem.
I understand some of the reasons for low turnout because I studied it in my AP Gov’t class in high school: political apathy, lack of higher education, etc. But one would think, after all the adversity black people have gone through since the founding of this country, there would be a sense of urgency or pride to get out and vote, to do something. Well, not so much.
Just because we have a black president does not mean that everything is hunky dory for us. President Obama is not a band-aid for the black man’s problems. The black community is not united in the US.
Black people need a movement now more than ever, and it doesn’t exist. 
I wasn’t an Afro (African-American Studies) major in college, and I’m not going to pretend like I know every detail about the history of the black struggle in this country – which no doubt still manifests itself in 2010. But I do know that someone had to fight for the privilege for me to get a degree from a university, to vote (even if it’s between the lesser of two evils), to take advantage of opportunities that were denied to others in the past. So why aren’t more of us taking advantage. Rather than help our people grow, the black community still sees itself trudging along this path called progress.
It’s called blaxploitation.
The formal term is referred to the film genre that essentially stereotypes blacks as pimps, drug dealers, poor people, blah blah blah. But I find the term to really encompass a broader view of how the black community allows others to exploit them. For example, hip-hop was first and foremost a political movement that evolved from the realities of disenfranchised black youth that were just fed up with what was going on. It was a movement representing black solidarity like the black power movement of the 70s. Over time, however, the suits in the music industry have created and marketed this cool, black, ‘thug mentality’ propaganda to the public in order to capitalize off of black folks – read: exploit black folks. Obviously there are exceptions to this statement, but only a handful.
Comedian Paul Mooney said it best on the Dave Chappelle Show: “Everybody wanna be a n***a, but nobody wanna be a n***a.” And there is a powerful truth in that. There is some aura of “cool” associated with being black. But the real life circumstances of the average Black American demonstrate that it is better to imitate and capitalize off of black people - our appearance, our language, our talents, our music, our culture, our spending power, our EVERYTHING – rather than to empathize or to help us. How is it that everyone else knows how to harness our evident power but us?
I’m not going to discredit those people that are trying to do something, to create change within the black community because I know that they are out there. The problem is that they are competing with powerful industries that have developed effective means of exploiting the black community for decades. When will we stand up for ourselves en masse again?
Black people need a movement.
