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Ron Jackson's Perspective
The Sunday Journal -
Think
Kankakee, Illinois
April 14, 2002
Reparation column
elicits
colorful comments from some |
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Being nominated for the
NAACP's Negro of the Year Award has never been one of my
aspirations. After my March 31 column, "Reparation
claims are ridiculous," I am now certain that will never happen.
According to a few local Blackologists, I have fallen
even lower on the black credibility poll. Blackologists are
blacks who are 55 years old or older who will never miss the
opportunity to speak with great eloquence to anyone who will listen
"how the black man is in his current position of poverty and lack of
privilege because of the past injustices of the white man."
While I can sympathize with those a decade or more older than me who
may have witnessed or suffered racism at its best, I can't empathize
with them.
Times have changed. Fifty or more years ago, a
black man could be killed for looking at a white female. That
doesn't happen today. If the O.J. Simpson trial proved nothing
else, it showed us that a black man can even kill a white woman and
nothing will happen to him.
I have been told I am not black, or that I am not black
enough. I have also been told many times I don't look black,
act black or talk black, but since my reparations column, I have
been told by some well-informed, well-meaning blacks that I don't
think black either.
Ok, so I don't have the dark skin, the continuous curly
hair and maybe some other obvious features attributed to black
Americans. Maybe I don't act black because I don't wear really
colorful clothing, Mr. T starter jewelry kits, drive a Cadillac, or
walk around with a chip on my shoulder as if the world owes me
something. Maybe I don't talk black if it means Ebonics and
jive are not my first languages. But what does thinking black
mean?
Does thinking black mean I must believe the Democratic
Party is the greatest party since Woodstock? Does thinking
black mean I must agree that slavery justifies that 20-somethings
with little education or job experience shouldn't do custodial work
because that is slave work?
When I think young people without skills or education
should accept any honest job they could find, am I not thinking
black? When I think that if Jesse Jackson was a white man he
would be called a mobster for his tactics and Operation Push would
be a syndicate instead of a non-profit organization, am I not
thinking black? When I say nothing prior to my conception can
be blamed for my failures, am I not thinking black?
"There is a class of colored people who make a business
of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro
race before the public. Some of these people do not want the
Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their
jobs. There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who
don't want the patient to get well."
I totally agree with that statement. I wish I
could have said it that well. Those profound words, first
stated in 1911, came from a former slave, Booker T. Washington.
I wonder if anyone ever doubted or questioned his blackness.
Booker T. Washington spoke of black "victimization
hawkers" long before Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and countless
others. I guess things really haven't changed that much.
Booker T. Washington was a black man. I am no
Booker T. Washington. I can't be. I don't think like a
black man. |
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