Why do black people suffer so much?

Source: www.pbs.org

Now I’m a cheesy-romance movies kinda gal, this is because most movies that have some level of intelligence have that emotional element that I cannot handle. I’m a weeper, emotionally loaded movies have me… you guessed it: WEEPING. And it’s not the pretty kind of weeping, it’s the ugly kind. The sobbing loudly kind with tears soaking my t-shirt, blocked nose, puffy eyes, gasping for air and shit. I am an ugly weeper. I just finished watching Selma and I have successfully soaked my pillow and now turn to writing to get this out of my system. If you haven’t watched Selma, you really should and you’ll understand my weeping.

 As I was watching Selma, a question a friend of mine asked me a few weeks ago came back to me. We had just walked past a group of happy-go-lucky-looking friends (they happened to be white), and she turned to me and asked “Why do black people suffer so much?” I cannot for the life of me remember what my response was but it was probably something preachy, but watching this movie had me asking myself the same question! Because it really does seem like black people have been suffering since the beginning of time.

 From Martin Luther King, Malcom X, Coretta King to Nelson Mandela, Thabo Mbeki, and Jacob Zuma black people have had to fight for and defend the livelihood of the black body. I kind of get it if you protest my adding Jacob Zuma to this list but once upon a time he played an essential role in achieving the freedom we enjoy today.

Most of the suffering endured by black people happens at the hands of the white man. Julius Malema writes that the oppression of black people and the white man’s assumed right to abuse the black man at will is built on the deeply rooted white supremacy. In order to change the perception of inferiority that is closely associated with black people we need to change the foundation on which white supremacy is built. Malema argues that since white supremacy is built on the structural organization of black lives, the dilapidated material conditions that have been made exclusive to black people, white supremacy can only be dismantled by changing the structure of black lives. From this reasoning we can also conclude that black people will continue to suffer unless the collective black race progresses beyond the animalistic conditions we are assumed to we live in.

 The black man’s current suffering is based on the foundation laid by the colonial project dating back to the 1600s. What about before that? Did we always suffer so, if it started at some point what did we do to deserve it? What did our ancestors do so wrong against God that His wrath is still upon us almost a millennium later? What was the catalyst to all this suffering?

This though is immediately followed by a question; whether or not I and others like myself contribute to us staying in this state of “despair” by constantly writing about and debating how the black man is a victim instead of writing about solutions to the black man’s state of “despair”. I’m not victim blaming, nor am I saying that black people are to blame for all the suffering they have had to endure. I do, however, wonder if we have been victims for so long we cannot stop thinking like victims and thus remain victims (does this make sense?). One of my sisters always says you cannot change any of your habits if you haven’t changed your mindset about and towards those habits, similarly in order to change this seemingly never ending state of despair we need to stop thinking like victims.

Source: www.bustle.com

"I’ll tell you what I know to be true...that we are descendants of a mighty people, who gave civilization to the world. People who survived the hulls of slave ships across vast oceans. People who innovate and create and love despite pressures and tortures unimaginable. They are in our bloodstream. Pumping our hearts every second. They’ve prepared you. You are already prepared."-Amelia Boynton, Selma

It pains me to see other black people immediately cower and doubt themselves when they enter spaces that are predominantly white. I am one of these people that is/was a victim of their own thoughts, because that’s what it is really. Coming to Stellenbosch opened me to the demons in my head that tell me I cannot possibly do as well as these people that have grown up with the world at their feet and could not (no matter how much they wished) be better prepared for the four years ahead of all of us. I on the other hand had been brought up by uneducated parents, gone to a missionary school somewhere on the side on the road somewhere in KZN. Instead of thinking: despite the fact that my counterparts had the best that the world had to offer to prepare them for the four years ahead of us (and I, the good grace and brilliance of my high school teachers) we are both here and it doesn't matter how I got here only that I am here and I am going to my best...

 Does it not make me and others like me brilliant?! Shouldn’t the fact that they needed the world to prepare them for the milestones ahead of us and some of us had the bare minimum give us goose bumps because we are infinitely strong and brilliant? I don’t know about you but I think we really should start celebrating ourselves. Not just the occasional guy in ”Africa” that builds a helicopter “with his bare hands” but each and every one of us for doing the small things that move us forward as individuals and a people.

 I don’t know about you but I am seriously over this suffering and continuous discrimination, degradation and oppression. It’s time we move beyond what anyone other than ourselves think of us as a collective. We are not victims, we just need to stop thinking like victims.

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