The biggest reason for the lack of advancement for Africans in America is we are prisoners of our own history. No one can be smarter or come up with better ideas than Marcus, Martin or Malcolm. We can’t deviate from what our heroes have done in the past since we’re psychologically bound to their concepts and our elders will crucify us if we dare to do things differently. This type of thinking has made our most supported activism lazy.
The reason I say our “most supported” activism is because I know there is much activism going on where people are really committed to creating the change we need but the activism which gets the most support is protesting. Why, because protesting is lazy activism. People don’t have to use their minds, they don’t have to commit to any changes in their lives, they don’t have to be inconvenienced in any way; all they have to do is show up and stand around. Most of the times protest are nothing but social gatherings that produce no results.
Does this mean I am against protest? No. I am however against protest being the number one tool used to liberate our people. Protest are great for getting your voice heard and bringing attention to your issue but it limits you to getting others to recognize your pain and not doing something to fix your pain yourself. This is why it is lazy. If we aren’t being hired by caucasian businesses, is the best solution to protest or start our own businesses? If we are being targeted by a racist police system, is the best solution protesting or starting our own police force? If opportunities are intentionally being held away from us, is protesting the best solution or should we create our own opportunities? I believe when you look at it this way, there is no way to think protesting is the way to liberation.
Understand, this is not a knock on protest organizers; anything any of our people actively do with good intentions I’m all for and protesting can and does get the ball rolling. The problem is the majority of the people who show up to the protest don’t do anything after the protest is over. The bus boycott in 1955 lasted over a year. How many of the people who attend protest are willing to be inconvenienced for over a year to create change? We can’t even get people to boycott black Friday and Christmas but those same people who refuse to withhold their money will show up for a protest.
This mindset and actions are extremely lazy and we must address it. If we have to stop protesting all together and force people into activism some other way then so be it. We cannot give people the opportunity to pat themselves on the back for doing absolutely nothing; we have to force them to put in the required work. We have to show our people the error of their ways and how having a mind to protest for a day with no correlating actions is detrimental to our cause.
It’s easy to meet up somewhere and chant. It’s a lot more difficult to go out your way to support Black businesses, get away from consumerism, stop listening to degrading music and watching degrading shows, start our own police force, criminal justice system, education system, hospitals etc. We need our own self sufficient cities where we control everything in them with no connection to the US government. We need to be totally sovereign but that takes work and that work is what many of us are afraid to commit to so we settle for taking to the streets in protest.
To the Kings and Queens of this beautiful race of ours, it’s time for us to get to work. It’s time for us stop begging for help and validation while calling it demanding. Demanding and begging are the same thing, the only difference is when you demand something you do it in a more aggressive way. Either way, the help and validation is at the discretion of the people you’re begging/demanding it from. If we must protest, let a plan of action be given out at the protest for people to follow after it’s over but by no means should we ever again, take to the streets, marching, yelling and screaming then leave and go right back to supporting the same system that is oppressing us because that is the laziest form of activism.
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