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Last Friday, I picked up the Washington City Paper to see on the cover: “Black Victim, Black Cop, Black County” (9/22). Whoa, I thought, now this is an interesting twist on what has constantly been a slant of white vs. black, with blacks always being the victims. Now here is our dirty laundry as blacks: that often we are victims of our own home-grown black rage, anger, and violence; that we don’t always feel “home”; that perhaps, just perhaps, the reasons are not simply because we are “confused” but because we constantly are told that we are “outsiders.”
Reading the background on Prince Jones Jr. was eye-opening and extremely painful. Not only has an intelligent and wonderful human life been lost, his reality touched on the realities of many blacks in America, particularly the reality of being black in D.C.
You have in “the community” several mind-sets and realities. You have your haves, who have always had, and your have-nots, who have never had. Then you have a subgroup of have-nots who can imagine getting “theirs” at your expenseby robbing or beating you out of yours.
Why is it that as a people we are not talking about it? Why are we as a people resigned to covering it up, calling folks either “‘hood rats” or “16th Street house niggers”?
I could go on and on about the alienation and anger I feel. For years, I’ve endured the “house nigger” label and out-and-out attacks against my psyche and person by those who feel anger at what they read as my otherness, my not-quite-blackness. However, I have learned that being angry is counterproductive and only gives way to ulcers, headaches, and other maladies that disrupt my life.
Instead, I would like to suggest a dialogue between blacks, not finger-pointing, because we are all guilty of omissions, outright slanderous backbiting, and stereotyping. My question is, Who else is willing to pull the covers off this ugly monster’s name, then destroy it? It sure is killing us all, in more ways than one.
LeDroit Park