I'm not afraid of vampires or werewolves, and scary dreams never consisted of ghosts or goblins with me. Rather, reality-based nightmares are what keep me from falling asleep at night.
I've come to realize that all of my fears are based on a simple idea -- rejection. At first, I believed that I was pathological because I didn't want to be rejected, but looking at society in general, I believe almost all we do is done out of the fear of being rejected.
Dealing with rejection scares the hell out of me. Some think that I'm callous, but I have created a hard exterior so that my vulnerability isn't exposed. Yet, I long to be loved socially, emotionally, mentally and physically. What I want is what everyone wants: love.
Anyone involved in the expression of true love cannot concurrently be oppressive. With real love, there can be no class, gender, sexual or racial privileges. Love allows one to recognize differences while not allowing those factors to create tension. Those not willing to challenge ideologies of privilege do not love their neighbors as they love themselves but only their position in the hierarchy. Those lower in the strata often long for more privilege while simultaneously recognizing the damaging affects of casting aspersions.
Walking around campus late at night repeating, "Say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud," is a plea for others to recognize the humanity of those who are saying it "loud." It is a plea for love, asking others to stop rejecting based on race. In a world that has been historically oppressive to "others," saying something loudly is the antithesis of what the hegemony allows. Blacks that challenge the ideologies of inferiority by a simple phrase, "I'm black and I'm proud," make us uncomfortable because they don't fit the mode of "normal."
Hearing this phrase, particularly for the folks that so eloquently responded by saying "Shut up, niggers," jerked the "normal folks" out of their Matrix-like reality of life where class, gender, racial and sexual orientation distinctions don't cause tension.
Hearing the word "black" made them suddenly realize that they were "not black" and therefore different. Being both different and from a privileged class and/or race, their automatic response was to use the historically oppressive term "nigger" to denigrate folks that were simply deconstructing inferiority ideology.
If rudeness was the only issue -- that the black folks were just rude to wake up well-meaning white folks (and one freshman black kid, according to the online responses) -- why was the response based on race?
"I will shut them up by calling them niggers" is the thought process here. But what they have done is display their own fear of inadequacy.
They cannot love the humanity in others because they cannot love the humanity in themselves. If they could, they would not try to castigate a group based on phenotypical elements. Instead, they love their class and racial privilege more than the humanity in themselves and others, and therefore reject the very claim that one can be both black and proud.
Calling four black women "Zulu warriors" and "chocolate sauce" is likewise ignorant. The young boys (and I say boys on purpose) were drunk and probably going to or coming from a party that had more than its share of hip-hop being played that was penned by black folks. They realize that they can never fully or really be "down" with blackness even though they probably enjoy all of black life too much. Thus, they castigate what they cannot be: black folks. They show their fear of rejection although they love blackness.
Because of this, we have a cycle of rejection and lack of love that is pervasive in every facet of human history. And rejection is a bitch. I know from personal experience that loving the humanity of someone else can sometimes yield a unenthusiastic return.
If it isn't reciprocal, it becomes difficult to continue loving. But this is the challenge that makes us human: to love in spite of rejection. It is our nature to want love and to shun rejection. But even when there is no return, those that are against oppression must choose love.
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