“…And it ain’t gonna stop with Obama
To save the world we must start from the bottom”
~ “Sour Patch Kids” by Asher Roth
This all came about when I was watching an ad for 40oz Malt liquor; although the commercial was racially insensitive, we gotta be realistic. What type of people drink 40s? I know I don’t see Tiger Woods on the green gripping a 40 or Barack at the podium taking swigs in-between sentences. Therefore, I wasn’t as upset at the fact that everyone in the ad was black and African-American.
Journey with me as I give a brief lesson of our black history. Keep in mind, I am no historian and my high school black history teacher was a white guy (that’s another story). It all started in the motherland of Africa, check your history books because this is where all life originates. I won’t bore you with a history lesson so here’s the footnotes, from Africa to slavery to the civil war to the civil rights, we as a people have come a long way. But still our fight is just beginning.
The term African-American, although harmless to some but to others (African-immigrants) find this offensive because Black-American didn’t immigrate from Africa like they did and the mashing of racial groups is in itself quite infuriating (i.e. ___-American this and ___-American that). Be proud who you are and where you come from but I myself didn’t come here directly from Africa. I’m sure somewhere down in my ancestry my people came over from the motherland but I was born in the United States. I see myself as a human being first as we all should and then everything after that is secondary.
With the 2008 Presidential election of Barack Obama, we were witnesses to a new era of change and hope. There were record numbers of people turning out to vote both old and young; it was a gracious sight to see. I wish we’d apply ourselves like this more often. I often wonder why we as a people put so much emphasizes on racial situations. I try to look at everyone as a human being before anything else. Don’t get me wrong, I am not ungrateful of the sacrifices and paths that my ancestors have set for me to live the way I do today. It just doesn’t seem like anything in my generation is truly worth fighting for. Yeah, there are still some injustices around that we must amend, but utopia isn’t just a dream. It can be a reality too. A reality for all of us, including African-Americans. I hope someday soon we can come together like that Beatles song says.
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