Who taught you to hate the texture of your hair? Who taught you to hate the color of your skin? To such extent you bleach, to get like the white man. Who taught you to hate the shape of your nose and the shape of your lips? Who taught you to hate yourself from the top of your head to the soles of your feet? Who taught you to hate your own kind? Who taught you to hate the race you belong to so much so that you don’t want to be around each other? No…Before you come asking Mr. Muhammad does he teach hate, you should ask yourself who taught you to hate being what God has made you.

There can be no black- white unity until there is first some black unity. We cannot think of uniting with others, until after we have first united among ourselves. We cannot think of being acceptable to others until we have first proven acceptable to ourselves.

• Malcolm X

“This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been naïve to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy imperfect as my own. But I have asserted a firm conviction- a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people- that working together, we can move beyond some of our old radical wounds, and that in fact we have no choice if we are to continue on the oath of a more perfect union”.

President Barack Obama wrote those prophetic words in a speech in 2008. I believe President Obama was acknowledging his place in the struggle for equality for all while also championing the masses to do their part because he was not the savior. I actually don’t think the nation will know the effects of President Obama until many years later because he was looked at as a savior and not a man. We could appreciate and also measure Michael Jordan’s greatness because we had seen Oscar Robertson, George Gervin and Julius Irving.  If we had never seen those men we would do what we as people always do with something different. Were dismissive, indifferent or we inaccurately measure it because again we have no measuring stick. President Obama is a cake made without measuring cups given to a person who lacks taste buds.  

You hope and you pray and then you hope and pray some more but, deep down you know. Looking at the landscape of America I knew that the problems of Ferguson, Missouri the problems of Baltimore, Maryland, the problems of Staten Island, were my problem. Do you know why? I knew that these were my problems because these cities are not special or unique in any way. The judicial system is run just like any other court system in America. The police officers are trained like any other moderately funded to well-funded police force in America. Last but, certainly not least people of color live in these areas and last time I checked racism knows not area or zip code. What did I say when I saw the video of the white officers manhandling teenage blacks in McKinney, Texas not 30 minutes from my door? Unfortunately I said “I knew you were coming to my house…come in and sit racism”.

The climate in America today is so charged racially, sexually and economically but, it’s like everything is interwoven. The haves loathe the have not’s. The minority hates the majority and nobody actually believes the economy is as stable as it seems. Higher Learning is a 1995 film directed by John Singleton that follows three distinctively different freshmen. Malik (Omar Epps) is the black track star who feels entitled while also feeling controlled as a prized bull of sorts as the school pays his tuition. Remy (Michael Rapaport) is a young white male from the Midwest who has a hard time fitting in with any group. Remy finds his way to a group of white supremacist after being picked on by his militant black roommate. Lastly Kristen (Kristy Swanson) is the wide eyed blonde that might as well be from Mayberry with aunt bee. Kristy makes an early bad decision that leads to her being raped which leads her right into the sympathetic arms of a lesbian.

The film succeeds overwhelming in comparing and contrasting university life as a microcosm for the world at large. Where else can you find a Walmart sample platter of everything the world has to offer? The movie also poses a great question and answer of how people respond to the pressures of life and interaction with very different people around you. Do you assimilate? Do you fight the system? Do you quit? It is as much a movie about racism and social injustice as it is a movie about choices and the ramifications of said choices. In the end of the movie much like the world at large it takes a school shooting (incident) at the Peace Festival of all places to put things in perspective.

“President Kennedy never foresaw that the chickens would come home to roost so soon…Being an old farm boy myself, chickens coming home to roost never made me sad; they always made me glad.”

• Malcom X

The events that have transpired in America are far from “A black thing”. The “black thing” concept is an event or action that evokes sympathy and pity from mainstream America. The kind of event that also makes mainstream America fearful as black’s loot and destroy their own community. I will never understand destroying the community you live in but, I digress.  The “black thing “historically lasts a news cycle before the next major headline i.e. “gay rights”. However; in America today every major news market will run something tonight about racism.

At times I feel like social injustice for people of color in America is an endless race. We start and we run many laps but, without a defined end it appears an exercise on inequality. I think ….racism is all over the television but, what now? Then I see the taking down of the confederate flags in Mississippi, Alabama and Fort Sumter and I say that’s great. The flag that is a symbol of the old south and all the wounds that accompany the South’s racially charged path.

I just ask why did Dylan Root and 9 innocent church goers have to spark the change. Have the NAACP not fought for the flags to be taken down for years and years? Is the climate of hatred and lawlessness not already so great in America that we understand that an injustice anywhere is an injustice everywhere? James Boulware a white man opened fire on the Dallas Police Department with no central motive. Is one educated fellow not to make the correlation or see the pattern of senseless violence? When have police ever been attacked let alone in broad day light? It is clear now more than ever that racism in America is everyone’s problem. I hope working towards a solution is everyone’s answer.

I will never say that progress is being made…If you stick a knife in my back 9 inches and pull it out 6 inches there’s no progress….if you pull it all the way out that’s not progress…the progress is healing the wound that the blow made”.

Malcolm X