The growing number of gated communities in our nation is but one example of the obsession with safety. With guards at the gate, individuals still have bars and elaborate internal security systems. Americans spend more than thirty billion dollars a year on security. When I have stayed with friends in these communities and inquired as to whether all the security is in response to an actual danger I am told “not really," that it is the fear of threat rather than a real threat that is the catalyst for an obsession with safety that borders on madness.Culturally we bear witness to this madness every day. We can all tell endless stories of how it makes itself known in everyday life. For example, an adult white male answers the door when a young Asian male rings the bell. We live in a culture where without responding to any gesture of aggression or hostility on the part of the stranger, who is simply lost and trying to find the correct address, the white male shoots him, believing he is protecting his life and his property. This is an everyday example of madness. The person who is really the threat here is the home owner who has been so well socialized by the thinking of white supremacy, of capitalism, of patriarchy that he can no longer respond rationally.White supremacy has taught him that all people of color are threats irrespective of their behavior. Capitalism has taught him that, at all costs, his property can and must be protected. Patriarchy has taught him that his masculinity has to be proved by the willingness to conquer fear through aggression; that it would be unmanly to ask questions before taking action. Mass media then brings us the news of this in a newspeak manner that sounds almost jocular and celebratory, as though no tragedy has happened, as though the sacrifice of a young life was necessary to uphold property values and white patriarchal honor. Viewers are encouraged feel sympathy for the white male home owner who made a mistake. The fact that this mistake led to the violent death of an innocent young man does not register; the narrative is worded in a manner that encourages viewers to identify with the one who made the mistake by doing what we are led to feel we might all do to “protect our property at all costs from any sense of perceived threat. " This is what the worship of death looks like.
Yes beyonce, thank you very very much!!!Growing up wasn’t easy for me, even as a boy, then as a black boy, then it was even harder as a black boy who lives in Africa. You might think that white privilege is more prevalent in America but no, it is worse here in Africa were white people are literally worshiped as gods.While growing up as a boy in my teens, i had serious self esteem issues, i didn’t like the color of my skin, i didn’t like my hair, i didn’t like my butt, and i was a boy!!! can you believe it? in 2007 i even tried bleaching my skin, lucky for me i bought a fake bleaching cream, translation, it didn’t work. I dyed my hair blonde several times.But after a while i started to get my self esteem in place, the fact that i had so many white folks as friends at that time didn’t help, truth is most white people living here in Africa claim not to be racist but when you catch that stare, hear that comment, see the way they react, you can smell racism all over them. I can give you a simple example, I had a white friend years ago who was an exec at a big oil company here in Nigeria, I had just graduated and needed a job, I spoke to him about it and y’all wont believe what he suggested, well, he suggested I work as his steward.You see, a lot of Nigerians will jump at it, but i smelt racism all over that offer and i wasn’t gonna be a slave to a white man who still had slave-owner tendencies, he totally undermined my degree and felt i was better off as his “slave”.When Beyonce dropped ‘formation’ i was blown away, never before have i felt more proud to be black!!! and now her ‘lemonade’ album is here and it is everything the black community needs. Beyonce has ‘black’ going mainstream, her lemonade album has white girls wishing they were black, getting tans, dying their hair black, talking gangster etc. black is the new black.I really do appreciate what bey has done for the black race, now black men and women will walk the streets, heads held high in all their blackness and be proud!!! THANKS BEY!!!