Today In History

Asa Philip Randolph, labor leader, and civil-rights leader, was born in Crescent City, FL, on this date April 15, 1889.

Randolph who was an influential figure in the struggle for justice and equality for African Americans. He was the organizer of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and began organizing that group of Black workers. At a time when half the affiliates of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) barred Blacks from membership, Asa Phillip Randolph took his union into the AFL.

Despite opposition, he built the first successful Black trade union; the brotherhood won its first major contract with the Pullman Company in 1937.

He warned Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt that he would lead thousands of Blacks in a protest march on Washington, D.C.; Roosevelt, on June 25, 1941, issued Executive Order 8802, barring discrimination in defense industries and federal bureaus and creating the Fair Employment Practices Committee.

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It was more of an experience…

I had recently gone through a crisis and was able to push through and find a suitable solution. The result is that I am happier than I have been in a very long time.

Then there’s politics. Politics never used to be my thing; I despised the subject coming up in conversations. Mainly because I didn’t follow politics or couldn’t keep up with others engaged in the, what I thought was, nonsense. Well, now that I am older it’s time to do my best at learning how it all has been affecting my life.

I have taken to social media; obsessively sharing, reblogging, retweeting, and posting my own content, anything having to do with activism, politics, inequality, et al. Sometimes I even post without reading the content first and then forget to go back to learn what it was all about. Those articles that I do get to read usually leave me feeling upset or ready to fight someone. Thursday, of last week, I had had one of those days of not being able topull away from Facebook, Twitter et al, and I found myself becoming enraged. Extremely triggered, the thought of using [drugs] came up in my mind. I seriously almost fainted went it happened. Grateful that I did not use that night. To get my mind of things, on Friday, after another day of looking at new articles, I chose to go see a movie. Why would I have gone to see this very film if I wasn’t looking to get more upset? Allow me to tell you this, I did not leave the theater upset; I left the theater feeling validated.

Arriving late, I missed some of the opening dialogue. Again, my anger was triggered, but I cannot control the MTA. I was trying to find a seat in the Beale Theater (Film Society of Lincoln Center); a place I never had been as I felt it was not built for me. Walking in front of the screen to reach three empty seats, and when I arrived I noticed a coat hanging on the back of the first seat so, in my mind, I chose the second seat in. As I stepped into the row, an older grey-haired white man, seated with his wife (assuming), in the second row, reached for the coat and placed it on his lap. I thought nothing of it until I sat down. Child, if I would have done that, I thought to myself but did not close the thought with a “then”. As I sat in the middle seat, of the three free, I made eye contact with a younger dark-haired white man with a mustache and scruffy beard sitting to the left of the empty seat on my left. Handsome, in those seconds, I thought, and in those very same few seconds, I witnessed white fragility. His facial expression when our eyes met, the way his eyebrows curled up in the center and eyes widened as if he was about to start crying and apologize to me for something. He also appeared to be afraid of either I or himself maybe because when I finally sat down, he took a deep breath and sighed and he pulled his feet up off the floor and placed them on the short partition wall in front of us. That did not look comfortable, it looked like a fetal position.

I still unsure of how much I missed, may not much. There wasn’t any time given for me to start focusing on the film; two white men came to row and asked if anyone was sitting in the two empty seats on either side of me. Telling them, “No,” they asked if they could sit together, so I grabbed my coat and scooted over to the left. This drew the attention of the scruffy young man and again he looked frightened and upset as if he done something wrong.

Finally, we’re all sitting down and watching the film. A clip of Leander Perez advising how “…every…self-respecting…parent” should remove their white child from a school that a Negro has entered. This was followed by a clip of a white woman saying, “God forgives murder and he forgives adultery. But he is very angry and he actually curses all who do integrate.” I whispered, “Oh my God.” From one of the two men on my right was heard a scoff and on the left another deep breath.

From my peripheral, I could see that the couple to my right were holding hands. Kin, another thought.

I will not review the film, I know the story. I see it daily. Feel it daily. Even drugs did not take it away.

My experience in the theater itself. My heart raced when I saw film footage, that I had never seen before, of whites, in the south, protesting integration. Those same swastikas and confederate battle flags are waved around today. Frightening that these people are not seen as radicalized rebel forces terrorizing communities.

As the film moved gracefully along, I noticed something else coming from the left of me. A light, from his smartphone, but not only the light, also a pattern. Every time during the narration of the film or scenes from footage that included James Baldwin, the young man would look at his phone; the smartphone was his “safe place”. Whenever the words “White people are…” “Whites in…” “Whites will…” “Whites have…” (anything similar; I cannot remember the exact quotes)– Anything that would tell him exactly about his privilege, and why he has it, he would run to his safe place. Again, I thought, I would have done that! And there, I was witnessing that fragility- that dissonance, and it was distracting.

I tried to stay focused. I tried to make mental notes of things I wanted to researched like the photos of Malcolm X holding a camera–He was a photographer? I wanted to see more images–but that smartphone.

What was I to do? A part of me wanted to snatch it from his hands and throw it across the room shout at him, I should not have to suffer from your dissonance! When the title came up on the screen, “I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO” they are not talking to me; they talking directly to you so LISTEN UP! Your mental disorder is a right and privilege for whites in this country, and every person of color suffers because of it so LISTEN UP! and then I would sit back down. Would not I have become the stereotype they had placed upon before my birth if I had done that? I pushed through and I did not pity him.

I still felt validated before I left the theater of mostly white patrons when the lights came on. I am not alone in seeing that there is a white narrative in 99% of what thrown at us as news, movies, advertising, music, and TV programming. Having us depicted as villains, thugs, uneducated, degenerates, angry black men and women most of the time. Yawo Brown of TheMagicalNegro.net describes best in this article The Subtle Linguistics of Polite White Supremacy. You hear it in the Bobby Kennedy’s seemly prophesizing the coming of “negro” president. Baldwin’s response is indeed epic.

So, my whole Life I have been experiencing these things– maybe not the same as Baldwin, Evers, X, and King but I know what it’s like to only be given white heroes to choose from. I know the unease of having a police officer in close proximity. I know what it feels like to made to feel less than; to fear for my life– all because of the color of my skin. I also know what it’s like to protest in solidarity with strangers and kinfolk alike for a better America. The film validated the feelings I was experiencing in the theater. One of the factors contributing to challenges I have face my whole life was playing out right next to me. Some people will show face and pay the price of admission but will not truly listen.

LISTEN UP!!

This is not a review of the film– Go see it!

I ended up purchasing the accompanying book to the documentary the very next day