Dear friends,
The phenomenal Malcolm X once said “you don’t catch hell, because you are a Republican or Democrat...you don’t catch hell, because you’re a Baptist or Methodist...and you sure don’t catch no hell because you’re an American...because if you were an American, you wouldn’t catch no hell...you catch hell because you’re a black man… You catch hell, all of us catch hell for the same reason."
The point that our beloved brother was making, and it still holds true, is: our oppression and exploitation is not inflicted upon us as individuals...rather, the injustices that are put upon us are done so as a group.
For our women, there is the double jeopardy of being both black and female...of course, in a socially-stratified society like ours, one can belong to an oppressor and an oppressed simultaneously...the Clarence Thomas\Anita Hill case proved that quite adequately.Likewise, European American women, while they are oppressed as females can be equally racist and harmful to all African Americans, as well. The same goes for European American (so-called “white”) people who make staunch claims of “sexual identity”, based upon something as precarious, if not frivolous, as the human sexual appetite.
Therefore, to me, anyone who claims that s/he wants to get rid of human oppression and exploitation must necessarily insist that we rid ourselves of both Male Supremacy and White Supremacy...after all, long before Barack Obama there had already been scores of black presidents all over Africa and the Caribbean (and continue to be)...yet, that has not helped the plight of black women (or their children) in those places...if anything, it’s far worse than here.
Liberation!
G. Djata Bumpus
