a black girl

Open Letter to Black People Who Send Forwarded Emails

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

So I've opened my email this evening. Next to the three Horoscopes, the Bed Bath and Beyond Cupons, and the Jesus Loves Me forwards are of course a plethora of emails about how we don't buy enough stamps with black people on them, how we buy a lot of useless shit, how we don't read, how we don't teach our children about themselves, or any other variation about why Black people can't unite

I have a theory:

If we can't unite, these emails or at least the sentiment behind them, have something to do with it.

This past week in anticipation of the National Blackout, I was horribly frustrated by the ways in which Black people talked about my people. It was entirely Black people talking about why the boycott wont work, how disunited Black people are anyway, how Black people are lazy, etc. It was like being at a Klan rally with nothing but Black folks. These conversations always come with some kind of superior air about being so disunited:

"I would involve myself if I knew that Black people were united, but we aren't. If a brother has an opportunity to buy some rims, he will."

It always comes with the speaker as a "good" Black person, down with the people, fiscally sound, educated... but those other Black people... they need to get it together.

Just shut up.

I wonder sometimes with these emails and others about Black people not doing enough XY or Z how the morale of Blackness is? Does scaring black people by berating us on what we think we aren't doing work? How does how we perceive ourselves as Black people affect how we organize? Who is mediating this? Where are these assumptions coming from? Why do we so quickly beleive them? Who does it Ultimately serve?

I thought the Literary renaissance of the 1970s and 80s proved to publishers that Black people read. What has suddenly happened that we assume we don't? There is an industry targeted at us as readers--now we can discuss or dispute the "value" of what is being read but it is an insult to writers, scholars, students, and readers who are Black that there is this blanket assumption even amongst ourselves that we don't read.

New mantra for Black people: Black people love Black people, Black people want to support Black people, and Black people read.

So now I'm off to buy 3 dozen books of stamps of Hattie McDaniel and to purchase a few books published by Third World Press from Karibu Books.

In Love and Blackness,

Bettina

Labels: black folk, emails, internet, race, racism