I'm not angry. I'm raging. Black rage isn't ordinary, everyday rage.
We are in singular position in this country historically. And because of this, situations arise where the feeling of being angry isn't an apt description and calling it raging mad isn't acceptable.
I experience black rage when I have to constantly reiterate to avid news watchers that because the negative story runs first that doesn't make it indicative of all black people being criminals.
Black rage is constructive. Black rage is love. That's what Cornel West says about Malcolm X.
"His profound commitment to affirm black humanity at any cost and his tremendous courage to accent the hypocrisy of American society made Malcolm X the prophet to black rage - then and now, primarily because of his great love for black people," West said. "His love was neither abstract nor ephemeral."
Black rage was the fuel for the Black Freedom Movement, regardless of whether the revolutionary was King, X, Davis, or the SNCC leaders. Everyone was redirecting his or her black rage into something concrete - the Black Freedom Movement.
"If black communal struggle was in conflict with the pursuit of that dream, there will be no struggle," said Fred Lee Hord in "Reconstructing Memory."
He was talking about the way students at a predominantly black institution felt about achieving wealth and communal struggle being in opposition [with each other]. It's sad, but I think it's true of students at predominantly white universities as well.
The problem with students willing to put their pursuit of wealth and status ahead of a communal struggle is that the effort will fail without them. Young people, specifically college students would play a major part in any communal struggle, just as they did during the Black Freedom Movement.
If college students are so worried about getting out of school to in order to chase a brass ring they need to be guided by advisers or fellow students into organizations early that have a chance to affect change.
The students need to realize it's OK to try something alongside academic duties. The focus on getting out shouldn't be the only one a student has.
I've read that only five percent of blacks actively participated in the Freedom Movement, and of course this doesn't mean it was always the same five percent. If this is so, then its likely the same would still hold true today in regard to any struggle.
In the absence of a goal begging to be reached, this generation needs to search out what it wants and make it happen. But what do we want? And how many people would actually participate?
I think the final and most lasting paradox of the "African-American Rebellion" was its demise. No one finished the work he or she started. No one had the chance. Malcolm and Martin were killed. The Panthers, and some other groups were disbanded, some because of government intervention, others not. We were left with a dearth of leadership and a slew of memories of what happened to our leaders.
I think the people who have the chance make the most noise politically, that next prophets of black rage, are either coming up somewhere now or are afraid to step up.
Yet another paradox of "African-American Rebellion": How do you bring change for a group that teeters on the edge of being monolithic in a time where nothing is overtly wrong but something isn't quite right? I'm not sure.
The rage must first be channeled correctly. If this is making it, everyone should be raging.
Write to Aric at ariclewis@hotmail.com
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