Posted by Dan Ewert : 4/10/2002 12:33:00 AM (Archive Link)
A realization just occurred to me concerning the earlier civil rights thread and my concerns about the leadership’s tactics to suppress dissent. In squashing opposition, the leadership goes deeper than just using epitaphs against opponents. Why are the names so effective in the first place? Here’s why, I think. There are African Americans and then there are ideas that some African Americans put forth, nurture, and maintain. The leadership, though, who support these ideas have mutated the situation so that being black means holding these ideas. They are no longer merely notions that one is free to believe or not believe and still maintain ethnic credibility, they are notions that one must believe in order to prove ethnic worth… being black means holding these ideas. If you don’t hold them, then you can’t be black. You are an “other” and then are given labels such as Uncle Tom or sellout. It’s horrible that one’s ethnicity and ethnic credibility must be contingent upon purporting certain opinions that others have devised for you. The “leaders” have put a stranglehold not only on thought but on identity as well.