Free Will

4/2/22

I want to talk about free will, accountability, and this Malcolm X quote and what it means to me, especially in light of "The Slap".

I posted this quote originally on my personal Facebook years ago; I think it was the summer of 2020, shortly after the Floyd protests, in response to a news report of a 4th of July shooting in the Bronx where a child was hit with a stray bullet and sent to the hospital. The child wasn't hit in a vital organ or vein, so they thankfully survived, but it still made me furious and I called it out as needless and unnecessary.

Someone commented critically, saying that this Malcolm X quote was in reference to blind American patriotism, not black people, and the real issue is "systemic racism", and highlighting black violence gives cover to racists.

I strongly disagreed with that comment, just like I strongly disagree with "The Slap" last weekend and think Will should be held financially/legally accountable for it like anybody else would. Here is why.

There is more than one kind of blind patriotism. And what I sadly see in too many of the "slap" defenses from black people this past week is essentially "blind black patriotism". This kind of blind black patriotism essentially means protecting all black people at all costs, no matter what they do...even if it's to other black people, in our own communities. This is the same kind of blind black patriotism that has created the "no snitching" culture of the streets.

Looking at history, I empathize with why many people think this way. Systemic racism is real, especially in policing. We would rather tolerate violence and crime by ourselves, to ourselves, than to throw a black person at a historically racist and brutal institution like the criminal justice system, to see them become a statistic, and give more fodder to racists.

But as much as I empathize with this position, I find it fundamentally toxic and wrong...misguided loyalty and enablement toward abusers and the worst elements in our own community, out of a communal sense of "us vs. them" Stockholm Syndrome.

I have read a nauseating amount of puff pieces in the media sympathizing with Will/Jada's side; about Will's trauma as a child watching his father abuse his mother and not do anything about it; about the jokes he gets for his marriage...a marriage he himself chooses to stay in and make 100% transparent to the entire world for scrutiny and commentary. But I have seen little mainstream media sympathy about one black man assaulting another for freedom of speech, and how it must feel for that assaulted black man to be humiliated in front of the whole world, to be memed about forever, to have armchair tough guys criticize him for not doing anything back, when he did the very best he could...and I have seen so much "He had it coming / He been joking 'bout her for years / He shoulda known better" toxic femininity happily clapping for the slap. As someone who has survived abuse himself, I have found this lack of consideration sickening and triggering...and also hypocritical from the same people who would all say "Black Lives Matter".

Yet I still worked the longest week I have in a very long time, sleeping only a few hours a night, and I didn't slap a single person over it. And I don't have millions of dollars to comfort me (yet, anyway).

We all carry trauma and pain inside of us, and we could all use more empathy for each other. Millions of black people carry trauma with them to work every day, generational trauma even; but we do NOT assault one another for it. Our trauma is our cross to bear, and ours alone. Talk about it with your friends/family, seek therapy if you must, but do not take it out on others. Once you do that, you are crossing a line, and must be held accountable.

Chris Rock was a victim of severe childhood bullying, and it got so bad he sent a bully to the hospital for months over it, and had to get therapy for anger issues.

R. Kelly was also a victim as a child. He was molested. This should never happen to any child, and I wish we lived in a world where it happened to nobody, ever. My heart breaks just thinking about the child Robert Kelly, with nobody to protect him.

But once he grew up into an adult with his own free will and the ability to choose better and/or seek help, he did neither and became a serial child predator, and he needed to be stopped and held accountable.

Too many black people did not have the heart to hold him accountable, because of blind black patriotism, and also because of his celebrity. And I understand why. I did it, too. Everyone remembers and loves "I Believe I Can Fly", "Happy People", and "Ignition", just to name a few hits. I too participated in this culture of mentally blocking or shrugging off his obvious, visible abuse (cue the legendary Chappelle Show "Piss On You" joke) because his music was great, and he was a wealthy famous black man living the "American Dream", and the idea of holding him accountable and putting him at the mercy of an already racist and flawed justice system was too much to bear.

But while we all decided to look away, what was he doing?

Victimizing more black girls.

It's always easy to do the wrong thing, which is often doing nothing at all, a.k.a. "don't snitch". Doing the right thing is always hard, but it doesn't make it any less necessary. Otherwise, the cost of doing nothing is choosing to continue to victimize ourselves...and like the "Ouroboros" snake eating its own tail, the cycle will be endless. That slap wasn't just to a comedian on stage, it was to all of us as a people, and we need to stop slapping ourselves, ignoring it, and calling it "love". That is essentially mass-scale self-abuse.

Many will strawman this as "respectability" or "seeking white acceptance" or whatever, and call me a "Tom" or a traitor. That is flat-out wrong to me, and though it might offend me, I won't slap those people for it, and I've been called worse. I want black people to be better to ourselves, FOR ourselves, not for anybody else. I love black people, but true love also involves honest criticism and accountability, just like criticizing America doesn't mean you hate it. To borrow the song of another famous black man with a troubled past, we need to start with the "Man in the Mirror" to make a change. Yes, systemic racism is real, historical disadvantages are real, and they must be called out and eliminated, so we have less "ghettos" and "hoods" and have better schools & neighborhoods and more homeownership & business ownership to build generational wealth and give our present and future people a better chance--but none of that eliminates our own agency as individuals, right here and right now, as you're reading this. We have the free will (ha) to make better choices, whenever and wherever possible. Physical slavery ended in 1865, but as Bob Marley said, we must emancipate ourselves from mental slavery. We can only do that by freeing ourselves from a racist tribal "us vs. them" mentality, and hold ourselves accountable to do better, and also hold accountable those who don't.

Otherwise, we as black people are no better than white supremacy and white tribalism, and you cannot get mad that people like the Trumps get away with literally everything, either. And we will all slowly be on the road to hell as a society.

Beyond just black people, I think we as a society need to be less tribal, and free ourselves from tribal, binary, absolutist thinking. The tribalism and zero-sum, binary mentality that this late-stage-capitalist Darwinist shithole we call "America" has put upon too many people is saddening to me and makes me fear for the future now more than ever. We can call out systemic racism while also preaching for accountability for ourselves; we can "protect black women" (peacefully and in true self-defense only), while still calling out male abuse, and not endorse toxic masculinity to "Take it like a man" or get violent over words. None of these things are mutually exclusive, and arguing for one does not diminish or distract from the other. On the contrary, willfully ignoring one exclusively for the other just makes for rank hypocrisy, and like Ouroboros again, the cycle of conflict will continue.

If you made it this far, thank you for reading. If you disagree, please don't slap me.