Hey y’all. It’s me. Your favorite unapologetic, black, advocate for feminism coming at you with something new for this semester. A column. The Black Column, to be exact.
“Oh no!” One might be thinking. “They gave her another opportunity to shove her agenda down our throats?!”
Yes. Yes, they did.
So, here’s the rundown: This semester I am taking “African & African American Studies II,” taught by Professor Harold. Is this my first “black” class? Hardly. I always try to integrate my blackness into my studies in any way I can, despite not being an AAS major. But I’ve never had a platform like this. So while I get educated, I’m gonna educate y’all a little bit too.
What exactly does that mean? Well, I’m gonna give you a little taste of my interpretation of what I learn in class. Not a substitution for the class by any means at all, I hope this encourages you to not only take the class, but also to do your own research, and engage with the material. I am nothing more than a third-year student, not even majoring in this department, commenting on how this makes me feel. I’ll say what sticks out to me, what makes me uncomfortable, what inspires me, etc. And you can agree or disagree, but more than anything, I want you to begin your own education in Black Studies. Because that is important and necessary work. To paraphrase something Professor Harold said in our first day of class, I don’t care what major you are. I don’t care how many degrees you have. If you know nothing of black studies, you are uneducated.
And now maybe you’re wondering “Okay, cool, she’s got a little black platform now. That’s great and important! Does this mean all her other articles can be a little less black?”
Long Answer: My blackness is an inherent part of my identity that is unable to be separated from anything else. It affects how I see the world and how the world sees me. Even if I write an article about what I ate for breakfast for a week, it’s still a black article.
Short Answer: Come on, you know better than that.
To be serious for a moment, one of the topics of our first lecture: how black people had to fight for the right to be literate. They had to fight for the right to be educated. So often we think of fighting to integrate schools, but we forget my people had to fight to get their own school in the first place. Literacy was a weapon they could use against their oppressors, and therefore, something they had no right to. People died for the pursuit of knowledge. They died for the right to read the words on a page.
I’m not trying to gas myself up. I’m not even talking about myself, really. But I’m just saying, considering how hard white supremacy tried to keep us from reading anything, much less produce anything of our own… black people writing? That’s a little revolutionary.
So stay tuned for this column. It should be fun. Like the announcement of Beyoncé’s pregnancy (WITH TWINS!!!), it is no coincidence that this is launching during Black History Month.
W.E.B. Du Bois said “that Negro blood has yet a message for the world.”
Here’s mine.
Until next time.
“Speak the Truth to the People,” Mari Evans
Speak the truth to the people
Talk sense to the people
Free them with honesty
Free the people with Love and Courage for their Being
Spare them the fantasy
Fantasy enslaves
A slave is enslaved
Can be enslaved by unwisdom
Can be re-enslaved while in flight from the enemy
Can be enslaved by his brother whom he loves
His brother whom he trusts whom he loves
His brother whom he trusts
His brother with the loud voice
And the unwisdom
Speak the truth to the people
It is not necessary to green the heart
Only to identify the enemy
It is not necessary to blow the mind
Only to free the mind
To identify the enemy is to free the mind
A free mind has no need to scream
A free mind is ready for other things
To BUILD black schools
To BUILD black children
To BUILD black minds
To BUILD black love
To BUILD black impregnability
To BUILD a strong black nation
To BUILD
Speak the truth to the people
Spare them the opium of devil-hate
They need no trips on honky-chants.
Move them instead to a BLACK ONENESS.
A black strength which will defend its own
Needing no cacophony of screams for activation
A black strength which will attack the laws
exposes the lies, disassembles the structure
and ravages the very foundation of evil.
Speak the truth to the people
To identify the enemy is to free the mind
Free the mind of the people
Speak to the mind of the people
Speak Truth
Recommended Readings for further exploration:
- “The Vocation of the Black Scholar,” Vincent Harding
- The Education of Blacks in the South: 1860-1935, James Anderson
