I love Alvin Ailey Ballet. I see at least one Alvin Ailey performance every other year and sometimes I go every single year they come to town. And I've been doing so for a couple of decades.
It occurs to me that the audience at an Alvin Ailey ballet always looks like the truest picture of America to me. It's what America is supposed to be. Every race/ethnic group is represented in all manner of dress.
At the end of one performance, I scanned the crowd instead of the dancers taking their bows.
There were a lot of people in California casual-dressy clothing like me, but I also saw people dressed like they just came from a jazz club or from a ballroom. I saw people dressed up like bankers, farmers, and Hells Angels.
And during the encore, that comes after REVELATIONS at every show, nearly all of these people were standing, some dancing a little, most clapping to the music, singing--and singing LOUD-- about Moses.
It's moments like these that I find myself in love with my life.
And I'm thinking we should all keep this picture in mind as something that life in the United States could be if we work for it.
And working for it does not mean walking away from a fight.
And the fight was on when Roshon Nelson and Donte Robinson quietly refused to leave Starbucks when they were ordered to. And it was they were "ordered to leave." Trust.
People have characterized the police as having "asked them to leave." But you don't arrest somebody for failing to respond favorably to an "ask." You arrest people when you've given an "order" that's been disobeyed.
White supremacists and Black Respectability Politicians, who are on the same page as often as they are not, keep asking the question:
They didn't "just leave" because even if they don't have black children they care about, they know they probably will one day.
They didn't "just leave" because they have nieces, nephews, cousins, and future grand children who will all be black and all be subject to being treated like a dog with fleas in any white run establishment if they don't fight white supremacist based injustice with acts of civil disobedience.
If I ever have a run in with Supervisor Becky in a #ShoppingWhileBlack situation, I hope I have the guts to refuse to "just leave."
If I am treated as if I am less human than the white person next to me, I hope I can push my imaginings of what my own Supervisor Becky will say if I'm arrested.
I hope have the guts to risk my mental health in a jail cell for a day or longer, the guts to risk my career by sitting down in order to stand up against anti-black racism from random white people and also from those black and brown people who would assimilate into whiteness at any cost.
I hope I have the nerve to do what is required because the only way White America is going to pull itself together and act like a segment of it does at the end of Alvin Ailey's REVELATIONS is if we train them how to treat us.
And a big part of training white folks how to treat us means we, as black folks, having to communicate, "OH HELL NO!" when something jumps off.
Some of us (the respectability politicians I am resentful of having to claim sometimes) need to recognize the difference between finding handholds enough to climb high within the white supremacy system and being treated as an equal human being.
Black Quality Of Live Matters. We all have to what we have to do pursue justice when and if we can.
Roshon Nelson and Donte Robinson became the heroes required precisely because they didn't "just leave."
BLACKCHICKROCKED.BLOGSPOT.COM
It occurs to me that the audience at an Alvin Ailey ballet always looks like the truest picture of America to me. It's what America is supposed to be. Every race/ethnic group is represented in all manner of dress.
At the end of one performance, I scanned the crowd instead of the dancers taking their bows.
There were a lot of people in California casual-dressy clothing like me, but I also saw people dressed like they just came from a jazz club or from a ballroom. I saw people dressed up like bankers, farmers, and Hells Angels.
And during the encore, that comes after REVELATIONS at every show, nearly all of these people were standing, some dancing a little, most clapping to the music, singing--and singing LOUD-- about Moses.
It's moments like these that I find myself in love with my life.
And I'm thinking we should all keep this picture in mind as something that life in the United States could be if we work for it.
And working for it does not mean walking away from a fight.
And the fight was on when Roshon Nelson and Donte Robinson quietly refused to leave Starbucks when they were ordered to. And it was they were "ordered to leave." Trust.
People have characterized the police as having "asked them to leave." But you don't arrest somebody for failing to respond favorably to an "ask." You arrest people when you've given an "order" that's been disobeyed.
White supremacists and Black Respectability Politicians, who are on the same page as often as they are not, keep asking the question:
Why didn't they just leave?
They didn't "just leave" because they have nieces, nephews, cousins, and future grand children who will all be black and all be subject to being treated like a dog with fleas in any white run establishment if they don't fight white supremacist based injustice with acts of civil disobedience.
If I ever have a run in with Supervisor Becky in a #ShoppingWhileBlack situation, I hope I have the guts to refuse to "just leave."
If I am treated as if I am less human than the white person next to me, I hope I can push my imaginings of what my own Supervisor Becky will say if I'm arrested.
I hope have the guts to risk my mental health in a jail cell for a day or longer, the guts to risk my career by sitting down in order to stand up against anti-black racism from random white people and also from those black and brown people who would assimilate into whiteness at any cost.
I hope I have the nerve to do what is required because the only way White America is going to pull itself together and act like a segment of it does at the end of Alvin Ailey's REVELATIONS is if we train them how to treat us.
And a big part of training white folks how to treat us means we, as black folks, having to communicate, "OH HELL NO!" when something jumps off.
Some of us (the respectability politicians I am resentful of having to claim sometimes) need to recognize the difference between finding handholds enough to climb high within the white supremacy system and being treated as an equal human being.
Black Quality Of Live Matters. We all have to what we have to do pursue justice when and if we can.
Roshon Nelson and Donte Robinson became the heroes required precisely because they didn't "just leave."
Read more on Starbucks and why Supervisor Becky's "implicit bias" or "overt racism" shouldn't even matter to white people.http://blackchickrocked.blogspot.com/2018/04/starbucks-proves-once-more-that-calm.html
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