Stop Saying, ‘We Are Not Our Ancestors!’

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Listen: The brawl that occurred over the weekend on the dock at Montgomery’s Riverfront Park has grow to be the cathartic reward that retains on giving for Black folks everywhere in the interwebs. The memes, the video commentaries, the jokes, the soundtracks, the intelligent different names for the teenager who swam to the melee—it’s been a much-needed breath of recent air for the diaspora.

That being stated—summa y’all are ruining it for me. And also you’re doing it with 5 easy phrases:

“We’re not our ancestors.”

First off, this loud, unsuitable and ahistorical sentiment wasn’t born after the mega MAGAt-merking melee in Montgomery, the place Black folks got here collectively to satisfy white entitlement and whiter violence with Black unity and Blacker fists (and an occasional chair, in fact).

For the higher a part of the previous decade, “We’re not our ancestors” has been considerably of a rallying cry stated largely by youthful Black individuals who I’d guess realized their Black historical past from the likes of Ron DeSantis if not for the truth that even Florida’s backward and racist retelling of Black historical past requires classes on how Black folks additionally dedicated acts of violence on white folks throughout the nation’s historic race massacres. (I imply, Florida’s agenda seems to be extra about casting Black individuals who protected themselves and their households as “additionally violent” than it’s about highlighting the truth that Black folks had absolutely the proper to guard themselves and their households—however nonetheless.)

My level is, it’s actually apparent that numerous Black people haven’t correctly realized our historical past—which is comprehensible. It’s not like several Ok-12 college in America goes out of its technique to train that throughout the seventeenth, 18th and nineteenth centuries, hardly a decade glided by and not using a main slave rise up taking place within the antebellum South.

We had been deliberately not taught that slave revolts had been such a terrific and fixed concern in America that some Accomplice states carried out “Black codes” or “slave codes” to forestall them from taking place by disallowing enslaved folks to satisfy in teams of greater than 4 or journey greater than 10 miles from their grasp’s residence.

Black folks weren’t taught that in 1680 Virginia’s Basic Meeting handed “An act for stopping Negroes Insurrections,” which barred enslaved folks (or Black folks usually, truly) from assembly in teams, carrying weapons, or leaving their masters’ property with out their masters’ written permission, amongst different issues.

All I’m saying is—if our ancestors had been such passive, demure and obedient receivers of violence and oppression, why had been white folks so afraid of them revolting?

However, no matter. Let’s simply say for the sake of a loud, unsuitable and ahistorical argument that the a whole bunch of enslaved individuals who spent some two centuries staging slave rebellions signify the exception and never the rule. In spite of everything, I’m keen to stipulate that there have been extra enslaved individuals who didn’t take part in uprisings than did. However are we actually all that totally different?

Setting apart the evident indisputable fact that our ancestors endured structural oppression that we couldn’t think about whilst systemic racism continues to be very a lot a factor, are we not the technology of Black people who’re, at greatest, simply as possible to answer white racism and/or violence by pulling out our telephones to report it as we’re to start out preventing?

Do y’all do not forget that time a white man attacked a Black McDonald’s worker over a straw and never a single Black individual stepped in to assist till it was time to restrain the younger Black lady from beating the bologna despatched off of her white attacker? Have been the Black bystanders not of the “We’re not our ancestors” technology simply as a lot because the Black lady who fought?

Hell, I’m keen to guess that if we did a head depend, we’d discover that even on the royal Caucasian smackdown in Montgomery there have been extra Black folks observing and recording the occasion than there have been throwing fingers. And I’ve no drawback with that—particularly for the reason that Black people preventing outnumbered their melanin-deficient punching luggage anyway—till Black folks begin utilizing our collective second of communal pleasure to disrespect our ancestors.

And, make no mistake, it’s disrespectful irrespective of how one tries to justify it.

Many on social media have tried to spin issues by claiming that each one “We’re not our ancestors” actually means is we don’t should take what our ancestors needed to take due to their sacrifice. And it’s completely true that we get to say “We’re not our ancestors” solely as a result of our ancestors paved the way in which for the restricted diploma of company and freedom that we at present take pleasure in. However that’s additionally why the assertion is disrespectful.

How precisely is “we recognize what our ancestors sacrificed for us” being conveyed by means of the phrases “We’re not our ancestors”? Would you say it in entrance of your ancestors? Would you proudly put on a t-shirt that reads “We’re not our ancestors” in the event that they had been bodily standing in your presence? You’d look Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner, Malcolm X, and the deceased members of the Black Panther Get together sq. of their faces and declare that “We’re not our ancestors”? Do you assume they’d obtain these phrases as a press release of deference versus condescension?

If “We’re not our ancestors” isn’t meant to suggest that we’re bolder and fewer controllable than the generations that got here earlier than us, why will we solely say it in response to movies that present us preventing white racists? Why don’t we are saying it in response to the myriad of movies that present us recording racism to put up on-line so the web may give us our recourse? Why don’t we are saying it after we fail to guard one another?

If what you imply by “We’re not our ancestors” is “They fought so we may battle more durable,” why not simply say that? Black Twitter is actually intelligent sufficient to discover a technique to phrase that rallying cry in a method that rolls off the tongue in addition to the flippant and clearly inaccurate rallying cry it could substitute.

Nah—I’m simply not shopping for it. Many people aren’t.

https://twitter.com/123itsmeMary/standing/1688617796576374785

Right here’s a remaining thought: We don’t protest inequality by strolling into sure loss of life like our ancestors did.

Certain, we interact in protests. We made “Black Lives Matter” a factor as a result of we all know how disposable Black life is handled, even now. So, we regularly protest understanding there’s an opportunity we’ll be harm—even killed. However we don’t march into conditions the place we all know bodily damage and/or loss of life are all however sure. The variations between Aug. 5 and Bloody Sunday aren’t restricted to the truth that we inflicted protecting violence within the former and had violence inflicted on us whereas we had been unprotected throughout the latter. The members of the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery knew they had been marching right into a state of affairs they won’t march out of. At Riverfront Park, essentially the most these preventing needed to concern had been assault costs.

In actual fact, one may argue that we’re, certainly, not like our ancestors as a result of they had been well-practiced in placing their lives on the road in methods we may by no means have. However I favor not to take a look at it that method. I favor to imagine we completely are our ancestors. We’re their legacy and their reflection. And we must always declare that proudly each time.

We’re our ancestors by means of and thru. The tip.