Wow. That was a truly great read!
And nails some salient points on race as would a well written song.
Be damned if I figure what he is saying
A big problem is that where once the idea that the color of your skin said something of inescapable importance about who some folks were and what they could be, or even ought to be, was a gate to keep some out the very same concept is now a gate to keep them in!
The whole idea of blackness once used against blacks by some whites is now advanced by some blacks “for blacks”.
What this can mean for black persons is, at least in part, that where they were once free in their minds, that which sought to oppress them being more or less external, and so they frequently lived like it (going about their lives and building a future for themselves and their families inspire of external pressures), that now too many are oppressed from within, from things like what Scripture calls “strongholds”.
While one can point to the flocking of blacks to the north seeking often nonexistant jobs the truth is that that dislocation WAS NOT enough in itself to cause the present troubles.
Rather it was the accepting of radicalism about race (seemingly tied to radicalism about politics and even of religion with the NoI or what would eventually rot into Black Liberation Theology), the switching of who was manning the gates I’d mentioned above, that festered and about the time that SOME blacks started burning down their own communities and driving away the jobs the whole community depended on — decades after the last time mobs of rioting whites had burned down a black community — the course was set in many communities for the present troubles.
Consider ...
Whereas before if a black was highly successful despite the effort by some whites to keep the gate closed they were celebrated. They weren’t accused of acting white because they were highly educated or unashamed capitalists.
And the rhetoric of advancement, outside of radical circles (and sometimes even within, for the sickness either wasn’t fully advanced or else those who were already consumed by it may have realized it wouldn’t sell well ... yet), reflected the wholesomeness of those seeking to escape oppression from without by excelling, by succeeding, by, to be blunt, overcoming.
But once the radicalism had not just taken root but fully flowered: then we started seeing the broader acceptance of this idea that being black, as set forth by those now using the gates trying to keep people IN, meant in part not acting too white and especially not believing too white.
I know that sounds absurd, and it is, but leftist radicalism breeds absurdities in people no matter their race. Consider the anger we now occasionally see at “cultural appropriation” and sometimes, if not oftentimes, by the same folks who rail against so-called Oreos (blacks who revile other blacks for not being black enough).
Even me writing this post will offend the race radicals because the gatekeepers keeping the people in have even less use for Terence’s wit and wisdom than did the segregationist of old. Namely: “Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto.” or “I am human, nothing that is human is alien to me.”