Warning: Adult themes
There is a book that I read many, many years ago by Cornel West, entitled, “Race Matters.” And throughout the text he clearly demonstrates and reiterates this many times. Today, as I write this, is Mother’s Day. As I have popped in and out of my social media channels today, there have been many celebrations and declarations about what Mother’s Day is and isn’t. Feelings that have been good about being a mother and having a nice mother. Or feelings that have been bad or sad about not becoming a mother or being raised by the proverbial wolves.
All of this has been accompanied, of course, by the usual platitudes and feel good cards, lots of pictures of drinking, and many old pictures bringing back memories- real or imagined.
And then…
And then, the very reason that I do not watch the news came blowing through my screen.
People being shot at a Mother’s Day parade in New Orleans, and …
A picture of a teenage boy, holding a pistol to his teenage “woman’s” temple. And, her declaring her, dare I use the phrase, undying love for this man of hers.
This is an oversimplification, but why is it, that all, well most, of the people with white people in them seem to be having a good time, celebrating each other? And the only two pictures of Black people that have tons of comments, on this day of mourning and celebration, have to do with guns, violence and death?
When did we start thinking our own lives were so “worthless,” so “valueless?” When did we buy into promoting our own devastation, destruction and annihilation?
Cornel is, of course, correct. But strangely, not in the ways that he meant.
Who in Heaven or Hell have we all become?