I never thought I’d say the words, but I agree with Rev. Al Sharpton. In fact, I actually gave a hearty “Amen” to some of the comments he made at the funeral for my namesake, Michael Brown, who was finally laid to rest in Ferguson, Missouri, this past Sunday.
Now, I must say that I am not familiar with the vast majority of Sharpton’s sermons, radio and TV broadcasts and community activities. I just know that when I have heard him, I have disagreed with him, sometimes profoundly. And until Sunday, I was not impressed with his role in Ferguson, nor was I hopeful that his presence would bring about anything constructive.
But let’s give credit where credit is due. He nailed some things in his funeral message.
On the one hand, he gave a very clear perspective of the way many black Americans view the police and justice system, saying: “In three weeks, we saw Marlene Pinnock, a woman in Los Angeles, laid out on the freeway … a California highway patrolman hit her 15 times on video, with no weapon in her hand, nothing, no threat to her. Right after that, a man, they said he had loosie cigarettes, and they put an illegal chokehold on him – a man videoed it, 11 times he said he couldn’t breathe – and the policeman wouldn’t let him go. Later that week, we see Michael lying on the ground. America, it’s time to deal with policing! We are not the haters, we’re the healers!”
But he didn’t stop there, nor did he focus only on “policing.” Instead, he said that it was time for his own community, black America, to get its own house in order.
He laid into the rioters and protesters, explaining how the parents of the slain teenager “had to break their mourning to ask folks to stop looting and rioting. … Their son taken, discarded and marginalized? And they have to stop mourning to get you to control your anger, like you’re more angry than they are?”
Exactly. Who were the rioters and looters thinking about? Themselves, not the Brown family and not the larger goals of the community. But isn’t that the norm with looter and rioters? As Sharpton said, “This is not about you!”
Of course, he did spend much of his sermon stirring the crowd about the perceived inequalities of blacks vs. whites under the law, calling for a movement that would bring about changes in policy while calling for a fair and impartial investigation of the shooting of Michael Brown. And while he certainly made some valid points, much of this sounded like the same old rhetoric we’ve heard for years.
Quite frankly, this hasn’t helped the African-American community advance itself across the country.
But then things took an interesting turn. Sharpton said, “And we need those that are bad cops – we are not anti-police, we respect police – but those police that are wrong need to be dealt with, just like those in our community [who] are wrong need to be dealt with.”
Did you catch that? Not just the “bad cops” but also “those in our community [who] are wrong.” Al Sharpton was saying that this call for justice is a two-way street.
He then proceeded to lay into his own community in ways that only a black leader could do, saying that they had bad, rotten apples in their midst but refused to deal with them.
“We’ve got to be straight up in our community, too,” he said, “We have to be outraged at a 9-year-old girl killed in Chicago. We have to be outraged by our disrespect for each other. Our disregard for each other. Our killing and shooting and running around gun-toting each other. So that they are justifying trying to come at us because some of us act like the definition of blackness is how low you can go. Blackness has never been about being a gangster or thug. Blackness was no matter how low we was pushed down, we rose up anyhow.”
I’ll say it again: He’s right!
How in the world did “blackness” get associated with being thugs? With wearing baggy, underwear-exposing pants? With drug use and criminality? With fatherless homes? What does any of this have to do with being black?
And then the final salvo: “Blackness was never surrendering our pursuit of excellence. It was when it was against the law to go to some schools, we built black colleges and learned anyhow. … We never surrendered, we never gave up, and now we get to the 21st century, we get to where we got some positions of power. And you decide it ain’t black no more to be successful. Now you wanna be a nigga and call your woman a ho, you lost where you come from.”
Again, all this was interspersed in a message that played into black victimhood and that pushed some of the standard buttons, but in the midst of the sermon, there was a clear call for personal responsibility. In other words, he was saying to his people that in some ways, they were their own worst enemies.
Without a doubt, there are major social issues that must be addressed, and the racial divide in our country can’t be ignored. But social inequality will never be corrected by looking for a handout from the government or by blaming someone else for the problems. Change can only come when people determine to discard the victim mentality and quit blaming others. (This works for every ethnicity and color.)
Black Americans have overcome all kinds of obstacles in the past, as Rev. Sharpton rightly said. Today, they must remember their heritage as overcomers and throw away the victim card for good. Only then can they rise into their full potential – and America will not be whole until they do.
