Don’t Fight Back, Your Mission is to Survive
In his Time magazine article, Toure also noted: “If you encounter such a situation, you need to play it cool. Keep your wits about you. Don’t worry about winning the situation. Your mission is to survive.”
“Some people will take that prejudice and try to force their will on you to make sure you feel like a second-class citizen and to make certain you get back to the lower-class place they think you’re trying to escape. The best way to counter them involves not your fists but your mind. You know your value to the world and how terrific you are. If you never forget that, they can’t damage your spirit. The best revenge is surviving and living well.”
Martin Luther King Jr. would look down on the notion that surviving is good enough, since he once said: “A man who won’t die for something is not fit to live.”
Although Toure urges using the mind rather than the fist, one of the most represented and beloved African-American leaders, Malcolm X ,would not agree with how the mind is best used when someone physically threatens you.
“If you’re not ready to die for it, put the word ‘freedom’ out of your vocabulary,” said Malcolm (1925-1965).
During the Asante Wars with the British, Queen Mother Yaa Asantewa (1840-1921), gave a woman’s perspective in a speech rallying to the Asante men who cowered when the British took away their king.
“Now I see that some of you fear to go forward to fight for our king,” she said. “If it [was] in the brave days of Osei Tutu, Okomfo Anokye, and Opoku Ware, chiefs would not sit down to see their king to be taken away without firing a shot. No European could have dared speak to chiefs of Asante in the way the governor spoke to you this morning. Is it true that the bravery of Asante is no more? I cannot believe it. It cannot be! I must say this: if you, the men of Asante, will not go forward, then we will. We, the women, will. I shall call upon my fellow women. We will fight! We will fight till the last of us falls in the battlefields. ”
