Here it comes again.
It’s Blackface, it’s Columbus’ing a culture to take credit for its creativity, it’s incessant use of loaded words like “thug,” but in totality, it’s a lack of emotional intelligence. That’s the reality some white people have chosen to live in.
Who wakes up one day, visits a cotton field and decides to share on social media the act of channeling one’s “inner (insert mass of people who were brutalized for economic advancement of a country)”? Especially considering the obvious fact said imitator is likely a far descendant of the ancestors who whipped innocent Black people on those same cotton fields every morning before the sun rose? Why is the fact that those actions are offensive so difficult to understand?
Perhaps it’s this “turn the other cheek” responsibility Black people have never wanted nor asked for. Perhaps it’s the idea that Black anger should be exhibited through peaceful marches only. Maybe somewhere down the road media, music, film and educational propaganda have deluded white people into thinking it’s okay to mock hundreds of years of cruelty and oppression of human beings. However, make these same injustices against Jewish people, and the world is reminded once more that anti-Semitism is not tolerated.
In no manner does an apology wave away the integral lack of sensitivity presented by these offenders who only come to face their transgressions once called out by those they have offended. Had Erika Escalente not been dragged through the mud of social media for her post, she would still have her job, her racist comments would have been accepted, and she wouldn’t have been forced to face the truth of her insensible behavior.
Yes, Ms. Escalente, to channel your inner “n-word” is insolent to Black people far and wide, because hundreds of years of racial sensitivities are passed down to each generation of Black children. The Black people alive in 2015 wake up to face reminders of their former state of bondage every time another Black child is shot for holding a toy, or when a teenage girl is flipped over by a police officer the size of a linebacker in her classroom, or when the nation’s cable news network has a Black man on the screen suggesting to them that the violence against their people is somehow their fault.
You probably saw it as a comical. Black people saw it as a tell tale sign that racism lives on.
To simply throw an “I’m sorry” at their faces and expect to be absolved of any judgment or backlash is naive.
