Damon Young's persecution of straight Black men

I've highlighted my responses in yellow, but Damon Young is another serpent contributing to the demonizing of Black men as a whole seemingly in the name of Feminism.

It feels counterintuitive to suggest that straight black men as a whole possess any sort of privilege—particularly the type of privilege created for and protected by whiteness. In America, we are near or at the bottom in every relevant metric determining quality of life. Our arrest and incarceration rates, our likelihood of dying a violent death, our likelihood of graduating high school and attending college, our employment rates, our average net worth, our likelihood of surviving past 70—I could continue, but the point is clear.

He put that out there to avoid any backlash over his title, but he's trying to use that title to try and put others in the mind frame of placing Straight Black Men in that light regardless when it comes to Black women.

But assessing our privilege (or lack thereof) on these facts considers only our relationship with whiteness and with America. Intraracially, however, our relationship to and with black women is not unlike whiteness’s relationship to us. In fact, it’s eerily similar.

It's not eerily similar, but he's trying to get his readers into that mindset.

We’re the ones for whom the first black president created an entire initiative to assist and uplift.

Who created the situation that made him create something of that sort? Furthermore, he didn't do that for straight Black men alone. He did that for men and women and it wasn't specifically for Black people.

You can read it for yourself at the government link below: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2016/03/30/president-obama-has-now-commuted-sentences-348-individuals

The people given clemency were listed as individuals, not straight Black men, and they weren't all straight Black men so he's lying to his readers to try and sell his narrative.

We’re the ones whose beatings and deaths at the hands of the police galvanize the community in a way that the beatings and sexual assaults and deaths that those same police inflict upon black women do not.

Answer me this. Have the tides turned to actually punish Police for all they've done to harm Black men and women in an unjustified manner? He's speaking in a blanketed way too, as if straight Black men haven't spoken out against Sistas being harmed. For the most part the media will not put a camera in the face of a logical well spoken straight Black man that speaks out for the community. The cameras are usually on Black women speaking out, the Black people who look crazy or borderline homeless who can barely talk straight or Black men and women who don't care for other Black people. So it sounds like he has even bought into the narrative that Black women are the backbone of the community, while at the same time trying to punish straight Black men for any challenges they face. I mention the "Backbone" because certain brothas and sistas are backbones of the community, its not automatically Black women and its definitely not all. If you live according to the notion that Black women are the backbone of the community, what would your outlook be towards the Black men that walk the walk?

We’re the ones whose mistreatment inspired a boycott of the NFL despite the NFL’s long history of mishandling and outright ignoring far worse crimes against black women.

He's trying to segment the pain, as if one needs to outweigh another to be deemed wrong. The NFL boycott was not inspired because of straight Black men being hurt, it was based on Black people being hurt or killed and cops are facing no consequences. Look at what he is saying though, he is trying to turn it into something else.

We are the ones who get the biggest seat at the table and the biggest piece of chicken at the table despite making the smallest contribution to the meal.

He's saying "We", as if he knows what's going on in every single home where a straight Black man lives. If that's what he is doing that's on him to confess to his audience, but again he's trying to sell a narrative.

And nowhere is this more evident than when considering the collective danger we pose to black women and our collective lack of willingness to accept and make amends for that truth. It’s a damning and depressing paradox.

Again, Damon needs to speak for himself, because there are countless straight Black men who do not fit this.

When speaking about race and racism, we want our concerns and our worries and our fears to be acknowledged. We want white people to at least make an effort to understand that our reality is different from theirs and that white supremacy is a vital and inextricable part of America’s foundation, and we grow frustrated when they refuse to acknowledge their role—historically and presently—in propagating it.

I'm not one of those straight Black men who pushes for the understanding of White people, my outlook is to learn and teach Black people how to grow and how to punish the people who try to persecute us. Damon is trying to persecute straight Black men in his article.

When the racism isn’t blatant or doesn’t appear to exist at all, we want them to give us the benefit of the doubt.

Who is he trying to sell this to? He keeps saying we, but if he believes that he's making up racism in his mind then that's something he has to deal with. His focus on trying to be the mouthpiece for straight Black men is something to question. Like he's stepping up for the rest of us to get something off his chest that we we're all guilty of.

Because we’ve trained ourselves to be able to sense it—even in minute and barely perceptible amounts—because our safety depends on our recognition of it. We share how it feels to be stopped by a police officer, or perhaps to walk into an all-white bar and have each eye trained on us, or perhaps to jaunt down a street in an all-white neighborhood, and we want them to understand how words and gestures they consider to be innocuous can be threatening, even if there’s no intention of malice.

He's mentioning this stuff under that title to try and give straight Black men a similar appearance.

Although we recognize that not all white people are actively racist, we want them to accept that all benefit from racism, and we become annoyed when individual whites take personal exception and center themselves in any conversation about race, claiming to be one of the “good ones” and wishing for us to stop and acknowledge their goodness.

Here is the selling point to try to place straight Black men into the fold of being White people of Black people and he's also trying to persecute the decent straight brothas. I will not take responsibility for a no good Black man. As a matter of fact, I will probably expand on this post as far as decent Black men are concerned. He wants there to be an approach of just accepting the blame and not pushing back against bullshit, but enough of that gets done. Just like the bad behaviors that come in other forms, he must also get his, for the demonizing of “Straight Black Men” as a whole.

But when black women share that we pose the same existential and literal danger to them that whiteness does to us; and when black women ask us to give them the benefit of the doubt about street harassment and sexual assault and other forms of harassment and violence we might not personally witness; and when black women tell us that allowing our cousins and brothers and co-workers and niggas to use misogynistic language propagates that culture of danger; and when black women admit how scary it can be to get followed and approached by a man while waiting for a bus or walking home from work; and when black women articulate how hurtful it is for our reactions to domestic abuse and their rapes and murders to be “what women need to do differently to prevent this from happening to them” instead of “what we (men) need to do differently to prevent us from doing this to them,” their words are met with resistance and outright pushback.

Damon really has some nerve, and he is targeting straight Black men, which includes decent brothas. I would respond with something further here, but I will hold off.

After demanding from white people that we’re listened to and believed and that our livelihoods are considered, our ears shut off and hearts shut down when black women are pleading with us.

For the record, this isn't something every single Black woman is pleading. As a matter of fact there are sistas that are well protected. Who is he selling this to though? Is he trying to say that straight Black men deserve to suffer in silence because he feels that all Black women are suffering in silence? He isn't acknowledging the straight Black men that stand up for Black women right or wrong because it doesn't strengthen his narrative. His article strengthens the feminist narrative.

Making things worse is that black women and girls are also black people in America—a fact we seem to forget whenever possessing a bad memory is convenient.

There have been straight Black men that have and continue to stand up for sistas, even against other Black women that have spoken down against sistas. My post isn't to plead with this serpent, Damon, it's to basically reveal one of the people who are part of the problem who may appear as if they are trying to help. He isn't laying out a way to make a change, he's trying to sell a narrative against straight Black men to assist with an agenda. He's mentioning street harassment but now a days you can't even say "Hi" to be a decent person, speaking can put a Black man in a situation where he's being labeled someone that harasses women.

There are men that don't even bother anymore to avoid drama and as time progresses what do you think that's going to further promote? Making nothing into a problem when it comes to those of us that aren't guilty, makes it hard for some of our brothas and sistas to see straight. There could be nothing but a joyous occasion going on, but someone like Damon could sell a narrative to turn it into something entirely different in someone's mind. That's the power of deception. You ever see someone mess up their relationship because someone outside of their relationship got into their head and made them paranoid? That's the power of deception, and that's the type of bs Damon is selling against straight Black men.

The effects of racism—metaphysical and literal—and the existential dread and dangers felt when existing while black are not exclusive to black men and boys.

I don't know about you, but I have never said or thought this, Black people are in the struggle not just men but he acts like this is a mindset we share. So who is he trying to sell this too? Is he trying to gain the support of (Black) feminists? Seems like it.

They face the same racisms we do and the same doubts from whites about whether the racism actually exists that we do, and then they’re forced to attempt to convince their brothers and partners and friends and fathers and cousins and lovers of the dangers of existing as black women, and they’re met with the same doubts. The same resistance. The same questions. They are not believed in the (predominantly white) world or in their (predominantly black) communities. And we (black men) remain either uninterested in sincerely addressing and destructing this culture of danger and pervasive doubt or refuse to admit it even exists.

Damon isn't speaking for all Black women, because there are plenty of Black women who don't think like that. There are plenty of sistas who can comfortably say “I'm going to get my dad/brother/cousins” to address a Black man for disrespecting them, but that wouldn't fit Damon's narrative.

I’m not quite sure where I first heard “straight black men are the white people of black people.” I know I read a version of it recently in Saki Benibo’s “The 4:44 Effect.” Mela Machinko tweeted, “Cishet black men are the white people of black people” over a year ago and apparently received so much criticism for it that she temporarily locked her account. But in a conversation we had earlier today, she shared that her tweet was actually a revision of another tweet she’d read. (A month after Mela’s tweet, it was revised again by @rodimusprime.) I also know that I’ve read pieces and been a part of conversations connecting our (black men’s) relationships with black women to the relationships we have with white people but never quite heard it articulated this way.

Either way, that statement, that phrasing and what they suggest are shocking and succinct: simple, subtle and fucking scary.

And it’s true.

Take note, Damon mentions Saki Benibo, someone who slithered out of the woodwork to persecute Nate Parker who was acquitted of raping a White woman because the evidence showed otherwise. He labels him a rapist when Nate Parker was under attack to prevent the success of “Birth of a Nation”. That's what they were deployed for. This serpent also had the nerve to label Nate Parker a murderer of this woman by saying he did so via her suicide. Nate has the right to sue for slander. He doesn't include any evidence of the woman being publicly humiliated by Parker or anyone else, but he puts it in his article. Where are all these people who went after Nate? Why are they no longer targeting him? Did their handlers call them back or send them after another Black person? This is who Damon mentions. By the way, Saki writes for the Medium which is also owned by a non-Black company.

I guess his article was inspired by Mela Machinko, but listen to what he's saying. What I am getting from this is not really steps that can be utilized to make an impact. I'm hearing someone trying to low key incorporate feminism into the mindset of straight Black men.

Kneeling Now Huh?

I've promoted the boycott of anti-Black hate for quite some time, and how to stop supporting racism. Colin Kaepernick took a knee and all sorts of people disagreed while some of us supported what he was kneeling for. It was powerful because the NFL tends to be the place where Black men are expected to fall in line and be gracious for the opportunity, but the other people kneeling should be gracious for the Black players who honestly make the league what it is today.

Colin wasn't kneeling with his sights set on disrespecting the flag. A flag that doesn't really represent us anyway including the national anthem that was edited to hide the racist roots from which it came to be, but Sistas and Brothas still consider it home. Many of our Brothas and Sistas have even gone to warzones for this country, regardless of the circumstances and come right back home to hate dished out by a lot of people who would never enlist. Kneeling is okay, it lets people know on a large stage what's being represented by these players. Colin kneeled because he grew tired of cops committing criminal acts to harm us, kill us, set us up and even if its caught on camera in most cases, they don't get punished. This isn't a debate about the criminals that aren't cops, its about the ones with the badge and their supporters with the deflection being the flag and our veterans. I've seen veterans missing limbs ask for help because their homeless and get bypassed by non-Black people but some of these people enjoy using them as scapegoats.

Colin did something symbolic, but that wasn't the only thing he did. He used his resources to make an impact. Just like the video below will tell you, you have an option when it comes to impacting racism. President Trump flapped his loose lips of destruction to try and get Black athletes tossed out of the NFL and it revealed something.

Don't give the management of NFL teams praise for kneeling, because they're kneeling (now) for the simple fact that they wouldn't have a solid meal ticket without those Brothas. They could replace them all with non-Black people and I'm sure it wouldn't matter. The NFL wouldn't be the NFL and it would leave room for Black entrepreneur's to create a profitable league to fill the void where the NFL once stood. I say that to say you have more power than you think. The NFL needs these brothas, those are kneels of concern. Those NFL team owners don't want to lose their metaphorical slaves. By the way, college athletes need to be getting paid too because they bring in way too much money and most don't make it to the pros. Their hard work on the field goes on to fund other programs that are sometimes run by racists sometimes teaching racists, but I digress.

Check out the video (again if you've watched it already) and connect the dots in your personal life, because you have the power to do so. Do not go out marching and doing protests, because it's not efficient (that seriously needs to stop). Chances are you are not in the NFL, NBA, MLS, etc. so being out there will only put you in harms way with nothing to show for it. Make your money do the marching out of those stores that support racism and learn how to make it work for you. The money is very important to them, they could careless about the marches beyond using them to demonize us.

Speaking of boycotts, punish the players who have a problem with kneeling too (Black or otherwise). Our job isn't to kiss ass, we have to pave the way so that the future is brighter for our children and their children's children who shouldn't have to deal with the same unpunished abused of the badge. If these people want to kneel, don't just stop there, stand together to get the process started towards punishing police officers. Breaking the oath should come base sentence to make the criminals of law enforcement think twice, which could save tax dollars eaten up by judgements against them.

So let the kneeling be motivation because you have what it takes to make a change.

Brotha Bee: Black People and DACA

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJFa5clgUZM&t=4s

(If you aren't anti-African American, take no offense to this video because it only disapproves of those people while also speaking on the importance of self improvement.)