Moments when I became enlightened

One incident from my childhood that revealed to me the consciousness of race or class was during 9/11. My mother’s previous job had an incredible view of the towers and I saw the second tower collapse. It was like watching it in HD when I was that close to it. I remember one tall (or at least he seemed tall to me at that age) white man standing next to me. Once the tower fell I recall hearing him say to a friend of his “Oh we’re bombing those motherfuckers.” “We’re gonna bomb those Taliban motherfuckers.” After that I remember going to my mom and asking her about what the guy said. I can’t really remember the explanation my mother gave me but I do remember that being a time when I really started thinking about the separation of races and things such as that.

Another time that I became aware of the social status of people in America, mainly black people, was when I was watching the Dave Chappell Show with my older sister when I was pretty young. On the episode he performed this skit where he was imitating amateur night at the Apollo, or something like that and, he was dressed in this African dashiki and was beating some bongos. The first thing that he said were “Black people do this,” he then beat a specific pattern on the drum and then he said “White people do that.” and he beat a different pattern on the drums again. His character then continues to beat the bongos and says “When white peoples power goes off they pan-ic,” he then hits the drums quickly two times in succession. He continues by saying “when black peoples power goes they plaaaaan it.” And he hits the drums twice but slowly when he pronounces the word. I didn’t get it at first so I asked my sister about and she explained to me that a lot of the times some black people don’t pay their bills and so they usually plan when their power goes out. Apparently the reason for this is that there are times when people are unable to pay their bills and support themselves at the same time so they consciously know about the lack of bills that they have paid and can usually plan out when something is going to happen as a consequence of this.

A final moment that opened the light of different races and classes were some episodes of the boondocks. One of the episodes was known as “Granddad's Fight”. This episode was about deaf blind guy whose only mission in life was to make people miserable. During that episode the main character, Huey Freeman, can be heard narrating the scene. He is describing what he calls a “Nigger moment”. During the moment two black men get into an argument because they bumped into each and within a few seconds the confrontation escalates into a shoot out where both of the men are extremely close to each other and shoot at each other. They run their clips out completely without landing a single shot and then they continue going on about their business. However in a scene following that, one of the men from the previous moment bumps into a white man and almost initiates another moment until the white man said. “Wait I’m white I don’t have to deal with this.” and walks off laughing about the situation. When I saw this episode I was able to start forming my own opinions and thought about the topic myself at first. It made wonder if blacks are more prone to violent and irrational outburst and why whites are looked at as being more in control of their emotions. Another episode, which was titled “The Passion of Reverend Ruckus”, was about this one grotesque looking black man, who can be considered being an UncleTom, dreaming about different racial heavens which include Black heaven, Asian heaven, and White heaven which is apparently the best heaven. The thought of that episode just made me think about this racial hierarchy that we have in this world and how the thought process of some people actually reflects what is going on in this episode.