So... I saw the movie Twelve Years A Slave. I saw it because a friend and brother, whom I admire, respect and like, expressed some disappointment in my unwillingness to see the film which for me had little to offer in the way of something new about our Maafa (holocaust). So I saw the movie because people-- friendship--matters more to me than the R45 for a movie and so after much FB debate and consideration I viewed the movie. I was mostly bored. 12 Years A Slave reminds me of the really attractive person who has no personality but because they are so attractive we wish them to be more than they really are-- in some case we need them to be who we imagine them to be to justify our need--and so we invent a personality for them. As a movie it was expertly put together, beautiful to look at, soul-less thing. People it is 2014, not 1813 or 1913 and Id love to see more movies in which we imagine a world in which Africans overturned enslavement and created a new world, a new kind of global economy that is rooted in humane values. Dont tell me about thats not real. If you can spend money and get hyped about movies about a white dude flying at a speed of light or a grown ass man with adjustment issues running through New York, then you can imagine new worlds for African (Black) people, where we are the architects of a brave new world instead of a hired help in someones imagination. Are we so afraid that we dont even have the courage to dream of a better world? Do we not at least have it in us to give our children that chance to envision and imagine a better world? As Maulana Karenga notes: Until we break the monopoly the oppressor has on our minds, liberation is not only impossible it is unthinkable. For one is not likely to achieve what one cannot even conceive. I conceive of a world in which we are fully free; where African nations and the diaspora through off the heavy anchor of white supremacy and neocolonialism and create integrated economies that develop relationships with other nations based on communal values rather than the parasitic ones the animate the European global economy; where Black men stand up for Black women and Black women stand up for themselves with Black men right alongside them, and they both stand up for Black children, and we all stand up for each other and our communities. If we set the vision out there, some day our children or grandchildren or great grandchildren will step into it and activate it, just as the Black people in America activated the vision of those enslaved African ancestors who held out a vision that black people are breathing life into today. If your vision is just to be modern day version of Doke from the movie Driving Miss Daisy, I dont have a problem with that, you do you, white supremacy has plenty of room for you in that car, but damn it Im trying to fly and Im building with people who are interested in flight too.
Posted on: Thu, 06 Feb 2014 04:40:54 +0000
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