“Oh, I think we’ll always be a sad people,” a black woman said to me in 2001. She was very smart, very well-informed. And that remark seemed utterly ordinary to her. It didn’t to me. Why would any people always be sad? Or, why would a people willingly embrace such a prediction?
I think of her whenever I see how gloomily we are trained to see just about anything that happens to — or for — black people in this country. We must always stare at the cloud rather than the silver lining, obsess over the fly in the ointment. It looks like my friend was right about us being perpetually sad.
I wish she wasn’t, because it isn’t the only way of grappling with challenge. In 1957, when legendary black contralto Marian Anderson was the subject of a See It Now documentary special, the Little Rock schoolhouse episode happened to occur during filming. The producers of the special used the contrast between this event and Anderson’s successful tour in Asia as a “hook.” They even asked Anderson about Little Rock — and she looked slightly perplexed that her opinion would be part of the proceedings.
A black person wrote a response, complaining that — get this — the special was wrong in mentioning Little Rock but nothing about “the many of our race who are on top.”
What worries me is how unlikely that would be today from so many of our smartest chroniclers, who consider their job to be to remind America eternally of societal racism, to the point of spinning stories in the direction that most writers in 1957 would have seen as good news.
Why have so many been so hell-bent on painting it as sad that so many black people are moving back down South? Just 40 years ago, most black people could barely buy houses outside of the ghetto, but now thousands of families are picking up stakes and happily moving to states where life will be cheaper and more comfortable.
click here to read more: http://www.theroot.com/views/sadness-black-folks
