On Pride and Privilege
It’s a hard thing to do for a Black man, to give up his pride.
It may cost him everything. His relationships, his freedom, it may even cost him his life. That’s the thing about it, the more you lose around you the more important it becomes to hold onto your pride, your manhood.
So, where does that pride come from? Why is it so strong and so difficult to break? Why does it have the potential to be so destructive?
In my opinion, a Black man’s pride comes from a deep-seated resolve forged through generations of physical and psychological abuse. Do you know the amount of self-pride it takes for a man to be a slave and continue to wake up each morning to a life of hardship, hatred and violence? What about the amount of pride it takes to march into Mississippi during the civil rights movement? Those kinds of acts take not only an immense amount of individual pride, but also pride in one’s family as well as their race.
It’s this same pride that still exists in Black men to this day. This is the reason it is unbreakable; it has to be.
At its core, the principles of the Black man’s pride force Black men to exist outside the power structure of white America because white America is responsible for the destruction of the Black man’s pride in the first place. The power structure of America is designed toward ushering white’s through society safely, developing pride and confidence slowly and deliberately but it does very little of this for the Black man.
Instead, the development of the Black man’s pride must happen naturally over time, independent of the white American authority. “Once outside of America's protective framework, development of the black psyche happens primarily through a series of "trial and error" events. These "trial and error" events can be seen as attempts by African Americans to lay their own moral and ethical framework that will serve as the basis for their own personal development.”
The problem is that within a capitalistic society the only avenues for wealth creation that exist outside of white America involve narcotics, violence and destruction and through popular media this existence has been intertwined with the Black man’s pride to the point where the streets have become the barometer by which a Black man tests his pride. Far too often the result is death or incarceration.
On the other side of the spectrum is white privilege. White privilege the idea that the white man’s sense of pride is handed to him through the very existence of America. It affirms his place in the world in a positive light so that he never has to question it.
Where a Black man’s pride is earned through struggle, the white man’s pride is gifted to him.
The goal moving forward has to be the creation of Black Privilege. A space where young Black men broaden the avenues by which they test their pride. Because the truth is, whether it is the streets or wall street, the Black man’s pride will always be tested on his journey through this white man’s world.