No one could ever hold a conversation with the vigor and unadornment like you with an ignorant white man.
"What is your real name?" O'Connor asks you to which you reply, "Malcolm X". O'Connor presses further, "Is that your legal name?". You answer, "As far as I'm concerned it's my legal name". O'Connor continues to press, asking "Have you been to court to establish that?".
"I didn't have to go to court to be called Murphy or Jones or Smith. If a Chinese person were to say his name was Patrick Murphy, you would look at him like he was innocent because Murphy is an Irish name, a European name, or the name that has a caucasian or white background. A Chinese person is a yellow man. He has nothing to do and no connection whatsoever with the name Murphy. And if it doesn't look proper for a person who is yellow or Chinese to be walking around named Murphy or Jones or Johnson or Butch or Powell, I think it would just be just as improper for a black person or the so-called "negro" in this country, as we're taught by the honorable Elijah Muhammad, to walk around with names. Therefore he teaches us that during slavery the same slave master who owned us put his last name on us to denote that we were his property. So when you see a negro today whose name is Johnson, if you go back in history you'll find that once his or one of his forefathers was owned by a white man who was named Johnson. If his name is Butch, his grandfather was owned by a white man named Butch" You counter.
O'Connor interrupts you with yet another probing question, "Do you mind telling me what your father's last name was?"
"My father didn't know his last name, My father got his last name from his grandfather and his grandfather got it from his grandfather who got it from the slave master. The real names of our people were destroyed during slavery" You answer, refusing to allow O'Connor the satisfaction in hearing you speak aloud your slavery-branded last name.
You never allowed the man's apathy and plain ignorance to the state of black man's plight in America, to leave your mission immobile.
Your masterful articulation laid the foundations for the Black Power and Black Consciousness Movements of the 60s and 70s, creating for black people a discovered importance in being a community. Having been a member of the Nation Of Islam, you brought to American black peoples of all backgrounds a gravity of brotherhood and family hood. In your presence and through your words, we were allowed a collective anger and a call for what was rightfully meant to be ours. You were tired of being nice to get what was only right up from under the white man. Why must we be submissive in asking for what should not ever have to be an argument? Why must we be imposed to carry their caucasian last names, their straight hair, their light skin, and yet we are still not entitled to the same rights that they are afforded?
With your fire carrying messages, you transmitted to us a call to love ourselves and to be proud of our blackness. To be passionately black and that to be black was to be beautiful.
Black self-hate has been made so strong. When my sister and I were younger, we would play outside almost all day every day. We would be hanging out at our friends' houses. My sister and I were at my friend's house where her mother offered to braid my little sister's hair. So there we were in her living room watching tv altogether, my little sister on the floor against the couch getting her hair braided by our friend's mother. We went home as we usually did before the streetlights came on. Upon walking inside my father caught sight of my sister's head and made it known that he did not like what he saw. He told her to take it out immediately, forcing my sister and me to take out her braids that were called, "ghetto". The black culture on black people was abominable. We were not to parade in our blackness.
Hair pressed was "proper". For years I watched my father work to adhere to white culture. He worked so hard to disbar the blackness inside of him. He was full of self-hate. This hate ultimately led to him disowning the children, myself included, that he has had collectively with five black women.
The white man's damage runs so deep. Its roots extend well beyond our mind's comprehension. Self-love is the first step, however, in any fight. Through it, we can call for the disparities to be set right in this nation for us. We have a right to be proud of our blackness, to be able to wear it, and not feel threatened by the society that we live in for doing so. We do not have to be apologetic in any facet while we fight for a reality where we are no longer met with hostility just for being black and existing. Your words of black empowerment will continue to be heard with a rapturing knock only growing with intensity.
Sincerely,
Kayla Mary Jane
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