JAYFORCE

I remember growing up how ‘tough kids’ would always remark and bark about how they would have fought if ‘massuh’ hit them with a whip back in slavery times. Even then I knew that was nonsense, bravado, untestable braggadocio bullsh!t. A whip would make a 1500-pound bull jump; not much fight in anybody AFTER getting hit.

Fight BEFORE, or run away. Yeah, back back in the day, I knew I would have played it ‘smart’ like that. But watching this… this is within these folks’ lifetimes, some even younger than me… These stories are NOT whip lashes, but Whites lashing out against my people in the vilest ways. Inhumanely… like they were acting to deny or strip away their humanity. And soon after the clip above started to play, I felt like I would have responded the way Jason George did – blacked out with rage #BlackOutRage

In “The Souls of Black Folk,” W.E.B. Du Bois talks about the first time he realized his skin color made him different. We asked celebrities, CNN anchors and reporters, and others to tell us when they first realized that being Black affected how people treated them. Share your own story with #RealizedIWasBlack

But I must say, making it to the end made me think of when I realized I was Black. I then realized that I don’t have an awful story to share. You see, I’m from Tuskegee. I was raised there. I grew up steeped in Black History. Loved on, scolded, chastised, challenged (by well-meaning adults and bullies) that were Black. Hell, being light-skinned, I was the guy who got ‘janked’ (meaning ‘joned’ or ‘cracked on’ or whatever your word for verbal hazing is) for being damn near White.

However, I was taught my history; ALL of it, MYstory, not HIStory. And I was imbued with a certain forgive-if-you-can-but-NEVER-forget attitude that persists today. I am sure that is why I often toss a ‘Black History’ lecture into conversations… Which likely why I often proclaim, “I’m from ‘Skegee, and that makes me the Blackest man in the room.” My upbringing and attitude is what steels my nerve and puts a fire in my belly when I watch or hear or read anything about how Black folks are mistreated – by individuals or institutions. I am usually able to channel my #BlackOutrage (see what I did there? #BlackOutRage to #BlackOutrage hash flip) positively… to fight negativity nowadays. But I also KNOW that is because my ancestors took the lashes, took the lynchings, took the billy club beatings… picked the cotton, picked their battles, put up with losses, pushed through struggles, put in ballots, and punted White Power in its azz to get them out and make Tuskegee the Black Mecca of my youth (Google ‘Gomillion v. Lightfoot‘). So while I do not have a story to share like those in the clip above, I feel them. I really feel them as they are told.

That said, I do remember that White security guy that used to follow my brothers and me around the grocery store when we were kids like we might shoplift. But he was a weirdo.

Watch the clip above. Compelling! Follow the link to CNN for even more.

MORE: I REALIZED I WAS BLACK (CNN)

– @ojones1