Hush That Fuss

Icon:

• An image; a representation.
• A representation or picture of a sacred or sanctified Christian personage, traditionally used and venerated in the Eastern Church.
• An important and enduring symbol
• One who is the object of great attention and devotion; an idol

Rosa Parks died on Monday at 92 years of age. She lived long enough to see Black folks move forward in ways that must have been unimaginable in Montgomery, Alabama back in 1955. She also lived long enough to see the beneficiaries of all the struggle and sacrifice spit it back into her face like a bigoted cracker’s tobacco.

We have become spoiled and complacent. Some of us truly believe that we don’t have to do anything else to maintain what Rosa, Fannie, Malcolm, Martin, & Bayard got beaten, shot at, and bombed out of their homes to achieve for us. So that we can go in to Macy’s and drop hundreds of dollars on trinkets. So that we can’t be outright be discriminated against for jobs and housing (they gotta do it on the low now). So that we don’t have to work as hard as they did.

What did she get for her contributions? She got robbed and beaten by some punk for 53 bones. She couldn’t even pay her rent in her last years. She was being manipulated (in my opinion) by some shysty lawyer types to keep the beef with Outkast cooking over the song “Rosa Parks” in hopes of getting paid handsomely. Where was Jesse and nem? Oh wait they were out selling out the very struggle that at one time they believed so deeply in so that they can get paid too. Rosa could have gone on the lecture circuit like the rest of them and got paid too. But she didn’t. She stayed close to home and immersed herself in youth and used her time to educate them. How cool is that? It’s just one more thing to respect her for.

While we owe so much to Rosa for the small thing she did that helped change the lives of so many, most of all we owe her an apology. We should apologize for taking her and all of the efforts of the women (who always set if off for pretty much any major event in history) and men in the struggle for civil rights for granted. We need to apologize reducing her to a symbol instead of a person who had needs. We need to apologize for willingly becoming all of the things that they fought so hard to prove that we weren’t. We need to apologize for BET and UPN and our on going cooning for cash. We need to apologize for Hip Hop becoming a plantation where the only crops being harvested are misogyny, violence and profiteering.

From the bottom of my heart Rosa, I am sorry. Rest in peace.

Later………...