Our Voices: Should we divorce this country?

By Kenneth L. (Kenny) Hardin

Africans in America (AIA) have been mired in a long-term, one-sided relationship with their partner, the U.S., for centuries. Although we’ve been treated callously and insensitively, we continue to show our commitment and loyalty to this relationship. 

We’ve endured domestic violence, political infidelity, social ostracization, and deep-seated indifference to our needs, yet we still love her unconditionally. 

Even though we’re continually physically and emotionally abused, we make excuses saying it will be different the next time, but it never is. 

We rationalize and explain away how we’re mistreated in this relationship, often shouldering the blame for the abuse. Instead of standing up for ourselves and demanding we be treated with decency and respect, we accept the token symbolic apology gestures and remain silent until the next time America raises its hand to us.  

Like a jilted spouse, we stand beside America at the press conference to show a united front and our unwavering support. We even have a few confused Knee Grow spouses of America who’ll publicly defend their captors, owners and abusers in a sad display of justifying why they love and believe in them. 

These modern day Stepford spouses have developed such a misguided psychological alliance with their abuser, they refuse to see how they’re only props to further an agenda of white supremacy.

I love my Country and the opportunities it’s provided me and would never do anything to subvert it, but it’s time for a legal separation. I don’t mean packing up a few things and sneaking out in the cover of night to hold up in a secret spot where America can’t find us. No, we need to stiffen our spines, stand up to the abuser and tell him the days of being silent, docile, passive and complicit in our own torment are over. 

Desperate times call for desperate measures and at this point, with all the brutality AIA continue to suffer daily, we ought to be about a half a mile down the road past desperate.

We’ve tried to be the good supportive spouse for years. Look at all the pointless things we’ve done to save our relationship with America. Every time an AIA life is taken, these new-fangled Knee Grow revolutionaries, who have no previous history of being involved in anything to change our condition, drop their Starbucks coffee cups and become modern day Malcolms. 

They engage in symbolic acts of wearing apparel with cultural quotes, darken their Facebook profile pictures, and kneel with their fists in the air while declaring this atrocity will never happen again. 

Excuse me as I stretch, yawn, shake my head from side to side and roll my eyes in obvious derision. How many more wake up calls do I need to read about after another police murder of unarmed skinfolk or the heinous brutal actions of racist whites before we put some definitive policy action and police reform into place?

AIA are some of the most loyal, courageous and patriotic people in this Country, but for decades, there has been little reciprocity. Offense is taken when we refuse to stand for an anthem that is an ode to subjugation. Self-righteous indignation abounds when we kneel at sporting events to bring awareness to our pain. 

They criticize violence for being a part of our protests but say nothing of their violence being the impetus for protesting. So, a divorce is inevitable, and it will get messy.

 AIA can’t allow America to convince us they’ve changed by offering cheap apology gifts like removing monuments, renaming streets or other empty symbolic gestures just to buy our silence.

Kenneth L. (Kenny) Hardin is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists.