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A [Class] Suicide Note

Amina Brown

Abstract


I can no longer pretend. I can no longer pretend that there is really a Black “privileged class.” I can no longer be complicit in Black persecution, and allow myself to believe that I am a exceptional Negro whose work ethic and access to whiteness makes me an anomaly of Blackness. I must become a martyr of revolution and reclaim Black solidarity as my own political afterlife. Therefore, I suggest that Black solidarity and all its attributes pertain to Black survival in the face of political antagonism, economic disregard and social displacement. It must pertain to Black creativity, Black art, Black innovation as a means of carving inclusive spaces into society when this society viciously excludes Black men and women. Solidarity is a needed social, political, and cultural phenomenon that relates to Black struggle. It suggests a means of dealing with an abrading urban infrastructure that ultimately proves malignant to Afrikans in dominant physical and ontological structures of whiteness. Black solidarity then is the first step to healing Black pain, and Black despair. It is needed to bridge the binary between Black hope and hopelessness; Black love and embedded hate. Solidarity is needed to redeem us and, above all else, to immortalize Black continuance and progression.

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ProudFlesh: New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics and Consciousness. ISSN: 1543-0855 (online).
Editor: Dr. Darlene V. Russell.

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