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Black Kids Will Save America
Our kids aren’t just fighting against the oppression that threatens their lives, they’re also fighting for the quality of living that they deserve.
T he night Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential election, my brother called me. He was sobbing. I hadn’t heard him cry like that since he was a child. There was no greeting, no yells of elation, just the same sentence through his sobs.
“Nobody ever told me I could have been president.”
He repeated that a few times, told me he loved me, then hung up the phone.
Nobody ever told him that he could be president, and nobody told me, either. I don’t think I ever heard a black classmate say that they wanted to be president when they grew up. Our parents loved us and believed in us, but they were realistic about the world. A world that was (and still is) out to get their babies.
For decades, many of us have believed the promise made by White Supremacy, that if we keep our heads down and work hard, while asking politely — but not for too much — we will be rewarded. We won’t be rewarded with power or freedom, but with safety and a little financial security. A chance for something slightly below middle-class white respectability. We didn’t believe this because…