It’s 2016, believe it or not we are well into the new millennium, and like it or not, racism is alive and kicking. My ancestors are turning in their graves. It seemed I shocked and surprised a lot of people when I didn’t remove the racist comments from my piece about Kwanzaa Con-Troversy. Ironically, part of the message of the piece was that Kwanzaa is a problematic holiday for a variety of reasons. It’s a newly created holiday, and in many ways is still finding itself. What my post about Kwanzaa found was a racist moron.
The comment in question was :
“A totally invented holiday for negroes. Any negro celebrating Kwanza is even dumber than the average negro.”
I was saddened, not really surprised, because being a person of color, and also a Voodoo priestess to boot, I know these ignorant racist individuals exist.
Many people thought I should remove the comment, block the person or start a fight. I’m not really sure if the individual was agreeing with me or not. Maybe I’m the one who is “dumber than the average negro,” but I don’t think so. I certainly didn’t leave the comment in place because I agree with it. Firstly, who speaks like this, are we in the 18th century ? Did this person think anyone would agree with them. I can’t imagine that to be the case, certainly not on a blog dedicated to Voodoo and other Afro-Diasporan religions. Thumbs up to the only person who did respond. They simply put “#ByeFelicia.”
I have been involved in quite a few discussions about racism in the past few months. Many took part surrounding the publication of Bringing Race To The Table Exploring Racism in the Pagan Community, of which I am one of the many wonderful contributors. My segment was included in the experiences section. I spoke of some of the difficult moments I have encountered by people who were too small minded to see things a different way. But even scarier for me, is that there were many who found my tales of struggle hard to believe. This is especially true in this day and age, where much racism goes unnoticed as it goes even deeper undercover. In my experience some of the smaller injustices get glossed over, and the larger ones are met with shock and disbelief. I honestly wish they hadn’t occurred. During the last radio interview I gave on this topic, I spoke about how my daughter had to experience some of these racial slurs and instances of oppression herself, so I can’t even say that these experienced are limited to my generation. I left he comment on the blog because I need people to see these things exist, so they can work to fight them whenever possible. It is hard for someone to be an advocate without first being a witness. I will keep choosing to see the elephant in the room, like the illustration for this post, and point it out to everyone else.
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