Conservative firepower take shots at Blacks by suggesting that all Blacks, not most, seem to carry a victim mentality thereby attaching an image of wretchedness to our lifestyles and efforts to succeed. This assumption has tainted the Black image in America and around the world thus bringing distain against us from people and cultures that have no knowledge of what a Black person thinks. Who started this negative image and why is it prevalent?

It starts with acts of misguided Black leadership and is magnified by conservative loud mouths and the neo-liberals caught up in the illusion of political correctness, that's who. When Black leaders (and no names will be withheld) like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and other media/COINTELPRO government appointed Black leaders are placed before a camera and given talking points, they call themselves speaking for Black America against social and institutional racism.

Every time an issue arises where Blacks have a run-in with a big business or institution, regardless of how wrong that Black person is treated or of what insulting blows they have taken from the undertone of American racism, we are somehow regarded as playing the role of victim. Well, excuse the hell outta any reasonable mind, but what is a person considered nowadays when they are attacked unfairly by a main power structure without any recourse?

In the case of Katrina, after all was said and done, the media and the conservative voices somehow attached the image of victimology to Blacks, regardless of any truths. When Black men are beaten by police, when Black youth are profiled on purpose, when corporations hang signs, advertise stereotypes, or segregate demographics to make a dollar: When little Black girls or boys are arrested, hung, and shot by law enforcement, in order to not fulfill the stigma of victimology or be considered whiners, Blacks are suppose to sit back and say nothing? That is asking way too much of a people that daily endures the antics and frat house racist games of a supposedly civilized, race-tolerant people.

To hell with the accusations of the victim mentality. If someone or company says or does something completely ignorant or racist toward a Black family, man, woman, or child, be damn sure that it is going to feel the lash and cry of injustice, and draw a crowd with every right to demand simple respect. Call us what you want and tag us with every negative stereotypical image you like, never should Blacks hold their tongue at the act of racism or bigotry in this country.

Granted, there are false claims and none more prominent than the media-made voices of the Black leaders paid to make those claims, just so whites can have a reason to call Blacks whiners. This game is sick and twisted and if Blacks or whites believe that it will continue to fly in the face of all-knowing Black minds, they need to seriously rethink and rewrite their political correct handbook or shut the hell up.

© January 2006 By CR Hamilton