Envy Ain’t No Friend of WE

It is an inevitable course that the man who envies you will one day become your enemy. — Nandi

Envy Ain't No Friend of WE
Envy Ain't No Friend

I didn’t arrive at the above observation by chance. I arrived at it through experience and observation, the bulk of which has convinced me that what we see today is reflective of what we saw yesterday. Not as in yesterday, today is Friday, yesterday was Thursday, but when we look at this peculiar course over centuries.

I’ve been blamed for being too hard on black people. Take it easy on them, I’ve been told. To that, I rapidly shake my head. I cannot take it easy on black people, because the majority of the hatred I receive is from black people. People who look like me and should share some of the same cultural values, but who operate eons away from that concept or any other concept that would make us a collective group with a collective thought, taking collective action.

I see it in the faces of black women whose eyes, if they were blades, would rip me to shreds. I hear it in the voices of black men and women who never have an honest word for each other. I feel it in the tension that propels us to walk on by, never bothering to acknowledge the existence of each other.

These faces, voices and vibes have made me an enemy because I choose to know and address issues which they refuse to know or address with any real commitment. And I’m not alone in this. I see it all the time happening to other black folks who choose to know and address the issues of the day.

There are those who harbor a deep-seated resentment. You know them by their “colors.” Listed are just a few clues to those “colors” (when you see them take heed):

  • Always knows how to do something better but can’t tell you how when confronted and asked to explain their position.
  • Everything you uncover, this person has already uncovered—a long, long time ago.
  • Stands at the ready to discount what you have researched or what you’ve shared, but can’t provide anything substantial in the way of proving or disproving the information.
  • There’s always a problem with something you know, share or do, yet they have no solutions.

Thing is, they’ve built themselves up to be so much more than they’re willing to dedicate themselves to that they pull out all stops to appear to be knowledgeable in front of their groupies (or those they’ve fooled into believing they’re “leaders”)—and that includes trying to go head to head with you in public for no good reason. Hell, they hate you for no good reason, they may as well go head-to-head for no good reason, too. They do all this because they envy you and everything about you. I’ve already said what follows envy.

It’s unfortunate that we not only have to tread carefully with those who look nothing like us, but when you have to practice the same caution with those who do, it gets damned ridiculous—and dangerous.

That brings me to something else. Everywhere I turn, I’m confronted with what “white” people did to us, what “white” people continue to do to us, what we need to do to “white” people who do things to us. What I never hear is what has left us so vulnerable that “white” people can do all these things. Simple. Our envy. Our willingness to sell each other out. Our willingness to butcher each other.

You see, all this happened before we even met “white” people. We already had to have enough bad apples among us, trying to go head-to-head, envying and all that other shit, for white people to have a chance at getting their turn. There is no way white people could have gotten 100 black people onto a ship using the mechanics they had at the time, if there was a sense of community, a feeling of family, among those in Africa.

My theory is that when the white man arrived on the shores of Africa he witnessed the bickering and petty infighting taking place, and he capitalized on it. Who wouldn’t? Of course, he did what he could to add to the hostilities, but the hostilities had to already be there. Just as they are today. For no good reason. And just like yesterday, they had to be ignored by the larger group for them to grow into such a malignant manifestation that one group of Africans could turn a blind eye to another—and sometimes assist in making it happen.

Even today when I share information on black-on-black violence, it is largely ignored by our people. I can’t help but believe I’m, in essence, being told it’s acceptable and just for black people to kill black people, but quite another for whites.

Why?

I mean, why should anybody respect your people enough to not butcher them, when you do it so often and so violently? Why should they not be allowed to partake in your blood-shedding games? The truth is that black people would rather focus their energies on a macro level, of which they have little control, than to address those micro issues which can be resolved more readily. We can resolve black-on-black violence much quicker than we can system-wide violence.

If we are ineffective on a micro level, we damn sure will be more ineffective on a macro level. But that’s what we do. AND, more importantly, that’s what we know, so we concentrate on issues too hefty to handle or resolve in our lifetimes, hoping that the issues we could do something about are taken care of by somebody else, because we really don’t care about each other like we claim to care. And they are—taken care of, that is. But not to our benefit. And that works out just fine because once again we get to blame outsiders for how they treat us, how they slaughter us, how they demean us, while never examining our role.

We must think back to the KKK midnight rides. Let’s be honest. How many black people do you believe saw what was happening to their neighbors who they probably sat down to dinner with, whose children they minded and who minded theirs, yet when it was time to provide a show of force, pulled down their shades and just thanked the “good lord” it wasn’t happening to them? Looking at today, I can’t help but think there were quite a few. And they used their prayers to Jesus to assuage their guilt. Their guilt may have well been assuaged, until their time came to be the benefactor of that midnight ride. And when they called for mercy, there was none. And none was deserved.

The same happened in Africa. Those who sold out others were, in turn, sold out. Today, blacks in Africa, America and other countries are still selling each other out, many of whom never experienced American slavery to be able to lay the burden of blame in its horrific orifices. I can’t help but think it’s a reflection of a past nature. A vicious nature.

This is a double-dare: post an article on a black-on-black violence incident that happened recently and then post an article on white-on-black violence, too. I’m willing to bet there will be anger, animosity, rants of “kill whitey,” etc., on the latter posting, while the former is largely ignored.

If you ignore it, it will go away. Or if you ignore it, it’s not really happening. That’s the stance we take when confronted with our own demons. We don’t want to see those demons. At one time I thought the phrase, “if evil sees itself, it will die,” was only meant for white people. I now feel differently. Evil comes in all shapes, sizes and colors. It is a one-size-fits-all demon that infiltrates and possesses the minds and bodies of people who seem otherwise sane and trustworthy.

It is this alter-ego that allows the black man and woman to make enemies of each other. To have no understanding or empathy for the other’s plight. It is what has kept us at the bottom of the barrel like a crustacean eating the scraps of the sea. It is what will keep us there, pinned in the murky depths until we gasp for air and our lungs fill with water. And even when our eyes are no longer seeing and breath has been replaced with nothingness, our envy will carry on to the next generation and the next—each outdoing the other in terms of selling our people to the “white traders,” giving no care to the generations of children that become entangled in this demon web of envy that always, somewhere down the line, translates into hatred. Envy will always be our enemy ’cause it ain’t no friend of we.


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2 responses to “Envy Ain’t No Friend of WE”

  1. Yao Avatar
    Yao

    I’d probably have to talk to ya on this one. I feel a lot of what you’re saying and I feel this way sometimes myself(and it’s quite depressing because it’s rather inexplicable), but aside from a lot of the conditions/ contrasts I would raise, there’s something that bugs me about our behavior.

    And this doesn’t necessarily have to do with “Black on Black violence” but it still does have to do with what can be described as some sort of indifference to our own or a priorities are out of order type of thing or something.

    It’s this thing about having more regard/ respect for strangers than for the people who you’ve lived around all of your life. Like for instance, I hate the concept of vacation resorts. I hate the concept of providing better accommodations for strangers while the people who’ve toiled for centuries for the nation live in ghettos. Dirt poor people in the same nations with people who have more money than they will ever be able to spend in their lifetime. Homeless children & elders in our communities and societies barred from the beach resorts where we serve strangers plantation style.

    I know this is more so about why we don’t treat each other more humanely, but I have to also wonder why we don’t treat other people as viciously as we do each other. We’ve committed some incredibly brutal acts upon each other for merely looking at each other while strangers have raped our children, murdered our fathers, tortured our mothers and our response is wanting to “work out” our relationship with them.

    smh

    Like I said, I’d have to talk to ya on dis one. Too many thoughts are zipping through my head. Especially when I take it back to Africa to the point where white folk come on the scene. I ain’t scared of typing up something long, but suffice to say that I think it’s a lot of things, including envy, and I also think it’s one simple thing which if we fail to adopt/ employ, it leads to a culture of all those other “aforenotsomentioned” things.

    Sigh…..

    You’ve depressed me now.

    You owe me a call.

    1. Nandi Asase Yaa Avatar
      Nandi Asase Yaa

      “I know this is more so about why we don’t treat each other more humanely, but I have to also wonder why we don’t treat other people as viciously as we do each other. We’ve committed some incredibly brutal acts upon each other for merely looking at each other while strangers have raped our children, murdered our fathers, tortured our mothers and our response is wanting to “work out” our relationship with them.”

      You made me sit back and totally reflect on this paragraph. So, so, so, true. Too many times to count, I’ve seen “us” get caught up with the rapists, the murderers, the sadists, etc. It’s like we have this off switch that allows us to forget how brutal these people and their descendants have been and how much our people have suffered at their hands. But that is why it’s still happening today. Why they can continue to brutalize us and never feel the backlash. I don’t know if it’s cowardice, insanity, a mixture of both . . . I do know it’s not behavior expected of sane beings. And, yeah, it would definitely take a real convo for this one, because it can get lengthy on both ends. I do owe you a call. 😉

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