So you’ve experienced injustice and you want to change the system, bring awareness or just express your frustration about an unfair system you’re black and it’s Friday.
As someone once said: “To be black in America is to exist in a constant state of...Oh shit! This motherfucker shot a dude right in front of me!”
Now it’s time for a black protest.
Black protests are slightly different from white demonstrations. While white protests are a sign of courage and patriotism, black protests are usually demonized as riots and “unrest.” However, to bridge the gap between wypipo protests and black melees, I created a handy-dandy guide that will help you have the best protest experience possible.
Step 1: Declare a reason to protest.
One of the most important steps in building a respectable protest is coming up with a valid reason for your event. You must make sure that reason is acceptable to white ears.
For instance, when the Founding Fathers decided to take up arms against their country, they did it for freedom and liberty because they understood that all men were created equal.
That was a bunch of bullshit.
According to many historians, including Gerald Horne’s The Counter-Revolution of 1776, one of the main reasons for the violent protest that we now call the American Revolution was that they were afraid they were going to have to give up their human chattel. When white people took up arms and declared that they’d rather stop being Americans than stop participating in the vilest form of white supremacy that ever existed, they said it was for “states’ rights.” They even called it a “civil war.”
See how it works?
I say this to let you know that a black person being killed by a police officer is probably not going to be a good enough reason. For white people, black lives being snuffed out like a candle in the wind is not a violation of their moral code. As late as 1966, 85 percent of white people felt the civil rights movement was unjustified. They despised the black power movement, the anti-lynching movement, desegregation, universal suffrage and even the abolition movement. They don’t give a fuck now, and they never have. Therefore, I suggest coming up with something white people care about more than black lives.
Say the police are killing puppies. Aside from the right to bear arms, they aren’t very familiar with the Constitution. So perhaps you should tell them that you are fighting for your 13th Amendment rights. Lawsuits against police departments are one of the biggest government expenditures, so tell them you’re fighting for fiscal conservative values and small government.
They don’t care about black people dying.
Who would protest that?
Step 2: Know your rights.
You can’t protest without knowing your rights.
Most white supremacist rallies, including the “Unite the Right” march in Charlottesville, Va., are billed as “free speech” marches because—aside from “the troops,” white people love “freedoms” more than anything on the planet. They can never enumerate them or explain what they are but they apparently think they only belong to white people.
Not only must you know your rights, but you must know your lack of rights.
The troops fought for Caucasian “freedoms,” including their right to tote killing machines into Michigan state capital buildings and carry bazookas into North Carolina sandwich shops, but Colin Kaepernick doesn’t enjoy the same First Amendment right to knee quietly during America’s favorite song that no one really knows the words to.
Black Lives Matter T-shirts are dangerous but Nazi flags and Confederate banners can hang in government buildings or on the faces of legislators who want to protest...I don’t quite know what they are objecting to.
Neither do they.
See how these white protesters so eloquently explain their important positions?
Step 3: Don’t expect white allies.
I don’t quite know why armed protesters always show up at white events, but they always do. Hee Haw-casians bring guns to baby showers and bible studies just in case the shit goes down. And while they might look like white supremacists, they always claim they’re just standing against government tyranny...
Until black people protest.
Where are all the “I’m the least racist person in the world” and the protectors of liberty when black people get slaughtered? What happened to all the militia people who went to protect the border from the Mexican caravan? I’ve never met anyone who was attacked by MS-13 but I know quite a few black people who have been brutalized by cops.
And it’s not just right-wing conservative Fox Newbies. 44 percent of the people killed by police in 2019 were white but I have never seen an event against police brutality that was 44 percent white. White liberals to show up, either. I always see black people at gun control rallies, labor union strikes and PTA meetings but I never see a single safety pin, Bernie stickers or pink pussy hats at demonstrations against police brutality. But after the shit dies down, they are sure to ask:
“How can I help?”
They’ll buy the fuck out of a Black Lives Matter t-shirt, though.
Step 4: Respect the authorities.
You have to respect the police even after they kill your people because not all cops are bad cops.
Except all cops protect the bad ones.
It’s like asking people to respect the guy who drove the car in a drive-by shooting because he wasn’t the one who pulled the trigger. Police inflict the pain that sparks riots and then inflict more pain controlling them.
Of course, the police are always respected at white protests. Plus, cops surveil every black gathering while they mostly leave white protesters to themselves.
Here’s a photo of a cop being well-respected in Michigan:
Step 5: Don’t loot or riot.
For God’s sake, don’t destroy people’s hard-earned businesses and property. Don’t act like you’re a Baltimore thug...
Or like a white guy whose team has just won the World Series or the Stanley Cup.
Or a “very fine” Nazi.
Or a “free speech” advocate.
Or a Sharia law protester.
Or a “right-to-work” protester.
Or someone protesting a flag football score.
Or someone who’s protesting protesting.
Or a Proud Boy.
Or a white mob looking for a missing girl.
Or an “occupier.”
Or Georgia.
Or a Tea Partier.
Or an original tea partier.
Or a Confederate, a segregationist, anti-war protester, a suffragette, a nativist, a pro-lifer, an animal activist, an environmentalist, a Jesus freak...
Basically don’t be like any white movement in the history of this country because you’re gonna have to kill and hurt people. Historically, that’s what made white movements successful. But you’re black so....
Step 6: Be violent.
There has never been a successful nonviolent protest movement in modern civilization.
The civil rights movement was not nonviolent. Black people didn’t inflict violence upon their oppressors but we bled like a motherfucker. We were firebombed, dynamite, beaten, bruised, dragged, stabbed, shot, slaughtered, hanged, dismembered and burned alive just for the opportunity to be treated like human beings.
Sometimes they are shot on hotel balconies or nailed to crosses. Sometimes their chests are pumped with bullets in ballrooms or they perish from despair. You must be willing to sacrifice your children while they are putting on their choir robes or going to get Skittles. If you want to protest, you have to bleed and die.
Or, you can protest like white people.
The American Revolution, the Confederacy, the Reconstruction era effort to disenfranchise black voters, The Red Summer of 1919, all the lynching, murdering, bombing and beating were essentially a series of riots and violent protests against offering equality to black people, indigenous Americans and anyone who keeps lotion in their glove compartment. They get to inflict the pain and draw the blood.
The violent ones always win.
Always.
So, because America only understands blood and gold, you must make a choice: You can become a peaceful martyr of an agent of change. If you truly want freedom, you must make someone bleed or offer gallons of your blood to decorate sidewalks and billy clubs. There is no other demonstrable path to a successful protest.
And you should know that the martyrs usually don’t win.
They almost never win.
In fact, there are only two paths to freedom and equality that has ever worked in this country:
Burn. Their. Shit down, or...
Step 7: Be white.
Good luck with that.