Is Don Lemon Helping US or Hurting Us?

Link: http://www.clutchmagonline.com/2013/07/no-talking-points-don-lemon-lists-5-ways-black-people-need-to-change-to-end-racism/

When I came across this interview; yet once again, a CNN reporter seems to have placed themselves in the seat of telling Black people what to do.  Why do so many of us in positions of power seem to think that we have to scold Black people into doing what is right in order to prevent white folks from “thinking negatively” about us?

In July, Bill O’Reilly gave a rant basically stating that Black people are responsible for their own problems.  Don agreed and on his show Talking Points, he gave his list of 5 things that Black People could do to combat racism.

How simplistic.

And who is Don talking to?  Really…

Honestly, I had to really take a deep thought position and try to understand  what motivated him to even do this.

Many Black people definitely had a reaction:

Most people know that Don is gay–and here’s his partner:

Imagine…a Black gay man, with a white lover, telling Black MEN how to act.  Wow!

Getting the picture?

The insanity behind Don Lemon’s rant is that it’s self-defeating.  Why on earth would you attack your own people on a major news network.

Equally, would anyone expect someone from the Gay and Lesbian community to defend gay bashing or a female CNN personality to defend why some women deserve to be raped or abused.

I don’t have a problem with people in our community who live in our community and who Marry Black men and women to speak for us; but when you have a white man as a partner; work at a news station owned by whites; how dare you take the position of trying to speak for the Black community, albeit, you live in Harlem.  How redundant.

Black people did not ruin this economy.  Black people did not start the wars we are now fighting.  Black people did not create institutionalized racism. Black people did not create profiling.  Black people aren’t domestic terrorists.

What Don did not talk about was poverty.  He did not talk about how institutionalized racism impacted the Black community over time.  What he did not do was talk about the tens of thousands of Black people who work in the community to try to help solve many of the problems in the Black community.   His rant was arrogant, presumptuous, and did not fully inform the public educatively of exactly what is going on in the African American community.

How do you destroy a people?  You do so by taking away the economic foundation of that community.

Don Lemon took the position of judge,jury, and executioner, and gave a sentence on our people before presenting the facts.  I’m sure he’s been profiled–whether he wants to admit to that or stay in denial about it.  And does it really matter if his pants weren’t sagging?  Did it matter that Trayvon Martin didn’t fit any of those stereotypical profiles when he was gunned down, Mr. Lemon?

Our leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, W.E.B. DuBois, Marcus Garvey, etc., did not come to prominence by downing their own people; they used their voice to uplift them, while confronting the realities of a system of oppression that was being waged against them.  They gave their lives for this cause.

Has Don Lemon given his life?  Where does Don Lemon come from anyway?  Better yet…who asked him?  He blamed the victim.  Just like whites do.  Who is he or Bill O’Reilly to judge our people without working in the community with the people most impacted?

In effect; Don Lemon is marketing White Supremacy by proxy.

I’M CALLING HIM OUT and so should many of you!

There is no commitment by Don Lemon to help the Black community and my advice to people like him is to understand that being a news reporter on CNN does not give you the authority to bastardize our people in front of white folks, so that you can be rewarded by them for speaking the words many of them even think about him behind his back.

Touche’.

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