Black Power Speech

        Some people say that slaves were taken from Africa. Now, as I sat that statement at that pace I said it at , I bet you didn't hear the falseness in it. Allow me to repeat myself, I said...slaves were taken from Africa. Maybe you caught it then maybe you didn't. For those of you that did, or were not paying attention...slaves were not taken from Africa. People were taken from Africa. Doctors, Scientist, mothers and fathers along with brothers and sisters, and they were turned into slaves. My name is Sophia and I will be talking to you today about why black is beautiful. Let me start with a quote by the brave Dr. Martin Luther King Jr..."Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend." –MLK, Jr.

        I want to begin by talking about today's actions, today's reactions, and today's decisions, and how they take part in black history. We throw around the word 'nigga' like it is just another word in our vocabular. We say it to get our buddy's attention (shake nicks hand). Let me bring you back to the N Word Presentation. By the way, I hope those images and facts that were provided to us moved you. How would you like it if your teeth were busted in, you had a swollen eye and a noose tied around your neck and the last word you heard...was nigger. Doesn't matter how its pronounced or how it is said. That word has the same meaning now as it did yesterday, and 400 years ago. We let this word slip from our mouths the way butter slips from a hot knife. Why do we think that this is okay? We, and I'm talking to my fellow brothers right here in the class with me, why do we stand down when we hear this word being tossed back and forth, while we're the monkey in the middle. Why don't we jump higher to catch that ball to stop the punks that are saying, "Aye Nigga!" I hope you think of an answer to that. We are not the fear that chills our ancestors spine when we heard the Massa calling. We are not niggas, slaves, spooks, coons or negros. We are our ancestors wildest dreams, we are everything they ever dreamed of being. Do you see how far we have come? But let me ask you this...Have we even moved? Is it that we are afraid that we won't fit in with the hype? Or because our friends say it, we can say it too? Picture this, your friend...a white dude, walks up to you, a black male, "Aye nigga wassup?" Do you stop and think about what they just said to you...or do you let it slide, like a hot knife to butter. Someone else hears your white friend use this word. "Oh my friends black, he doesn't care if I say it. He gave me the 'pass'" The word nigga means an adjictive used to desicbed a black or darked skin person. Now, correct me, please I'm giving you the chance to interrupt me...when a white dude says this to a white, mexican or any other non black dude...they're basically calling them a darked skinned person. Is that person black, is that person dark skinned? Are they using that word officially? The answer is no, "we don't care about what the word means anymore, it's been years since people actually meant it." When you give someone the "n word pass" we, my brothas, are just pushing ourselves back down to stage 1. You might as well be hunched over breaking your back picking cotton for your Massa that's probably gonna kill you anyway, and I might as well be in the back getting dragged by my hair and getting raped by his sons while your kids watch it happen. I'm gonna leave that there, and you tell me if that is ignorance or not.

        The black community is the strongest I've ever seen, and if we stopped hating each other, black kids stop killing other black kids, black girls stop looking at each other up and down. If we just become one, remove the N word from our songs and text messages. Can you even imagine how much more powerful we could be. By the black community killing one another, hating one another, going to jail for being caught up in the wrong group, we are just letting everything that the media thinks of us become reality. We let the looks get under our skin from the white customer service lady that keeps spying on you as you pick up a piece of material. We let the, "Black people are ghetto," stereotype to be true. What I'm tryna say is that it all starts with us. It starts with the black community. Are we lazy, is that why we won't step up to these things. Is it because there's only one of me and a billion other people on this planet that use that word, so what's the point of me even standing up here wasting my breath. I'll tell you why I'm up here. I'm up here because I remembered a few things...I remember where my father came from, and where his father's, father came from. I remember the pain and agony that raised like a tsunami in my ancestors body that made them want to stand up and join the freedom riders, that joined hand in hand with the white folks at Dr.MLK's speeches, that raised their fist high in the air when Malcom X said "Black is Beautiful!" And I remembered what Ms.Moore said, and this is not exact but "You may think your one person against the world and your voice won't do anything but it might change one person, and that person will go on and change another and another." The black culture said, quoted from the movie Sister Act II "if you wanna be somebody, if you wanna go somewhere you better wake up and pay attention." Let's not disrespect what the reverend king led for us, or malcom x faught us, or what rosa parks challenged us. They all did that for me and you. So that we can become one, and join hand and hand as the king said, "I have a dream that one day little black boys and little black girls will be holding hands with little white boys and little white girls." I end my speech with this, Power to the black community, I believe in us, and power to the people who will one day work together to remove this hate from our world!

Thank You!