Black America was “Taken” by Liam Neeson’s revelation.
Every man can understand justifiable retribution.
Every man can also understand the want to protect the sanctity of feminity. However, not every man looks at retribution racially.
Action and suspense film star, Liam Neeson recently made headlines when he revealed the dark thoughts of his younger self. Almost 40 years ago, after finding out that a female friend was raped, Neeson recalled that he went out looking for trouble.
“There’s something primal – God forbid you’ve ever had a member of your family hurt under criminal conditions. She handled the situation of the rape in the most extraordinary way. But my immediate reaction was…I asked, did she know who it was? No. What color were they? She said it was a black person.
“I went up and downareas with a cosh, hoping I’d be approached by somebody – I’m ashamed to say that – and I did it for maybe a week, hoping some [Neeson gestures air quotes with his fingers] ‘black bastard’ would come out of a pub and have a go at me about something, you know? So that I could (pause), kill him.”
With no identification of the alleged perpetrator, Neeson would have settled for any black man.
https://youtu.be/Zb8KEpkCdRom
Nat Turner Thoughts
When formerly enslaved preacher turned insurrectionist, Nat Turner rallied the enslaved his intention was clear: murder the oppressor. For this action, he was eventually killed but he took many slave owners with him.
His tale is a tragic one that is both celebrated and lamented. Today, the bonds of enslavement have been cast down by collective morality. Descendants of the formerly enslaved have clamored for reparations or their promised 40 acres and a mule.
It has never happened.
Also, Neeson is not an American citizen by birth, he understands the global struggle of people of color well. It is everyone’s history now. However, animus towards people who are not of color is considered unacceptable for people of color.
Review the rape history of slave masters. The buck treatment by slave mistresses was just as bad. Still, corporations like the Barclays, which was a slave insurer and more have not been targeted for violence.
No person of color across the planet whose lineage tasted the lash has spoken this way and lived. It is considered unintelligible for black folks to even hold the general market accountable for America’s past indiscretions.
Even when the Governor of the State that Nat Turner rebelled in was exposed for his racist inclinations.
America’s Biggest Fear
The biggest fear in the United States of America is African Americans holding white people accountable for the past. It fuels the poverty agenda and sustains the reasoning why African Americans shouldn’t receive equalizing power positions.
It is why many feared Barack Hussein Obama. Would he be the one to reverse the nation’s historical wrongs?
He wasn’t because it would take more than one man to accomplish that but his presence inspired hope. This too is still lambasted even by his successor today.
If people of color thought what Liam Neeson said through the prism of historical injustice, COINTELPRO wouldn’t even be enough to quash the thought.
However, J. Edgar Hoover and many others in the American government feared this the most. With Liam Neeson freely expressing his banal guttural urges as a celebrated action star, consequences must be handed down from the movie-going contingent of color.
For too long, men like Neeson and Virginia Governor Ralph Northam have been able to denigrate black bodies through their reckless actions. In fact, Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring admitted to wearing blackface during a college party in 1980. It just the latest racially polarizing bombshell to rock the state capital of Richmond.
For an actor like Neeson, who is beloved in popular black culture his words are a splash of cold water in the face.
Even still, in this day and age, black people are a homogenous group, not individuals responsible for their own actions.
Thank you, for showing us who you are and giving us a chance to voice our disdain with our wallets. Mr. Neeson, we are no longer “Taken” with you.
