After coming back from Jo’Burg I couldn’t stop thinking of a
certain aspect around Idols/Martyrs in Movements and the usage of them to
further the struggle in regards to gaining support from the masses. The thing
that sparked this was the visit to the Hector Peteirson museum, which is why I
didn’t discuss this in my last blog. While we were there I couldn’t help, but
think back to the fact that this individual was used as a Martyr in order to
further the cause when in actuality he wasn’t. This individual wasn’t even a
member of the movement, he was an innocent bystander who was in the wrong place
at the wrong time. This is still a sad thing, but it changes the perspective of
how we see this particular individual and begins to address what it says about
movements that utilize this system of idols/martyrs to further their causes.
To me Hector Peteirson is the South African Emmett Till in
both of these cases young boys were tragically killed, due to racial tensions
in their respective countries, and were both used as martyrs in order to make a
movement grow. Both of these individuals’ corpses were used as a way to show
that racism effects innocents, but do we as supporters of these movements not
feel bad about what we are doing to the legacy of these people? Would it not be
more moral to remember Hector, Emmett, etc. as the young men that they were,
whether they were shy, or outgoing or, loved to be the center of attention and
make people laugh. The alternative is to shadow who they were as people and
only remember them for the tragedy of what happened to them.
This type of behavior also applies to idols. Idols would be
people like Mandela, Malcolm X, and MLK jr. (I consider him and idol over
martyr as he has become the face of the movement and is remembered as a goal to
achieve rather than his martyrdom). In the case of these individuals we tarnish
their legacies by putting them on merchandise like t-shirts and by elevating
them to a status where critical analysis of these individuals is impossible. While
we were in Jo’Burg I noticed two things that make me hate this process the
first was visiting Mandela’s house. This struck me in all the wrong ways as I
could not see how this would add to who Mandela was, but rather it was just a
way to get money from tourists by exploiting his legacy and that make me
refrain from entering the actual house. The second thing was the unwavering
loyalty that Mandela’s legacy brings to the ANC at one point of the trip an ANC
member wanted to justify the use of tax money to buy a pool for the president, because
there is a stereotype that black people can’t swim. This type of behavior
without rationally thinking about the situation made me think that this is due
to the ANC being Mandela’s party. Even if something bad happens people will
justify it the best way they can in order to preserve that image.
The first Thursday back from Jo’Burg I asked Vernon what he
thought about movements exploiting individuals in order to gain momentum and in
order to attract a more fickle group of supporters (anyone who just looks at
the news and sees something bad and make a post to feel good, but doesn’t
actually perform action to help prevent the problem), because in class he
mentioned that some places that have historical significance to the legacy of
Apartheid are not being marketed as well as they should be. He told me that
this is one of the problems how we market individuals without destroying the
legacy and how do we build support, but not lose the message.
I personally have come to believe that we as a society more
importantly that we as black individuals must deconstruct our current idols and martyrs,
by deconstruct I mean force ourselves to view them as humans who made good and
bad decisions and leave it up for people to decide whether the good outweighs
the bad. This process must then be used to analyze the new individuals who we
perceive as idols and martyrs, because if we continue to turn individuals into
martyrs when its beneficial not only are we exploiting their legacy, we are
also saying to every individual who was not made a martyr, but died in similar
circumstances that your death wasn’t valuable to the movement. If we were to
search the Mississippi river I’m pretty sure we would find some remnants of an
extremely racist past and none of the victims would be important enough to care
about who they were. This is a societal and organizational process that I want NO part of.
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