***spoilers for the book “Lord of the Flies” are contained throughout
Which is worse - a racist/bigoted/prejudice non-white person, or a black sell out?
Imagine you are on an island like in the book Lord of the Flies. RWS is Jack, the sell out is Ralph, and you -- are Piggy; both Jack and Ralph are fight against you - beating you down, ignoring your voice, making you the butt of their jokes. But the thing is, you would expect Ralph to connect with you since you both found each other on the island first, but once Ralph meets Jack, they combine forces to gang up on you and you become the punching bag among the tribe of boys on the island.
The “Jacks” of the world are to be expected. There isn’t a situation that I walk into without me knowing that because I am a black man, I will be dealing with a lot of shit - whether it’s a restaurant, or my old job where I was a courier and went to various law firms, banks, and in some cases the residence of some clients where I received the standard “black man treatment.” in the book, Jack came out of nowhere, seizing power because he and his choir group were “the hunters” - they controlled the most important resource, food; if they didn’t catch anything - no one ate. This allowed Jack and his group to assert their power (just like RWS) over the group, and once Jack left the group with his hunters to start their own tribe, Ralph’s group was left helpless on their side of the island.
But the “Ralphs” in the black community, in my opinion are the worse. In the story, Ralph believed he had authority over the tribe of boys on the island because they had the only way to start fire, but once Jack separated from the main group and started his own tribe, all of Ralph’s power was lost over the rest.
Everyone knows a “Ralph” - that negro that feels that as long as they are “not like those other black people” in the eyes of whites - it makes them “better.” these “Ralphs” believe that they have some control and power, until they get their “negro wake up call” (see Herman Cain, Danielle Watts, Henry Louis Gates), and find out the system is not on their side (such as when Ralph attempted to call an assembly using the conch with Jack’s tribe, only for the tribe to ignore Ralph’s conch call).
As in the story, Ralphs only care about impressing Jacks, but once the Jacks of the world have no use for the Ralphs, they leave them on their own - but come back to take the glasses of a blind Piggy for their own benefit, while the Ralphs believing that all it would take is a reasonable discussion and giving the Jacks what they want will make the Jacks give back Piggy’s glasses ("if we just pulled up our pants and stopped listening to rap music, the dominate society will accept us!). The Piggys of the world will believe this too, because the Piggys follow the Ralphs believing that the Ralphs have their back (the we are ALL one people crap), and since they are viewed as equals to the Jacks, that this strategy will work, only to find themselves crushed by a boulder at the bottom of the Pink Castle of the mountain.
How does this relate to black people?
As we find in our RWS dominated society, Jacks have come along and asserted their position over black society. The Jacks own the restaurants we eat at, the grocery stores we shop at, the political system, the education system, etc., etc. With most of us being Piggys, we look to the Ralphs, those of us who have "made it" for a helping hand in getting our voices heard and obtaining a piece of the power that the Jacks have.
But as we have seen in our communities, those who we view as "saviors" and "friends" because they look like us, have been anything but helpful. When a black athlete marries a white person, they are essentially giving their wealth away to the dominate society, since the children will more than likely identify with the upper-class lifestyle which is predominately non-black. Our pastors will spend entire sermons, preaching fire and brimstone and "forgive our enemies", how fathers need to be in their children's life, but will not speak on how theRWS public education system is designed to keep black boys from achieving, or how the RWS media is conditioning our black girls into whoredom and degrading themselves.
So how do we deal with this problem?
When first meeting a Ralph, assert you dominance. Do not let them see your weakness as Piggy did when he told Ralph he had asthma and that his nickname in school was ‘Piggy’. Learn not to rely on Jacks, gather your own resources, learn to hunt and defend yourself so as not to expect surprise sneak attacks in the middle of the night, where Jack’s tribe will commandeer your only means to make a fire, therefore, taking your remaining power and influence.
You will deal with a variety of Ralphs and Jacks throughout life; neither will have your best interest at heart and will only use you for their enjoyment. But as Ralph found out, Piggy is all they have on the island, but it will always take a Simon getting killed at a feast for the Ralph to realize this**.
**Simon is described in the story as having dark skin and hair
***Lord of the Flies is only 203 pages, I read it in one night at work. Go to your library and check it out!
