For those who don’t know who she is I can tell you that she was the mother of the late Hip-Hop mega star and actor Tupac Shakur.
Afeni sadly passed away on the 2nd of May 2016 aged just 69.
I had found the picture of Afeni and I which was taken at a Radison hotel in Miami circa 2003 around six years after Afeni had buried her son who had been gunned down and killed following an altercation with a known gang member in 1996.
As I looked at the picture I remembered the all to brief time had spent in her company and thought how fortunate I was to have met such a truly fascinating character, mother, sister, Aunt of ours.
I originally posted the picture as I closely identify with the revolutionary side of Afeni and her slain son. The desperation to see true liberation from oppression for black people is close to my heart. My own mother would talk candidly about the effects of racism and impress upon me the true picture of the world as a hostile environment for black people. I grew up aware of the struggle.
My mother and father also instilled in me the understanding that racism is not a colour but the abuse of power and the ability to control the narrative about people, thus relegating them to the status that those with power wish to grant them. In their actions and my mother and father were pro black and without being anti-white. They gave respect to those who respected them and conducted themselves with the class and dignity associated with men and women of respect.
This image is what I harken to when I came across the picture of Afeni and I.
Beauty and strength.
She was battle weary but radiant, she looked as though she had been incredibly self-reconstructed after being so unfathomably broken.
Truly remarkable. I will never forget her.
So I posted the picture of her and I. I offered very little context to accompany the picture save for a few comments about the love I felt when in her presence.
A few days later I was contacted by one of my best friends about my recent post of Afeni and I. before I tell you what we discussed, let me tell you that the friend I speak of is an ally. Make no mistake about it. We have known each other for a hot minute and he has my back every bit as much as I hope he knows I have his.
So back to our conversation.
He asked me why I had posted this picture, as having done a little research before initiating our courageous conversation he had found out various facts.
Some of the facts he had found out was that Afeni had battelled drug dependency and had been imprisoned as a member of the Black Panther Party, when Afeni had charges of conspiracy to blow up multiple NYC landmarks brought against her. These charges were eventually dropped.
We also discussed her place as a role model and the character of her son Tupac. Tupac or 2Pac as he was often referred to was a creative genius. His musical output given the relatively short time he had in the spotlight is astounding. His early works found on his first album “2Pacalypse now” felt like the musical equivalent of a teenagers diary if that teenager had been born to Joanne Chesimard aka Assata Shakur (Tupac’s god mother) and Malcom X.
Amongst the frustration and anger found on the album in tracks like “young black male and Violent there is a different socially consciousness view such as is found on “Brenda’s got a baby”. This album is followed by Pac’s next release “Strictly for my Ni**az” where Pac had changed the formula slightly. Still conscious but more flamboyant, growing in confidence but a little less focussed. If you know how to listen to Hip-Hop you’ll understand just how prophetic “I get around” is of that album. At this time Tupac’s life was becoming more and more out of control. He was estranged from his mother, he had legal troubles as he had shot at two off duty policemen he saw assaulting a black male and he was about to stand trial for an alleged rape that until his death he strongly denied. Tupac released his 3rd album “Me against the world” arguably his best album at a time when having narrowly cheating death after being shot five times in the stairwell of a New York recording studio he was sentenced to jail for sexual assault. For Tupac it was a crushing low but having reconciled with his mother as evidenced on the song “Dear Moma” he spent his time in jail prior to his revolutionary roots and using his voice to speak on the strength of unity and uniting against the struggle of oppression regardless of race.
You see the essence of our conversation was this. As a man who is very open and honest about my support for the anti-racism and positive upliftment of the black community why was I comfortable with the association to Afeni and Tupac, Enemy of the state and gangster? Why do so many people see them as inspirational figures?
The answer is fairly simple. When you are truly looking at people through a lens of understanding and not through a lens of white privilege you start to see Tupac as a young man who grew up in circumstances that social services should have taken great interest in.
Afeni herself was struggling and in a society that saw drug addiction as an illness she might have received more help and an earlier intervention, thus sparing Tupac and his siblings some exposure to trauma via street culture.
As a former black panther Afeni will have been all too familiar with government officials. Not only had she been incarcerated wrongly as she was later acquitted she will have heard about or seen the murders of Fred Hampton. She would have known about the attempted murder of Joanne Chesimard also known as Assata Shakur. As Assata is Tupac’s godmother Afeni will surly have known about the war that the might of the USA government waged on the likes of Huey Newton, Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver , Bobby Seale and Angela Davis. It’s not hard to see why Afeni might not have wanted or received government help to safeguard her family. It’s natural that she wouldn’t trust them.
I discussed this further with my friend. Where he saw delinquency I saw the struggle to survive, where he saw sexualised lyrics, I saw the acting out of CSE victims. Where he saw gangster I saw a young brother acting out of fear on a path those around him wouldn’t let him leave. Today this would read like a county lines case.
For those who work with children in any form of safeguarding capacity, we only need to think of the many examples of children with dysfunctional attachment styles who’s vulnerability sees them gravitate to street culture. How many of those children find kindred spirts in the form of inner city poets and griots. The sad truth is that the musical tales of violence, danger and the get rich or die trying mantra is may feel like flicking through a scrap book that helps them make sense of their own lives. Lives that have so often become attempts to survive rather than lives that were saturated with enriching experiences.
For real people. Believe me when I say that some of the underlining principles found in some of Tupac’s songs will aid a bothers survival far more effectively than the school teacher, who through their unconscious racial bias doesn’t believe that the child in front of them is worth the time and effort anyway. The survival manuals crafted by the modern day street journalist like Black British rapper Dave will probably help the mans on ends strive for better standards then care workers who could not begin to understand life pressures of a young black youth. Tupac was one such child who used the musical survival manuals to engineer an escape. However briefly Pac fought to get free and over base heavy instrumentals with catchy hooks, he reached back into the hood and let others peak at the map.
Tupac was a reporter and Afeni cultivated one of the most precocious and insightful minds of the 21st century. To get mad and take umbrage at the graphic way in which he reflected not only his pain but also the pain of millions of oppressed people is obtuse to say the least. Can you imagine watching the ITN news reporter reporting live from some war torn province in some far flung city , with buildings crumbling left and right to a soundtrack of bombs and crying infants and getting angry at the reporter for telling you what they are seeing!
Maybe privilege should come with a government health warning informing those who have it that it will seriously alter your perception of the world around you and seriously boost your confirmation bias.
As any good health care practitioner, therapist or psychologist will tell you that trauma can impact so negatively on the child’s inner working model that it can impair their ability to communicate their distress in socially appropriate ways. Children suffering crisis act out. Some internalise their grief and pain others externalize it. Like many parents and professionals Afeni Shakur had navigated a difficult path and emerged at the end of a tough road intact enough to have raised a remarkable young man who clearly loved her. When thinking of Afeni and her child should we see them as a tail of tragedy and a tail of caution to be told to generations of children to discourage them from street life. Maybe?
Or should we revere them as icons who fought against insurmountable odds and emerged as genuine symbols of the post-civil rights struggle?
Perhaps it’s a bit of both.
One things for sure is that, that mother and child knew struggle, were kin to pain and had a close and personal relationship with death long before death fully embraced their physical being. They both encapsulate the struggle and the perils that accompanies oppressed people.
They held a mirror up to the world.
That’s why I posted the picture.
Thanks Afeni.
Cliff Faulder
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