When Alice Walker wrote ‘The Color Purple’ it was an almost overnight success.

Then came the criticism.

The criticism came from (almost) exclusively Black men who feared these violently fictionalized depictions would be applied to them.

Ironically enough, ‘Mister’ was loosely based on Alice’s grandfather, Henry Clay Walker, who chased her grandmother through the fields with a gun-only missing because of his drunken state.

She was accused of being anti-Black family, a hater of Black men, and just about everything else in between.

Though it was never said explicitly, it was implied that these men either didn’t exist or were apart of the shrinking minority.

But we don’t have to look too high in our family trees to find these violent men. Do we? For some of us, it may be as close as a glance in the mirror.

The violence that has been perpetrated upon Black women by Black men has run concurrently with white supremacy.

I want to make note that I’m specifically not using words like “some” or “not all.”

There is no individuality in the midst of systemic oppression. Each and every Black man shares a responsibility.

In one of my favorite interviews, Alice describes the politics of her childhood home. During her formative years, there were no gender roles. Her father and brothers were just as domestic as their mother and sisters.

But as oppression stifled her father’s idea of what a man should be, he quickly sought to wrangle some form of control.

“Don’t ask the boys to sweep, clean, or wash their clothes anymore”, her father said. As you can imagine, this ideology extended far beyond domestic duties.

That snapshot painfully captures what happens to oppressed people when they’re in a power vacuum.

Liberation is so much more than white people redistributing power, wealth, and resources.

It’s also exorcising the darkest parts of our souls.