I love to watch documentaries and the docuseries, “Dear Mama” about the relationship between the rapper Tupac and his mother Afeni Shakur is a must watch to better understand the artist, the role his mother played within his life, and the many parallels of the separate lives they lived.
Not to give too much away, but as a member of the Black Panther Party (BPP), Afeni played a large role in the creation of the Patient Bill of Rights in New York state after a woman in the community came to the party as her daughter with sickle cell anemia was not being cared for by doctors. This was a story I have never heard of in all the years of the media mentioning Tupac; most of the time we only heard of her drug addiction and her time in prison while with the BBP, but never about any of the positive things she did during those years before and after having her child. The Shakur name was very popular and I’m sure back in the 1960s and 1970s, she was very much on the news as law enforcement were involved in trying to bring down the party.
Hearing this about his mother, made me see how the same thing happened to Tupac; he was an actor, poet, and musician, but he is best known by the world for the negative events in his life including his time served in prison. I watched other documentaries about his life in the past and they highlight the good and the bad but if I was someone who only watched the public news coverage of his life, I would only learn about the events of the East versus West beef. This negative attention may have been something he wanted during the time, but what many fail to realize is that he died at the age of 25, and many people can’t say they lived a perfect life without “mistakes” before that age.
This series highlights how the life one lives as a child carries over into their adulthood. Afeni Shakur lived many years being watched by law enforcement along with other BBP members even while raising her children and along with pressures she faced in her personal life she became addicted to drugs. Tupac saw all these things happening to his mother, so with these pressures I can’t imagine how one is to behave because many of us hold our feelings inside and it builds up over time.
In most cases, a mother does her best to raise her children and make them into the best human, and what is seen is that all the good morals and thinking that were a part of who they were at the core was often overlooked by the negative events of their lives. Given the history of Black people in this country, we have a target on our backs from birth that is not in our control unless we conform to what the American society has created for us, but in the end, we are all human and the “mistakes” one makes should not be the only way they are remembered. So, if you can, tune into the series and let us know what you think about it below.