Project Logic Ga

I appreciate President Trump and his supporters for leading us to a collective, national enema which was a long time coming. Shall we–once and for all–get it all out. Metaphorically, America is a lovely mansion built on a shaky, corrupt foundation.  Republican sista Dr. Condoleezza Rice says that America’s birth defect is slavery.  This nation grew strong faster in part because it had free and systematically discounted labor for most of it’s existent.

Those who romanticize the Confederacy as a noble cause and wish for a return to days when everyone knew their role insult current and past African Americans. A popular Facebook poster reads “No White person alive today ever owner a slave. No Black person alive today was ever a slave.  We can’t move forward if people want to keep living in the past.”

That poster isn’t from a Klan site. Oh, no. There is no need for Klanning when these bold folks say what is on their minds point blank, straight No Chaser from a national political party…from the Oval Office. The same uninformed people declare “Go Back To Africa” as if, we came here voluntarily.  They love to mention that some Africans sold other Africans into slavery. But, those were warring tribes.

No Black person today was ever a slave but we should take a realistic look at the true timeline of Black oppression in what is now America. The first African slaves arrived here in 1619; 150 some odd years before the birth of this nation. In addition to brutal forced labor, we should not forget about childhood rape, reading being illegal and generally every effort made to turn humans into beasts of burden.

The horrible institution of slavery was justified by Christians from Genesis 9:24-27. Noah’s son Ham laughed at his father drunken state but his other two sons Shem and Japheth backed over him with a blanket as to not see him like that. Noah cursed Canaan, Ham’s son, to be a servant.  In the Black church, we say that Jesus cleaned the slate for any previous drama but when the Native Americans didn’t workout in the fields, someone had a bright idea about Africans/Canaan’s grandchildren supposedly.

The timeline on slavery for me doesn’t end until July 4, 1976, because the shackles of Jim Crow were simply an unofficial form of slavery. The Civil War saw the end of slavery but not the full citizenship of Black people and economically former slaves had no choice but to become sharecroppers or servants became a Black person could never have an opportunity until all White people prospered first.

For the White folks declaring that they never owned slaves, I ask if they want a forensic financial examination of their wealth. The connection between current Blacks and Whites who forced them into Jim Crow sharecropping is very fresh and involves the local, state and federal governments.  Also fresh is the land and wealth enjoyed by the ten richest families in most rural southern counties now….generational wealth or ill-gotten gains. We know who our folks/we worked for in the 1960s and 1970s.

So, can you as a Black person understand that if you were born blond and blue-eyed, you would likely support any system that provided advantages to your future grandchildren.  Can you as a Black person see that committing crimes which get you locked up is insulting our ancestors who were enslaved.  Author Ta-Nehesi Coates wrote that in the South before the Civil Rights Movement, Black incarceration numbers were low because the whole South was basically a prison to us. That’s deep.

America is so very much my country because my people labored here without compensation or under low-wages for most of history. Will I see this nation treat citizens of color correctly in my lifetime? The answer is no and we are actually going backwards. If we are to make it as a nation, we should take this opportunity to thank President Trump for inadvertently getting all sides to open up about how we truly feel….the good, the bad and the ugly. President Obama represented what a positive America should…unrealistic. President Trump reflects what America actually is….a racial mess.