I'm well into the book above and as I digest the history within I'm growing more and more troubled . . .
How could such a significant majority NOT see that treating another human being . . . And they KNEW that these 'brown folks' or other 'Coloreds' were human by their very words and memoirs . . . how could they NOT realize that this sort of 'commoditization' of a fellow human being's life . . . this relegation of a fellow, sentient being to a status lower than a pet or livestock . . . to just that of a tool in a shed . . . how could they not know that the whole practice was just evil!?
It's really breathtaking looking at that entire 'animal' of slavery . . .
And many denominations of churches, colleges and other institutions of colonial and post colonial society actively participated in propagating this misery on my forebears . . .
It's just breathtaking . . .
They treated our 'lot in life' or 'fates' with nonchalant disregard, callous flippancy and a 'for granted' 'philosophy' akin to the fact that there is electricity in the Big Apple or any other modern city for use.
They never stopped to think about what goes into it, what it is doing to bodies and souls . . . it's was as expected as breathing air.
"It is what it is . . ."
Our forebears' cruel, unjustified reality under servitude was just as absently accepted and as non-controversial, for the most part, a part of everyday life and reality . . . as the fact that everyone walking around now has a smart phone or is on Facebook.
The glaring truth that the entire financial system that catapulted many so-called first world countries into that status, that has been shaping the hegemonic assertions of culture and an ethnic sense of self for the 'preferred ethnics'(whites) etc . . . was built on something so blood-curdlingly wrong and ghastly . . . seemed to have missed most whites for many centuries.
That massive exercise in sequential, generational, moral delusion and apathy . . . is why we still have racial issues today
And it also informs why many whites feel so uncomfortable discussing race or feel a prickly sort of fear when they see a group of blacks or other folks of color grouped together and interacting with each other.
They feel the need to 'diffuse the situation' when often there is nothing to diffuse.
Why?
Because I think deep down many whites know that were the shoe on the other foot . . . the excuses/retorts they use that . . .
"I personally didn't own slaves!"
Or . . .
"That was so long ago! Why don't you let that go? So you hate all white people now?"
. . . Etc when they're privy to a person of color's lamenting about a racially charged incident or the societal states of affairs when it comes to race relations . . . wouldn't quite cut it.
They'd harbor a grudge against those who oppressed their great grandparents, and the distrust and loathing would not only be palpable but they'd 'guarantee' the dislike to be quite 'sensorily visible'.
Just like Armenians make no secret socially or otherwise of their distaste for the Turks . . .
. . . they would have done the same if it was us people of color that once oppressed them in the way they did to us.
The point must be made, and I don't mean to 'compare atrocities' but:
What Native Americans and Africans went through in this place and back in the motherland in terms of longevity, body count, magnitude of violence, and lasting impact on the descendants of the survivors dwarfs the Armenian attempted genocide and Hitler's evil.
I know this isn't socially politic to make the comparison I just did but facts are facts.
I make the comparison not to make light of anyone's suffering or to disrespect anyone's history but to impress upon those reading this the massive scale of what is afoot, and to give one a sense of the bloodthirsty 'timbre' of this seemingly-sentient, poisonous fume we've been breathing in this society.
Hopefully the ghastly truth of this will relay how urgent it is that it be addressed.
Back the Armenians and Jews:
Taking their example it would seems like us Blacks, going through that sort of history you're BOUND to have HUGE grudge . . . right?
Many whites think we 'should' or do and that is why too many choose the option of 'minding their own business' so as not to be the potential target of that 'rage'.
When you take it like that . . . it explains the uber racially antagonistic attitude of right-wing fundamentalists and gun nuts, as I've written about before.
They want to be 'prepared' in any way possible for when 'we' decide to 'act on our long-held beef'.
That we have demonstrated no such large scale proclivities has 'them' perplexed and they 'don't trust it'.
Hence we have drugs being sent into our once relatively-peaceful neighborhoods and aggressive policing with successively new draconian laws, as well as a hard-working legal system to keep us from getting any chance of 'coalescing'.
Similar scourges have been documented as having been deliberately insinuated into the Native American communities and reservations for the same fleecing purpose.
'They' don't overtly enslave us anymore but they treat us like rebellious slaves or 'savages' from back in the day all the same.
It's about control.
And it's about the fear generated when that control seems to be threatened.
Fear of a 'righteous retribution'.
Just look at how 'they' are behaving over Barrack Obama.
He is one of 'us' with a lot of visibility and power . . . more than any of our ilk has ever had.
That is 'troubling' due to the potential he may have or they think he may have to 'get them back'.
Its a double standard that no one seems to want to call out.
For example, and let's use the two previous examples, no one questions or disparages the public Armenian disdain for the Turks . . . nor is there anything but a nod of understanding if a Jewish person decides they won't buy any German luxury vehicles.
Both atrocities happened 'some time ago' . . . right?
Both groups have been 'allowed' their overt expressions of social 'righteous retribution' against their former tormentors by larger society.
But peoples of African descent and Native American potential for such a large-scale social retribution . . . on an even stronger footing and reasoning than the previously mentioned groups . . . has been met with much 'worry' and frankly 'fear' traditionally in this country conversely however.
Our 'situation' is also supposedly in the past just like the previous two examples
But unlike Armenian and Jewish peoples, even after we've supposedly been 'set free' from slavery and the cessation of open warfare on the 'frontier', our 'torment' hasn't really stopped like theirs has.
Jim Crow and other discriminatory policies past and present can be considered machinations of 'keeping Us in Our place' . . . or more correctly, keeping people of color in a sphere of existence that many in the majority have grown accustomed to and are comfortable with. It is also to 'disarm' us from undertaking any sort of 'financial retribution' or reparations/repatriations that may undercut the entire, Ill-gotten economy we now tout to the world.
It's all part of the same thing.
It's that yoke of slavery that neither white nor 'colored' has been able to shake off to this day.
And that makes me sad.
It means we have an almost impossible mountain of work still ahead.
In closing let me say one thing to any White reading this:
If you're in the trenches with us and actively fight against racism and white supremacy . . . then you should know that this isn't directed at you.
You're doing what you should
You're doing the only thing you can frankly.
But if you're bothered at all then you're exactly who I'm talking to because your umbrage is exactly the permutation of that generational 'avoidance' of our racial problem I spoke about at the outset.
That subliminal guilt your forebears never gave 'form' to has been passed down to you . . . and you need to deal with it.
It's no way to live honestly.
People of color are here to stay and we're going to be more and more 'unavoidable' each successive decade.
That 'stress', fear can literally kill you.
How do I know?
Because the stress of actively nursing the 'duality' necessary for existing and surviving in today's world has had deleterious effects on the collective health outcomes of many people of color.
(Read more about this 'duality' in W. E. B Dubois's 'Souls of Black Folk' and from folks like Tim Wise.)
Increased anxiety, persistent hypertension from the aforementioned that leads to arterial and heart disease, in addition to the increased likelihoods of strokes and aneurysms, miscarriages, etc . . . are the wages of living in fear or with a feeling of being oppressed.
We feel it from living under the yoke of a racially, preferential system.
You feel it from the same system telling you to fear 'them' or 'folks like me'
It's not good for either of us.
So please read what I'm saying and start to make a change in your sphere of influence.
Millions of 'You's and I's' doing this and making change . . . can change a country and even the world.
(C) Obioma 1/8/14
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