Slavery: The scourge that won't leave us alone

Well, shut ma mouth! Maybe throwing money at the problem of racial discrimination isn't the only answer.

I know! I've got it!

Let's try getting a bunch of white people together at a white person's pep rally in the burbs to remind angry black people, especially black men, to get over it. One more time. We'll be sure and trot out all the people they hate, but we consider exemplars of how things got so good for black people because we're all such great white people.

Hey, guess what? Even Barack Obama can't seem to do that.

Black Dudes and Dudettes! Yur Free...Fly like a bird...like me and my dudes
I accidentally listened in on a man conversation using an eavesdropping device I bought from an infomercial for $19.95--you know the one where that unpleasant woman is yelling at her husband to turn the TV down? That one.

Here's what I heard at the 2nd tee box from bunch of guys who sound like they truly, honestly, deep down in their hearts believe that their black sports heroes, et al. need to "get over it" (whatever the "it" is) and move on:

After all, they're free now; they've been given lots of opportunity and God knows they have the chance to go ahead of your kids for Stanford, Berkeley, Columbia, I know, it sucks. While we ameliorate, we alienate and someone pays. That's why I hate affirmative action. There has to be a better way. Not that it hasn't worked.

There are too many successes to throw away something till there's a replacement. I hate the waste and reverse discrimination. God, where am I gonna get that 5000 bucks for Jaime's teeth, Marsha's tuition? State schoolain't cheap. I shouldn't even be out here playin today. They all think we're rich as Midas. I don't know what they think anymore after that Obama and Reverend Wright thing...Hell, I thought things were getting better, except it sounds like they all hate our guts no matter what we do. I heard one girl saying it was about time blacks got all the power to take over and get the white man back.

Yeah, it's sorta when you think everything's copacetic with the wifey. Then I'm on the couch while Rover's lickin my nose.

But I told my kids we gotta get through this hate issue, when they asked, they said they were scared of some of the black kids at school--I told them to get over it and reach out to those kids...we want to help their kids. Jeez, I hate that. Why do they think we don't? Goddam Katrina, anyway. Makes ya sick. You really think we want bad things for their precious kids? That makes me sick, Man. Just sick.

I don't know. My old man hated em. I had to come a long way to even be in business with some of those guys, now they're my friends, I think, and now look what's going on. It just makes me want to go back to the way things were.

They don't care. They just want payback. Look at the black CEOs in the Forbes 500. Uncle Toms? Who cares? They made it and they're doing a job just like me. Why does everyone have to be a damn martyr? Good bucks. Yeah, they say they just have to do what The White Man says. Well, who the hell doesn't? Guess they never worked for a Japanese company. Who tells em all this?

You're right, Man. Shoot, I worked my way through school. My pop was a truck driver and my mom checked groceries at Safeway. They didn't hold any slaves. I didn't either. Yeah, we came from the south, but we got over it. Things have changed a lot down there.

I don't know where they get that we're all so rich or that we don't want them to have anything. I'm mortgaged up to my ass. My wife's driving me crazy with wanting more stuff and my kid's all want rapper's crap. Dude, I can't win for losin. I got a big job here and no one seems to give a damn about me.

The richest woman in the country is a black woman. Then they go and call us racist which is so off base and so wrong. If they only knew how much we really care. And it hurts personally when black people say those things. I wonder sometimes if that's what my black friends think of me. "

Every white person who has thought these things wants to know: what do black people want anyway?

America was built on slavery, at least the early part of her was
I knew you wouldn't like it; I've tried to tell others this before.

My husband stood up and walked out of the room. This evidently was a painful revelation for a noble white guy who felt he was on top of his own righteous race relations and thus always took the high road. He came back in and said, "Well, yeah, but we didn't use slaves until after the Revolution, and only in the South."

My husband is not a stupid, uneducated man, and evidenced by his early fifteen-year career in big time newspaper publishing, his ability to analyze events is far beyond mine. So I was frankly surprised at his apparent ignorance, almost resistance. It was as if I had insulted him. I realized he had no clue. Educators, for whatever reason, decided not to dwell on that abhorant part of American history.

"No, sweetie." I had to tell him. "I'm sorry to break your heart. It truly breaks mine too. But who do you think picked and cured all the tobacco the colonies exported to Europe in the late 1600s and into the 1700s?"

He still didn't quite believe me.

I blew through the facts. "Africans, some brought into the West Indies and up into the colonies... some brought directly, who picked the cotton and cut sugar cane to rot those English teeth. Why do you think the colonies exploded into its own expansive economy during in the 1700s? Slavery built the farms, mills, and plantations up and down the Atlantic Coast, not just immigrants. They kept slaves because they made them money. Period.

It's always about money. You of all people know that sordid dynamic of life. Follow the money.

And many of those folks, Protestants included, had slaves in the North for a long time until their faith could no longer justify holding human beings captive, even as early as the 1600s, lots of them."

"No," accusingly he glared, "prove it."

I was stunned. Why do white men, especially those who have made it, do this knee jerk denial thing when I bring up slavery? It's everywhere, believe me. And it's universal in terms of industry. It's like, okay, we did it; we stopped it; now let's move on. Like emancipation fixed it. Nothing ever happened before or after.

"I don't need to prove a fact!" I slammed back. "Why can't white America just admit what happened? I'm so tired of lies on both sides. This is why we're in trouble today. Lies. Black people lie. White people lie.

You can't steal people and get away with it and then act like nothing happened! Why did it have to come to this? We're still a long way off if we can't even accept what we've done. No one really wants to understand anything anymore. They just want it their way, or the highway."

Then I left the room and threw that damned eavesdropping thing away.

Thanks for the read.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade


Then this afternoon, after I posted this, the Obama camp attacks the only news source, Fox, who's willing to at least discuss the issue. This is typical of old line liberal politics. Distract, distort. Make allowances for bad behavior then attack the messenger. Obama looks like he's had to resort to those bad politics after all. Meanwhile, it's a dangerous place we're in and I wish we could back off. I doubt this will go away now.

As Wanda Sykes asked Jay Leno the other night, "Jay, who we black folk gonna blame once a black man get's the White House?"

Hillary will end up the nominee, not that I'm an authority or anything. It's just a feeling I have.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0308/Obama_campaign_praises_Wallace_says_Fox_has_been_deeply_irresponsible.html