From When We Believed it Was Mandatory: How We Got Here

Africans were brought to the New World as slaves. It was mandatory for them to live and work on the farms, plantation-homes and businesses of their masters.

For hundreds of years (in their quest to dominate the world) European conquistadors partnered with aspiring and seasoned slaveowners to develop plantation capitalism.  The scheme included a repetoire of torture, rape, dehumanization and enslavement of  African men, women and children who’d been stolen or  captured or  kidnapped, and  illegitimately traded or sold. The slaves were tribes villages and families in West, Central  (and in some lesser cases parts of)  South Eastern and North  Africa. The  Conquistadors then inhumanely transported the Africans into the New World in overcrowded ships. Once in the Americas Crucifixion, burning, and starvation were legal modes of punishment In fairness, it should be noted that there were some Europeans who were on the right side of history by declaring  slavery to be “an outrageous violation of one of the most essential rights of human nature,” “degrading to the rights of man” and “repugnant to reason.”

Around 1869  and after centuries of  chattel  slavery,  and a monumental civil war,  on what is now known as the USA, the  Union Army defeated the Confederate Army and the slaves were set “free.”   Despite legal mandates, many slaves were kept captive beyond the dates, terms, and legal mandates.  After all slaves were released,  they  eventually became known as they are today,  African Americans. So, chattel slavery ended but,  African Americans came under what has persisted:  social, legal, and economic marginalization.  African Americans are racially demonized,and systematically criminalized. Since brought to the America, African Americans have faced unwarranted violence and haven’t received the freedom and equality  awarded other Americans.

From When We Believed it Was Mandatory, Into The Moses Momentum

Mana’s Best Advice

The Moses Momentum: The Reasons We Stay

Ironically, coincidently or maybe prophetically it has  been 400 years since Africans were brought to the the shores of the Americas as  chattel slaves .  

In the Bible,  the story of the Israelites depicts them as  slaves in Egypt for about 400 years.  They waited for their God to deliver them. And as they waited and cried out for  freedom, there were disasters and plagues in the land of their enslavers. It was  believed to be brought by the power of  God utilizing Moses, a man appointed by God to help deliver them. So after losing a son to  a disease caused by plague, Pharaoh reluctantly released the Israelite slaves. Once   released,  they fled Egypt and crossed the Red Sea.  Not automatically finding  a new home and complaining most of the time, they wandered for 40 years before arriving at Canaan, their “Promised Land.”  

Note, they were enslaved and they wanted freedom from bondage. God provided a leader who lead them away from their enslavers, although their enslavers offered them an opportunity to remain in Egypt, they left Egypt. 

African Americas live  under varying degrees of  oppression.  Today’s oppression is carried out by some of  the grand and great grandchildren of former slaveholders. The oppression has been strategic and fierce. 

Virtually, African Aemricans live under a perpetual  state of mental  “pseudo slavery.” Metaphorically speaking, some of today’s African Americans  are no more than a little better off than sharecroppers of the past. In a sense, many of us are working but getting very little in the wealth of the crop. Compared to our white cohorts, we (statistically)  receive small wages and on the most part, many of us are constantly in debt. We buy homes that never amount to much wealth and often live in communities under siege by military-styled, combative and desensitized police forces. 

Since the outset of the United States,  African Americans  have worked alongside and sometimes  in the stead of  the master planners of this great country,  However, we  have not gotten our fair share of the rewards, the wealth or the freedom— which is the epic claim of life in  the USA.  Instead,  African Americans suffer under constinuously morphing  policies and ideologies of “Plantation Capitalism,” “Segregation,”  “Jim Crow,”  “TheNew Jim Crow,” “Mass Incarceration,” “Infanticide, “MisEducation” and “Systemic Racism.”  Then we are victimized and blamed.

Black Wealth and  Prosperity 

My concern is whether or not this relationship between blacks and the power brokers in The USA can be fixed. 

Black Wealth is all around us. There have been times during and after slavery that blacks have accomplished great and relative wealth here in North America.  Most of us have heard about black Wall Street  And,  beyond that, we’ve had and still do have some powerful black judges, teachers, educators,  doctors, lawyers, poets, politicians, millionaires and billionaires. We’ve also had a black First Lady,  a black President, a black man lying in the Rotunda, and now the first black woman of Asian descent nominated by a major political party as their Vice Presidential candidate.  Yes “we’ve come a long way baby,” yet, there seems no real intent to reach the standards of that “perfect” destination of liberty and justice for all. The “all” which includes blacks.. 

Right now JZ, Beyonce, Tyler Perry, Oprah, Byron Allan, Mona Scott-Young, Jada ,Will Smith, Eddie Murphy, Rhiana,  Jamie Foxx, Sean Combs, The Williams Sisters, Tiger Woods, TD Jakes, The Bonner Brothers,  Michael Jordan and Labron James  are just a few of the well-known, mega-wealthy blacks in the United States. The list is too long to count. But that wealth is meaningless when their cousins, other relatives, closest friends and confidents, not as well known,  are at daily risk of all sorts attacks that can lead to being traumatized, maimed  or killed. 

When does it end?  How long do we hold on?

Most African Amerians are  virtually and summarily exiled from the home of their ancestors. “Homeless,”  because we’ve  lost our ancestral  home long ago.  Ancestors who knew their relatives that could show us where they used to live no longer exist. So, African Americans do not have a  national home; we live on borrowed land  in a hostile environment.  We’ve  tried to be friendly, to convert, to assimilate, to acclimate but,  our attempts have not proven to result in genuine acceptance. African Americans  deal with having no identified land called African America and America has proven over time that we do not have equal rights under the law.  Now, although African Americans may not choose to live in and on land created for and run by themselves,–as many nationalities live here in the USA–there is  still a need and almost a requirement for its existence. It is long overdue. It is one problem solved. Just like Isralites, The Jews needed a home in Israel, blacks need a home.

Resurgence

It is nice when you go on vacation but most times after a while you are ready to get back to what is familiar, your home. It is your home because you have your name written all over it. It is your style, the ideas are based on whatever is your custom: contemporary, casual, formal, bohemian or mid century modern, whatever you like.

There was a few attempts in the past to find a piece of land, where African  Americans could separate themselves and build a “homeland.,”  a self sustaining,  culturally sensitive space. Liberia is where small numbers of blacks were transported to have an independent community. To this effort, in 2020 a  group of nine black families announced that they had pooled their wealth and bought land in rural Georgia to create what they will name Freedom Town.  However that has already been met with cynicism and  skepticism. Although Liberia was an attempt to return, it came under resistance because the land  belonged to other tribes already living there—somewhat  like Israel and Palestine, where the resistance and strife remain until today. 

Exodus versus Glory 

God didn’t take the Israelites directly to Canaan.  They wandered but eventually they arrived. Where is the Canaan for the blacks in the Americas, here for 400 years? Life is good in America, it’s one of the richest countries in the world. It is difficult to imagine living in a less industrialized, modern A class country. But on the other hand, if you’re only getting the scraps at the hands thrown from the hands of a greedy, self-serving system, then it is like living with  Count Dracula,  whose objective is to drain the life from you and give you nothing in return.

James Baldwin  wrote that  America  was a place he had “to escape from to gain freedom.”  He wrote,  “despite it being glamorous, it was marginalizing and oppressive” and that he’d “never know what the Statue of Liberty meant to others” and questioned “taking on the identity (American) of a society that oppresses you.”  W.E.B DuBois believed that “capitalism was a primary cause of racism,” and if this is a fact, in a capitalist society, racism will continue to exist because one feeds the other.

I have had much trepidation about the short term and long term future of blacks in the United States. Over the past four years racial relations have intensified as never before in almost 100 years. It seems hard lines have been drawn politically, constitutionally and  morally. For many of the power brokers and politicians, there  is a “them or us”  mentality. Then too,  because of racial and economic stratification in the USA, the power lies with the people who feel that black freedom and equality is a detriment to their wealth dominance and exercise of subjugation. And, this didn’t start yesterday.  The question about blacks persisted before slavery and continues to persist almost two hundred years later. Although  this thinking is based on illogical fear, it dominates the USA. and because of that  the near future looks dim for black and brown people in the USA as they live under an inferior citizenship status.