Hate "Cancel culture"? Where were you in 1492?

King Alfonso I ruled the African Kingdom of Kongo on Africa's west coast in present day Angola in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. He converted Kongo to Catholicism and he and his kingdom were recognized by the Portuguese and the Vatican. He was known for his wealth and piety. He built Catholic churches in his kingdom and sent his children to be educated in Portugal.  He built a cathedral in 1491 and after the Portuguese took over his country they let it fall into ruin and claimed it had been used for "primitive rituals."  It was as if he never existed. Chances are if you're not either African OR someone who either majored or minored in history you've no idea who he is.

       Mansa Musa of the kingdom of Mali in the 14th century was the wealthiest man in the world. It's said he was the wealthiest man who ever lived. Ancient maps made in Europe in the 1300s show Musa in the center of Africa seated on a throne holding a golden sphere.  On a pilgrimage to Mecca it's said that Musa lavishly spent so much gold that he literally collapsed dozens of economies.  I'll wager you've never heard of him either.

        Over time The kingdoms of Mali, Congo, Nubia, and Zimbabwe vanished from history and the Ancient Egyptians in North Eastern Africa magically became "Europeans" or "Caucasians". Don't believe me? Go to your local libraries archives and get a history text book from the 1930s, 40s or 50s. Europe started wars in Africa to created a slave trade was to give weapons to both sides of the wars they started and encourage them to bring live, healthy prisoners to exchange for advanced weapons.
       Imagine if during the second world war aliens landed in America and offered the Allies futuristic weapons to fight the Axis and all they asked in return were that we give them German, Italian and Japanese prisoners of war whom they would dispose of for us and whom we'd never see again. Would we have taken advantage of it? What if they offered Hitler the same deal and didn't tell us about it? We could simply acknowledge the alien with advanced weaponry in this fictional scenario, OR would could merely simplify it and blame war like people of earth as being entirely responsible lest we offend and "blame" an "advanced" alien culture.


       The American conservative movement in 2020 invented the term "cancel culture" as a means of riling up their base. Like most propaganda it's short, sweet, catchy and easy to remember because of the alliteration. Conservatives invented the term to describe the crescendo of those who've spent decades calling for the removal of Confederate Statues from the American landscape who are finally being heard.
        The men and women who were offended by statues put into place during the hey-day of the Ku Klux Klan (more fun and easy to remember alliteration) in the 1920s and 30s were simply dismissed. In fact the Confederacy being commemorated with these statues in no way resembles the actual confederacy. The creators of the confederacy stated in their letters of secession from the United States that they wished to protect "the institution of slavery", yet amazingly the inventors of the Confederate myth insist that the Confederacy existed to stand up to "big government" and to protect the rights of the individual and small business man. Slaves were an afterthought in the Confederate myth, much like Alfonso I of Kongo and Mansa Musa millions of American slaves whose lives and fates were the only reason the Confederate States of America came into existence were simply "cancelled."

       American history is RIPE with cancellations. The "Thanks Giving" myth illustrates this. When Europeans arrived on what is the present day eastern United States, Native Americans welcomed them. If someone arrived on your doorstep during a hurricane would you bolt your doors and tell them to leave, or would you welcome them? Natives did the later and were surprised when Europeans let it be known that they had no intention of leaving and would in fact take MORE land.
       Save the incidents known as Prince Phillip's war and the French and Indian war it's almost as if the scores of Native Americans who lived along the Atlantic Ocean never existed. They were "cancelled" as it were as they make the narrative of people seeking "religious freedom" somewhat let's say "klunky". People whose religious text says: "Love thy neighbor as thyself", "do unto others as you would have them do unto you", "whatsover you do to the least of my brothers you do unto me" and "thou shall not kill" look like thieves, murderers and hypocrites if you present them in a light OTHER than sitting at a table having a feast of Thanks Giving with the "noble savages" who had cultures and civilizations prior to the European's arrival.  Cancel them.

         Those crying the loudest of "cancel culture" want to forget "Irish need not apply" signs. They want to forget a culture which seemed to invent new stereotypes and slurs for Italians every other day. History books in these United States don't mention the thousands of Americans of Mexican descent who were in many cases 3rd generation Americans and beyond who were deported TO Mexico.
         We can stick out chest out and boast about the completion of the trans continental rail road in these United States, but conveniently forget that the Chinese who came him to be paid a fraction what white men made to work on the same rail road and faced the same discrimination, lynchings and tailor made racist laws specifically aimed at them.
        The people CRYING the loudest about "cancel culture" are the same people who seem to have "cancelled" the Jim Crow laws that  existed from the 1870s until the last of them was removed in the 1990s from history books and the American collective conscience.  We can acknowledge either a century of laws which prevented men of color from sitting on or testifying before juries, voting, going to school, holding certain professions, marrying certain people, getting bank loans, being protected from blood thirsty mobs intent on murdering them or simply entering a restaurant and having dinner and simply say that people of color never attempted to "assimilate" as groups of immigrants did.  Let's cancel a century of Jim Crow as if it never happened and simply paint Martin Luther King as a guy who wanted to use "white" drinking fountains and bathrooms and sit at the front of buses.  Let's also "cancel" the death threats he received and the fact that someone attempted to blow up the man's house while his wife and children slept.

      My point? The people complaining about a "cancel culture" only find it objectionable if they're not the ones doing the cancellation. 
      

June 2020: The Summer of George

 On May 25, 2020 transplanted Houstonian George Floyd was in a store in his adopted city of Minneapolis, Minnesota attempting to make a purchase.  Store personnel believed the bill with which he attempted to pay to be counterfeit and called police who arrived shortly thereafter.
     Mr. Floyd was taken into custody by uniformed officers on the scene and  security video from multiple angles show him to be complying with the arresting officers. For reasons yet determined officer Derek Chauvin put an already handcuffed Floyd on the ground and placed his knee on his neck until George was begging for mercy and his life but to no avail. It fell on deaf ears and Floyd died from the officer cutting off the flow of blood to his brain and his air supply.

        When video footage of the incident in which onlookers were begging Chauvin to remove his foot from the helpless man's neck went public Chauvin and the other officers present were immediately fired. Days later he was indicted for 3rd degree murder.  Protests and riots ensued in some cases concurrently. While watching the events unfold some only saw protesters, others only rioters. People saw that which they chose to see. They saw that which made them the most comfortable.
       I saw the footage and released a heavy sign.  I've seen this happen so many times it's as if I'm in the Bill Murray film "Groundhog Day" and I can describe every event forthcoming because it's happened so many times before.

1. Video is released. Many are outraged, but others will imply that we didn't see what happened BEFORE the cameras started rolling.

2. There will be protests in the streets and a few imbeciles will riot leaving some with a political agenda to try to imply that protesters were violent thugs bent on destruction and not civil rights.

3. The officer will face a grand jury and may or may not go to trial.

4. There will be discussions of race and inequality which will fizzle out as soon as there's a huge news story like a mass shooting or a celebrity wedding or baby.

5. The officers trial will result in either an acquittal, mistrial or hung jury, but in the event that there IS a conviction there will be a lengthy appeal, but during that appeal the officer will be out on bond. After years of appeals a sympathetic judge will uphold the officer's conviction, but commute it to however long the appellate process took. By such time either the indignation from the family of the person murdered will have subsided, or  the public would have lost interest.

6. Another black man is killed by a cop, security guard, neighborhood watch captain or citizen trying to make a citizens arrest and it starts all over again.

President Trump's response to the protest has been to use tear gas on peaceful protesters in Lafayette Park across from the presidential residence that is the Whitehouse and to tell the nation that our cities need to be "dominated" by the military in a sad attempt at martial law.  In other words IF police brutality IS real we can deal with it later, in the interim lets get on the streets and be brutal and excessive. Simply put the brutal police treatment will cease when the protests of brutal police treatment ceases. OR as the old naval joke said: "The floggings shall continue until morale improves."


Author James Baldwin once said in his essay "The Fire Next Time": “It demands great spiritual resilience not to hate the hater whose foot is on your neck, and an even greater miracle of perception and charity not to teach your child to hate.” 

I do not believe that black America HATES white America. I believe that there exists an undercurrent of fear and misgivings between us that has resulted in ongoing tension that threatens to suck us into an undertow that could kill us both.

I can't  and don't pretend to speak for black America. Like any group of people we're not a monolith. Our opinions are as varied as the shades of brown in which we come.   The civil rights movement was a century long battle to remove Jim Crow laws enacted in the American south by embittered Confederate veterans after they LOST the civil war.   The purpose of Jim Crow was to prove to the black man that he didn't have to BE a slave legally in order to be the lowest run in society.  Jim Crow laws were entirely economic. Wealthy southern whites allowed them as a means of pacifying their poor brethren. Convince a poor man that another poor man is the source of all of his problems and the odds of both poor men uniting to topple you decreases.
          For a century Jim Crow laws  gave poor southern whites the belief that they were somehow better than blacks by allowing them to deny them access to housing, education and even the right to use a public restroom. While that happened those same dirt poor people never questioned why wealthy whites kept them from country clubs, schools and living in certain areas.  Some didn't question it, others simply were satisfied in knowing that they weren't the lowest on America's totem pole.
     
        The problem with civil rights legislation passing in the 60s and 70s is that many non persons of color don't see it as the PAUSE of rights given in 1865 being removed, but rather that a problem was solved. They believe that racism vanished over night with the passage of a few laws. Those same people probably believe that the entire civil rights movement was about being able to sit in the front of a bus.
       I've never believed in entitlements. When I was eight I asked my dad for an "allowance" and rather than giving me one, he taught me to do paint and dry wall and paid me for working with him.
As a black man in America I've never wanted a "check from the government", "stamps" for food and sure as hell didn't want any damned free cheese.  All I ever wanted and felt I was entitled to was a chance.  I'd like to think that if I apply for a job my qualifications will be viewed as anyone elses.
      I want a justice system which can look at me and another defendant accused of the SAME crime and which treats us the same way and DOESN'T give me a harsher sentence based on the hue of my skin.

        While I love my country I would be remiss if I didn't say that she has racist roots. We are a nation built on land stolen from its indigenous people, who then created an industry of kidnapping the indigenous people of another continent to work on that stolen land. A war was fought over the ability to treat the descendants of those captive people in that state and the right to move them onto NEW lands stolen from the indigenous people.  While claiming to be the land of the free, my country has killed Indians, enslaved and killed Africans then allowed the recreational killing of the descendants of Africans, Mexicans and Asians for the amusement of jeering mobs.

     Are we a racist country today? I don't think we are, but the problem is America is NOT comfortable with it's racist past. My simply MENTIONING the aforementioned will anger many. I'll be accused of being a Politically Correct Thug who is revising history ignoring the prism that is history. I'll be asked to consider the time in which the creators of our country lived. Invariably I'll ask those same people to join me in the 21st century.
    Many non persons of color will defensively say of Indian genocide, slavery, the Chinese Exclusion Act and deportation of people of Mexican descent BORN in the United States.  "I didn't do it! Why do you keep bringing it up!?"  Odd that the same people may even proudly wave one of the flags of the Confederacy and call it "history" and a source of pride. Who decides what's "pride" and what's "hurtful?"  America has never owned up to her racist past or the inequities embedded in daily life to that end were we to think of it as a football game, the issue of racism has been punted on 4th down after 4th down with the assumption that the next possession will be when it's dealt with.  The problem is it's late in the game and we have no points on the board.
     Entire groups of Americans are marginalized by racism in different forms every day and others either pretend it doesn't exist because they don't face it, allow something in their minds to pretend that they are the true victims OF it, or act as if it lives in a bygone America in which their grandparents lived.  Sadly America's denial of rights to persons of color was replaced by a simple denial about racism and  unfortunately each time we evade the topic and pretend that there is nothing to discuss we ensure that some future generation will be discussing this same topic generations from now.

    In the meanwhile as his summer continues, George Floyd gets to join Travon Martin, Tamir Rice, Emmett Till and scores of black men whose names we'll never know whose only "crime" was being black in America and a victim of someone elses sad, preconceived idea of whom they were.  I can only hope that there will be no future martyr whose name shall become synonymous  with America's grave sin of differentiating degrees of Americanism, but I know it would be foolish to believe it's even remotely possible.  Our history has proven me wrong on too any occasions.

The Economics of racism

My friend Mike is from Michigan and once told me that one of the most obnoxious phrases we southerners had was "white trash" because in his opinion it exposed us as having an established racist history. He explained that it implied that a white man who wasn't a success was simply unmotivated and lazy because he didn't capitalize on "advantages" he had over others.
         I thought about what he said, then remembered Alexander Stephens. the only vice president the Confederate States of America ever had. Stephens gave a speech in 1861 which he called the "Cornerstone Speech" in which he said the United States was attempting to give blacks equality to whites and that the Confederate States of America would be a government in which the black man would have his rightful place in servitude and that any white man would have the right to succeed on his own merits.

https://www.csaconstitution.com/p/alexander-h.html

My friend's assertion gave me pause to thought. I honestly believe that racism was never about "race" It's entirely economic.  Consider something: If YOU'RE rich and wish to employ others the thing you fear more than bankruptcy is organized labor.  A divided labor force is much easier to control.
      The formula for racism is simple. You need two groups of people, one of which to whom you  must belong and a second group. The second group can be either larger or smaller in number. The way it works is You must convince members of YOUR group that either they are SUPERIOR to or should be WARY of the other group. Cast the second group as  "other" and a threat which must be contained.
       In the American South in the 1700 or 1800s  an immigrant fresh off a boat from anywhere in Europe had to work hard for very little money just as he had to in Europe. He also had a distinct disadvantage if he arrived without money, friends or well established relatives who preceded him here.  The southern economy was controlled by a handful of wealthy men who owned African slaves. Why would a man hire you if he already owned twenty people whose sole purpose was to work for him?
     Most of the southern economy revolved around the plantation system.  Cotton, tobacco, rice and indigo were big business and those who didn't own plantations were in some way connected to shipping or trading the aforementioned OR providing the creature comforts to those who did.  There was even a subculture of unskilled men whose sole source of income was hunting down slaves who had escaped plantations.
            The fact about slavery was that it prevented many immigrants from working in fields, but it enabled a planter class to rise to prominence because the cost of feeding slaves and putting a shed over their heads was minimal compared to paying a wage.  When the confederacy eventually formed in 1861,  it told poor whites not only of their "superiority" over the person of color but also that their aspiration should be becoming one of the southern aristocracy who owned them.

           Wealthy white southerners opinions of poor whites was slightly lower than their opinions of slaves in some cases as evident by the fact that they entrusted slaves to prepare their meals, serve as valets, maids and butlers and  to be wet nurses to their children.  To insure that most poor whites saw blacks ONLY as slaves, many southern states had rigid laws restricting the rights of free blacks. Other states would simply not allow free blacks to reside within them.
          The "masses" while they had no real social or economic power could at least harbor a sense of superiority given to them by the elites because they are lead to believe they are NOT the bottom rung of society.

         This occurred in the American west with the arrival of Chinese in the 1840s. Wealthy men who hired Chinese by the dozen kept wages low for whites because they convinced the poor whites whom they also wished to underpay that the Chinese insisted on working for lower pay.  To be fair, this trick can and has been used with nationality. The Irish, Italians and Polish can tell stories of being used as economic scapegoats in the United States and to be honest racism is NOT an American invention. It is the fruit of colonialism and at the end of the day it's premise is simple: divide and concur and exploit each group after creating tension between them.
       Us versus them as a business practice while unethical, sadly has proven effective.  Were one to examine the third reich of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1944, its perverse racial politics succeeded because a small angry Austrian was able to convince other German speaking people that they were a great people who had suppressed by others, specifically a group of "others" within their midst.
       
      

End the Quarantine! I Have but one Life to give for a Billionaire

His emaciated corpse lay amid the uncut sugarcane until two other men who were barely alive removed him. His burial would simply be his being placed into a hole and covered in earth, but he was being removed because his body impeded the important work of clearing the field of the cash crop that was sugar. He, the boy who had bled to death after having his arm crushed by a grind stone and  another who had simply died of dehydration and exhaustion would be replaced as soon as a trip could be made to Port Au Prince to purchase five more strapping caliban to work the fields. The preceding narrative is fictional, but scenes similar to it played out on a daily basis on Caribbean plantations where slaves were routinely underfed, tortured and shown so little compassion that King Louis XIV of France put the "Code Noir" (black codes) in place to address the brutal conditions to which they were subjected.
         Slaves were expensive, but so was sugar and as The French Colony of Saint Domingue produced 1/3 of the world's sugar and half its coffee slaves were well worth the expense.  A little over 30,000 French controlled nearly 800,000 expendable Africans who would more than likely die before they made it to 25.  Sugar was the most profitable crop in the new world. So profitable in fact that French Planters in the colony which took up half the island of Hispanola in the early 1700's lived as well if not better than royalty. If you were a slave in this world you had one job and that was to work as hard as you could for your master to add to his wealth until you died. Upon your death two or three new slaves would be brought in to replace you. You were nothing.

         April 17, 2020,  the Covid-19 virus has shut down the world's economy.  The Global infection rate has resulted in quarantines in every major city in the world as the United States sees 5% of those contracting the virus dying. Doctors and nurses work feverishly to find a vaccine or  means of treatment as politicians point fingers at one another. The citizens of the world are in a state of fear and uncertainty wondering when all of it will come to an end or perhaps when semblance of normalcy will return. President Donald Trump from his office in Washington DC speaks NOT of Americans dying or scientists working but rather of "reopening the economy".
           It seems as he he's saying to us that the men and women who are connected to ventilators are of no consequence and that those who have died should be the furthest thing from our minds. Men like him whose net worth is a billion or more are losing money so those of us sitting at home fearing our lungs shutting down need to get off our lazy asses and get back to work so that they can become richer.

         The flow of money into their accounts has been interrupted. HOW DARE we put our health above their ledger sheets! The people who pay pittances and cry like babies whenever someone suggest paying their workers more or putting regulations in place to make their work places safer want the quarantines to end not for the greater good, but for the sake of their bank accounts. Slightly more disturbing than that is the fact that there are people living from paycheck to paycheck who DEFEND the right of those to whom they mean nothing who honestly believe the pandemic to be a "hoax" perpetuated by an insidious media who simply want to disparage the billionaires they themselves will never be.
        Those living in opulence and the sycophantic politicians groveling at their feet aren't speaking of vaccines and cures. They want their money and much like the nameless slaves in Saint Domingue's sugar fields we are expected to lay down our lives for them. We are to rise with the sun and wield  our machetes until sundown to make our quotas. Us going back to work risking our lungs shutting down is for the greater good.  Jeff Bezos needs a yacht with room for a helipad. Trump needs another building with his name emblazoned across it. Sheldon Aidelson wants to see if he can literally ski down the mountain of money he possesses and if we have to die so that he may do so, then so be it. Why must people insist on being "unpatriotic" and standing in the way of his dream?
       Much like the slaves living in huts on Saint Domingue, we should be honored to die for such great and noble people. The money saved by NOT paying you a decent salary or making either healthcare or medication accessible to you can be used to buy a sports franchise, pay for a country club membership and maybe just maybe to pay hush money to an adult film star not to speak of a 4 minute sexual liason. People of the world, let us for once stop thinking of ourselves and sacrifice our beings for men and women to whom our names will never be of importance much less known. Yachts must be raced! Bigger fortunes need be amassed! The haves MUST HAVE MORE! Damn it! All they ask is that we realize how insignificant we are and to lay down our lives that they may have more! Let us end this quarantine cure be damned and die for our masters!