A Hard Fall

[DISCLAIMER: I am a cancer patient. While I may not have any active cancer/cancers in my body at present, I'm very cognizant that it could return. I am in no way attempting to say that all cancer experiences are like my own. Each person's cancer journey is like a fingerprint given that each is different. While they may have some commonalities, each persons fight with this affliction differers just as each person differs. Some cancers are more aggressive than others, and not all of us who battle this son of a bitch will prevail. This is a long, and ugly road and I pray for my brothers and sisters who trod this road with me. I remember those who trod it before me like my late grandmother, three of my uncles and five of my aunts.  My heart especially goes out to all the children who suffer with it who were diagnosed before they began to live and all who will walk on this road in the future. My purpose in writing this is to give insight to my battle with something which I'll loathe until the day I draw my last breath and hopefully which won't be the cause of my demise. While I can't and won't attempt to speak for all cancer patients I will say to those NOT on this road who would tell those of us on it how to walk, shut the hell up.] 

I was staring out the jeep's window watching stalks of sugar cane dance in the wind in fields we passed and I wondered if my ancestors had harvested sugar cane or cotton in those same fields. It was a balmy day in the small central Louisiana town where my father was born and spent the first decades of his life and I was leaving his memorial service.  Driving was my friend "Handsome" Bill. A friend and I call him that because he bears a bit of a resemblance to tv/movie actor Jon Hamm who played Don Draper on the show "Mad Men." Our inside joke being "Hey Bill, when are you going to introduce me to Joan from your office?"

         After going public with my diagnosis I learned some hard lessons, among them was that there are certain people who hear the word "cancer" and immediately presume that the person with it is on borrowed time. Cancer in the minds of many is effectively a death sentence. 1/3 of the people whom I thought were friends disappeared. I would later learn that some simply didn't know what to say so they said nothing and others simply left. I reached out to a former lover and told her of my diagnosis and she said: "Well...good luck with that." A few weeks later she called to apologize and said that she'd lost her mother to cancer when she was growing up in Detroit and couldn't handle the thought of losing someone else. She then quietly vanished. 

     A gorgeous, foul mouthed, buxom, small town blonde I know from California chewed my ass for NOT telling her before I told everyone else. I apologized to her for my being chickenshit in thinking for a second that she wouldn't have been at my side.  A group of my female friends who were in their own battles with breast & pancreatic cancer reached out. and became an online support group whom I lovingly called and still call the "Bad Bytches". A "Bad Bytch" can withstand anything and if they're on your side your odds just went up.

      Then there was "Handsome" Bill. Bill had been the Veterans Counselor at my college. An ex army sergeant who played ball while we were working on the degrees Uncle Sam told us we needed and was an all around decent guy. Upon learning of my health concerns Bill called and said: "Man if you need anything. I'm here." It's been my experience that people oft say that but seldom mean it. 

        I can't say that fall of 2021 was the worst year of my life as I haven't lived my entire life yet, but it was miserable. I had a procedure that made going to the bathroom a miserable chore. The woman who had been by my side had died of the Corona virus within days of being admitted to a hospital and a week later my father died. Because of Covid protocols and because I wasn't a blood relative I couldn't be at her side in the hospital when she died. Out of respect for her memory and her family's privacy I won't say the name of the wonderful woman I lost but will say this. She saved my life. A routine physical indicated an elevated PSA. Let me explain for those unfamiliar with the male urinary tract. Men have a gland called a prostate. it's normally slightly larger than a walnut and is directly beneath a man's bladder and the base of his penis. Canals flow through it which regulate the flow of his urine and well, let's call them male "fluids"  during sex.  When it becomes inflamed or enlarged it starts to produce certain chemicals or antigens specific only to the prostate which are detectable via a blood test. My PSA was high and my doctor encouraged me to get a biopsy. I was reluctant until the now late girlfriend convinced me to get a biopsy and in doing so sent me upon my cancer odyssey. Again, she saved my life. 

       One of the things about the cancer journey that doctors (well at least not our compassionate friends in urology) don't tell you is that depression is a good part of what you'll be dealing with. I was already depressed when a faceless nurse told me over the phone that the woman I cared for didn't make it and less than 10 days later my mother informed me that my father who had been suffering from dementia for the last 4 years had finally been released from the prison that his body had become.  Dad's last wish was to be cremated and enshrined in a mausoleum in his hometown. Upon being told of this by my older sister who had been his caretaker I actually laughed. Dad always saw himself as larger than life and his wanting a big granite monument to himself seemed in keeping with how he'd lived. "Dad was dad." as I liked to tell my mother. 

       On learning that I was going to Louisiana for dad's farewell "Handsome" Bill volunteered to drive from his home in Austin to pick me up and bring me to dad's funeral hundreds of miles away in another state which is how I found myself in the passenger seat of a large jeep staring at a field of sugarcane on our way out of the place I frequently refer to as the "ancestral homeland". Leaving dad's final resting place meant taking a four lane blacktop back to Interstate 10. We were maybe half a mile away from the interstate when Bill broke the silence with "What's your favorite coffee brother?" I give him a confused look and answer "Cafe Du Monde." He smiles not taking his eyes off the road and continued "We're coming up on I-10. Now IF we take a right we can be back in Houston in a couple of hours and this journey will be at an end...OR" he said "we can take a LEFT and in an hour and a half we can be in New Orleans AT the Cafe Du Monde" drinking your favorite coffee and enjoying a beignet." I sat there in disbelief. "The decision is yours. We take a right we're on our way home, we take a left and years from now. you'll be old and grey and in a nursing home telling the story about how you and. your pal Bill went to New Orleans...for a cup of coffee." 

       At that moment I realized that despite the miserable things 2021 had heaped upon me, there were still wonderful people in the world including one of whom who had sacrificed an entire Saturday to drive nearly 1000 miles in a day so that his basket case of a college bud could say goodbye to his father.  There are points in life when playing it safe is the way to go, when one must ignore Robert Frost's advice to take the road less traveled and to stay on the well worn path, but at that moment my friend had emboldened me to "carpe diem" (seize the day) and before we made it to the traffic light which directed us to the interstate and proclaimed "I guess we're taking a left." 

        We made it to New Orleans enjoyed COLD beignets and excellent coffee at Cafe Du Monde while a few charming college girls flirted with us. We were looking pretty good in our suits. Maybe they were just flirting with Bill and I was convincing myself they were flirting with both of us. Who knows.  I even bought a can of their famous French Roast (which I still have) and we drove back at dusk and talked about life,  the universe and everything. Along with dancing on a J-Rail platform on Christmas Eve in Akihabara in Tokyo  with my loving adopted big sister Mami, the detour on the trip home from saying goodbye to dad will forever be one of my favorite memories and I can thank "Handsome" Bill for that and yes ladies he's single.

           The handsome chump was right, I still regale people telling them about the time "[Me] and [my] pal Bill went to New Orleans just to get a cup of coffee."And for that I'm eternally grateful.

Happy Anniversary...

 

[DISCLAIMER: I am a cancer patient. While I may not have any active cancer/cancers in my body at present, I'm very cognizant that it could return. I am in no way attempting to say that all cancer experiences are like my own. Each person's cancer journey is like a fingerprint given that each is different. While they may have some commonalities, each persons fight with this affliction differers just as each person differs. Some cancers are more aggressive than others, and not all of us who battle this son of a bitch will prevail. This is a long, and ugly road and I pray for my brothers and sisters who trod this road with me. I remember those who trod it before me like my late grandmother, three of my uncles and five of my aunts.  My heart especially goes out to all the children who suffer with it who were diagnosed before they began to live and all who will walk on this road in the future. My purpose in writing this is to give insight to my battle with something which I'll loathe until the day I draw my last breath and hopefully which won't be the cause of my demise. While I can't and won't attempt to speak for all cancer patients I will say to those NOT on this road who would tell those of us on it how to walk, shut the hell up.] 

Three years ago in March I was wide sitting on a black vinyl chair in a small exam room with walls the color of which I still can't determine. Maybe they're a shade of light green, or perhaps they're grey. I've been to those rooms in the Houston Veterans hospital urology department several times and for the life of me the color of those stupid walls eludes me. Also, whenever I've been there I've been slightly more preoccupied with why I was there. I was staring at a fading chart on the wall of the male urinary & reproductive system and trying to be as positive as I could as I ignored a large silicone model of a penis which sat on a shelf above me.

                 I was a bundle of nerves but was told by the handful of people privy to my being there that despite certain risk factors more than likely the result of my biopsy would be negative. I probably just had something called benign prostate hyperplasia or simply put an enlarged prostate. I'd been wide awake for my prostate biopsy a few weeks earlier. Despite the shots and numbing agents employed it still hurt like hell. The procedure involves inserting a probe into a man's rectum then cutting tiny pieces of his prostate to examine them for cancer cells. Given the level of discomfort a local anesthesia is given but I still felt every cut.  When you reach a certain age, every doctor you see will be younger than yourself. As a man in his 50s I've reached that age. A fresh faced young doctor comes in with a chart and his face is without expression. Seeing young men and women without expression could mean one of many things, exhaustion, suppressed anger, or an unpleasant task ahead of them. He closed the door behind him and sat at the desk on which my elbow rested and said the five words which utterly changed my life. "I'm sorry. You have cancer."

              I've been asked many times since that day what I was thinking when I heard him say it. Did I go through the five stages of grief in an instant? Did I experience denial, depression anger, bargaining and acceptance before I drew my next breath? The best way to describe it would be sitting in the sun on a warm day then suddenly being doused with gallons of arctic water in an instant.  I sat there in disbelief feeling the blood drain from my face. "Are you sure?" I asked in a pleading voice. He nodded his expression still somber. "But" he said "the good news is it's not a fast growing cancer, and the survival rate for it is much higher than it was just a few years ago. It's a very treatable cancer."  Each time he uttered the word it felt as if he were stabbing me. I was in shock.

         "So." he said his demeanor seemingly changing instantaneously. "Let's schedule when we can take out that prostate." He was smiling.  This kid just told me I had cancer cells growing in my body less than a minute earlier and now he was SMILING. Urologists are a bit different from other specialists. Some see themselves as oncologists, many see themselves as surgeons. The truth lies in between, they are however not known for their bedside manner. Surgeons want to cut people open and the men and women whose domains are the kidneys, bladder and reproductive organs do not pass up opportunities to cut people open. I wish the medical school this young man had attended given acting classes so that he would have been able to better conceal his desire to have me on a gurney as he tried to see how quickly he could remove a part of my body. "Is there NO other option?" I asked still in shock. He seemed a little crestfallen that I wasn't ready to go onto an operating table.  "There are" he said trying to hide the disappointment in his voice, "but the prostatectomy is the most effective. You would remove all of the cancer at once. There is also radiation, but I wouldn't recommend radiation for a man your age." I would later research and learn that younger men who get radiation as a prostate treatment are more likely to have issues with incontinence and their colons years later.  "The thing is" he said "right now you have options for your treatment, but before we discuss those we need to schedule an MRI so we can see exactly where your cancer is so we can come up with a treatment strategy. How about next month?" I nodded in silence avoiding his gaze. "Okay" he said "Make an appointment with the front desk on the way out." 

      "Can...I have a moment? I asked. He nodded and replied "sure, just come out when you're ready." I didn't notice his leaving but heard the door closing behind him. In an instant I was quietly sobbing.  I could feel the tears falling from my cheeks as my vision became blurred.  I've no idea how long I sat alone in that room feeling as if a death sentence had just been imposed on me despite the young doctors assurances, but eventually I composed myself and walked out of that room feeling numb. The clerks made an appointment for me to be stuck inside a large magnet and I like an automaton I took the elevator to the first floor and found my way across a parking lot to the jeep in which my lady sat waiting.

          She could see I'd been crying. "Oh God." she exclaimed before I could utter a word. She wrapped her arms around me and my face fell unto her shoulder as I silently wept. "I had skin cancer. You can beat and WILL beat this." she assured me with a confidence in her voice that gave me comfort. I sat up as the tears continue to well up in my eyes, Her placid blue eyes gave me a strange peace at that moment. She grabbed my hand and said "Okay, let's get out of here." We drove off as I asked what every cancer patient asks throughout the journey at some point "why me?"  I had no idea what lay ahead. I won't lie and pretend that I wasn't afraid. I was, but my fear wasn't of my own demise. Years of reading samurai treatises have made me accept my mortality years earlier, but I was afraid of the fact that I was about to face the unknown. I'd just learned that I was about to start fighting for my life against an enemy which had killed men and women far stronger than I have ever been or would ever be, and it scared the hell out of me.

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!

     
       

Thanks Giving. A great "story"

In 1620, Pilgrims  seeking religious freedom with the blessing of King James VI (of bible translating renown) had endured a harsh winter many had succumb to hypothermia or died of malnutrition.  When the spring came they co-operated with the native American people and learned how to fish, hunt and farm and the following year had such an abundant harvest that they invited the natives who taught them how to survive to an autumn feast to celebrate.  I've been hearing that since I was in kindergarten and it's a great story, but unfortunately that's all it is, a STORY.
             
            The MYTH that the United States was started as a "religious" colony is a myth.  Since the 1490s when Spanish ships were returning from across the Atlantic laden with gold and silver the rest of Europe (especially England) took notice). There were 102 people aboard the Mayflower, 49 of those were Pilgrims and that 49 included women and children.
           For more than a century Spain had been bringing back untold wealth from the "new world" and England wanted its share.  They figured the best way to do that was "giving" land to English citizens who would be willing to simply occupy it.  There were those aboard the Mayflower who dreamed of finding gold, but unless they traveled south to Mexico, it's unlikely they ever saw any.

           Let's examine the pilgrims. They were members of the "Puritan" sect of the Anglican church OR Church of England. They were vehemently opposed to Roman Catholicism and felt the "mainstream" Church of England was too tolerant to immoral types. They felt the church should have been more active in the lives of the average citizen. In other words they wanted a theocracy as evident by the fact that throughout the 1600s they tried and executed persons for witchcraft. Supposedly the "pilgrims" got help from the Natives.
           That IS true, it has however been subsequently shown. that the indigenous people had NO IDEA that the Europeans had planned to stay. They presumed the Europeans were merely visiting and the Natives were doing the DECENT thing and not letting a group of incompetent people starve to death.  The would later learn at gun point as  the people of Africa and India would later discover that the British had no intention of leaving.  The fact that some of the land was given to religious fanatics DOES NOT mean that America is or was ever intended to BE a religious colony.

           European indentured Servitude was a harsh existence. It was essentially becoming someone's slave for a period of up to seven years at the end of which you'd be granted freedom and land; however, there were many unscrupulous businessmen who had indentured servants. Servants were often beaten, given just enough food to survive and there were laws which could add time to one's contract of indenture. In other words if a servant offended his contract holder, months or even years could be added to his contract. Some indentured servants assaulted or even killed those holding their contracts. More often than not they ran away and hid in other towns.
        The colonial solution to this was the enslavement of the African. The African did not have to be freed. You owned the African for the entirety of his life. In fact, colonies like Virginia made freeing an African slave so prohibitively expensive,  that it was cheaper to keep him/her.
       American slavery was simple. More slaves equaled more wealth. You could get a breeding pair and work the man to death knowing that his children will be your property. You could take liberties with his wife and any children she had would also be your property (thanks to colonial laws). Odd that those who believe that America was founded as a religious colony never express how the book of Exodus (NEAR THE FRONT) so vehemently opposed it.
 
                   The goal of this piece is NOT to bash the United States. I love this country, but I'm NOT a fan of fairy tales.  Am I opposed to "giving thanks"? No, I do so every day and I think we should all be grateful for what we have. I'm glad that I don't wake up each morning hiding from secret police and death squads dispatched by some dictator, but I'm also aware of the fact that MOST of the countries which HAVE dictators, secret police and death squads were once colonies of European nations who entered to take gold, silver, tin, tungsten, ivory, rubber, oil and in some cases even people.
          There is a popular racist theory that states that black Americans like myself should be especially grateful that we were spared the gut wrenching poverty and warfare of Africa by having our ancestors kidnapped and sold as livestock. That ignorant theory ignores the fact that Africa in the early 1500s was wealthy and had several strong governments and societies like the Songhai, Mali and Mandingo, not to mention the Great Zimbabwe. The "grateful negro" theory also ignores that the Dutch & French incited inter African warfare to promote political instability and get gold and slaves cheaply amid that instability.
       In other words, to make themselves rich from 1500 to 1900 Europe and later the United States would take the wealth of Mexico and all countries south, Africa, Asia and Australia. We don't have to hark on that, but we'd be fools to forget it or to simply pretend that it never happened.


           President Abraham Lincoln declared a national day of Thanksgiving in November of 1863, but it didn't become a national holiday until President Franklin D. Roosevelt made it one in 1941.  I'm of the opinion that if you're going to give thanks do it every day because as most combat veterans will tell you every day above ground is one for which you should be thankful. If you're going to conjure up a story in which religious fanatics who stole land and eventually INTENTIONALLY spread small pox to those from whom they stole it are cast as "noble pilgrims" seeking "religious freedom",  then don't expect the descendants of those from whom they stole it or the descendants of the slaves  bound to that land for the entirety of their lives to enjoy it as much as you do. Save me a slice of white meat and some dressing. "Happy" Thanksgiving.