The American flag
The Star Spangled Banner
Oh, say, can you see by the dawns early light,
What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thro' the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watch'd, were so gallantly streaming?
And the star spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
A path was chosen for White folks by White males who
controlled all seats of power in the
U. S. government. From the start, Africans
did not choose their path in life. It was chosen for them by a White dominated
government, and local KKK terrorists, especially in southern states. Blacks are
expected to follow the rules, and not deviate from their designated path
without permission from White people.
Whenever African Americans depart from their chosen path,
rightfully protesting against injustices and discrimination piled on their
backs like sacks of cotton 24/7, White folks tend to write them off as a
societal nuance. Collectively. They have no reason to complain or be angry, they say. Black
folks cannot conceal who they are. They have to prepare for whatever troubles
that comes their way. They are easy targets. Their skin tones greatly
depreciates their value, their right to respect, and their humanness.
Nat Turner, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Black Lives
Matter, Congressman John Lewis, Medgar Evers, Rosa Parks, Rev. Al Sharpton, and
thousands more civil rights activists carry on their backs cotton sacks filled
with mistreatment of African Americans. The desire for basic human rights goes
all the way back to slavery, a time when helpless Africans in a strange land
could not protest the inhospitable environment they were thrown into.
Black insurrectionists like Nat Turner understood this unnatural
ownership of another human being. Called the “Nat Turner Rebellion” by
historians and writers, Nat Turner was a slave, who in 1831, led a short
insurrection against slave owners in South Hampton County, Virginia. Supposedly
he and a number of slaves killed over 50 Whites in the county. Turner’s
co-conspirators were caught and hanged. Turner managed to escape, but was
caught and hanged. Turner’s deadly rebellion began with him killing his slave
master and his wife. Turner deviated from his assigned path in a society that
did not want him; would not accept him.
Now
is not the right time
White folks have always talked with twisted tongues in reference
to African Americans. Politicians said of the civil rights movement, “Now is
not the right time.” Civil right activists were told that Black folks need to
wait. They need to be patient. They would get their freedom at the right time.
Had King listened to this bullshit Black folks would still be patiently waiting
for freedom to wander into their neighborhoods, inviting them to register and
vote. Civil rights would have remained packaged, sealed, and undelivered.
Jesse Jackson was told when he decided to run for president,
“Now is not the right time”. He asked: “If not now, when”? Jackson ran for
president in 1984 and 1988. White folks
rejected him because of his skin color and marching for civil rights. They called
him a race baiter and a race hustler. They said even worse things about Al Sharpton
when he ran for president.
Black and White politicians told Senator Barack Obama “now is
not the right time” for a Black man to run for president of the United States.
They felt he did not have a chance to win. It was best that he step aside and
let one of his White opponents claim the prize. On the other hands, the time
was certainly right for African Americans to get shot to death, harassed,
stopped and frisked, and beat by White cops.
Martin Luther King said: “The daily life of the Negro is still
lived in the basement of the Great Society. He is still at the bottom despite
the few who have penetrated to slightly higher levels. Even where the door has
been forced partially open, mobility for the Negro is still sharply restricted.
There is often no bottom at which to start, and when there is, there is almost
always no room at the top”.
Attempted
banning of freed slaves
With the election of Donald Trump as president of the U.S.,
racism, and white supremacy have been repopularized. Calling cops on Black men,
women and children is also common again, like during the era of “Black Codes”, created
to keep newly emancipated slaves in their place.
Today, African Americans who have greatly veered from their
designated path, can live in any section of town they can afford. But Whites
cannot accept them invading “their” segregated, peaceful suburbs, no matter how
famous or wealthy. Blacks moving into these upscale neighborhoods destroys all
of those perpetrated myths. For instance: Black folks are on welfare, their children
are fatherless, they are drug addicts and thieves, lazy, irresponsible,
uneducated, and unemployed by choice. They
have no ambition to achieve.
Noted race baiter Republican Pat Buchanan says Black folks are
not grateful enough to White folks. He wrote in 2008: “First, America has been
the best country on earth for black folks. . . 600,000 black people brought
here from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 10 million, were
introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom
and prosperity blacks have ever known.
“Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks
than white Americans. Untold millions have been spent since the ‘60s on
welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student
loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits, and poverty
programs designed to bring the African American community into the mainstream.
We hear the grievance. Where is the gratitude”?
Centuries earlier the newly elected governor of California, Peter
Burnett, was more profound that Buchanan. The state’s first governor wanted
California to be an all-White state. He did not want free Blacks coming to
California, messing up his dream, colorizing his state.
He said, addressing legislators: “It could be no favor and no
kindness, to permit [free blacks] to settle in the state; while it would be a
most serious injury to us. . . . Had they been born here, and had acquired
rights in consequence, I should not recommend any measures to expel them
. . .
the object is to keep them out”.
According to the History Channel, Burnett was not alone in “his
vision of a California that banned Black people. Throughout the 1840s and 1850s,
California citizens and legislators fought to insure that free Black people
would be prohibited from immigrating to or living in California. And though
their efforts eventually failed, they reflected this fear and racism faced by
Black people in the American West”.
Newly emancipated slaves had to carry on their backs the burdens
of rejection and isolation. They had no other point of reference, or no instructional
how-to-books.
Donald Trump wants to ban all immigrants that are not of
European descent. “Others” are deemed life’s scum crawling out of Central
America, the Middle East and African countries for the sole purpose of destroying
America. He called African countries “shitholes”. Trump said he preferred that people
from Norway immigrate to America.
Stand
for the flag and national anthem
and be grateful to White Americans
White folks want all Black folks to stand, look patriotic, salute
the flag, sing or mumble the Star Spangled Banner, because they do not have the
right not to. Blacks should be grateful, catapulting fear and bigotry to a
respected place in society. African Americans should not complain if they do
not get a clear shot at achieving the American Dream.
And when they are shouted down and told by White folks: “America
is ours! We built it! Go back where you belong!” Black folks should not get
angry at these God loving, country loving, flag waving, anthem singing folks. Their
Christianity may be temporary out of order. You know . . . like toilets. They get a little cranky when
God is slow answering their calls. They want Him to tell Black folks to stop
protesting, taking a knee and disrespecting the flag and America. Bless their
patriotic hearts.
Accused by Fox talking heads of not being grateful to America
for allowing him to earn millions of dollars playing football, Colin Kaepernick
explains his reason for taking a knee rather than salute the flag, or stand for
the national anthem. He made the decision in 2016. His knees and heart were weighed down by a
cotton sack filled with inequality, police brutality and discrimination. He
dared not follow the long ago designated path for Black folks.
Kaepernick said, “I’m not going to stand up to show pride in a
flag for a country that oppresses Black people and people of color. To me this
is bigger than football, and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way.
There are bodies in the street, and people getting paid leave and getting away
with murder”.
Kaepernick related a story that tells of his a personal run-in with
police. “One of my roommates was moving out of a house in college, and because
we were the only Black people in the neighborhood, the cops got called, and all
of us had guns drawn on us. I mean come in the house without knocking, guns
drawn on one of my roommates. So I have experienced [mistreatment]. People
close to me have experienced this”. (Slate magazine, 2016)
The late 1960s civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer is noted
for saying: “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired”. Hamer was burdened
with carrying on her back the enslavement of Black slaves who never realized
human or political power. They dreamed of freedom but had no way of acquiring
it.
Ninety-nine years after Abe Lincoln’s signing of the
Emancipation Proclamation, Hamer dug her fingernails into the flesh of a Texas
President Lyndon Baines Johnson. He did not want Black folks to be seated as
delegates alongside the segregated delegation at the Democratic National
Convention in 1964. Johnson did not want to buck White southerners who could
hurt him politically.
Hamer and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee were
in no mood for governmental rejection. A White flag saluting, national anthem mumbling
president and a state of southern White folks were telling Black folks now is not
your time to be recognized as citizens of the United States. We will give you
permission when the time is right. Do not deviate from your designated path.
