slavery
Every season has its hot button issues. Like many, we at Cross Cultural Connections are very grieved at the death of Mr. Floyd. We are also thankful that it was a catalyst for other people of color to express repressed and painful memories and fears that they have experienced just for being black. Those of us on the CCC board are very racially diverse, international, and belong to churches which are likewise. We are parents in bi-racial marriages, grand-parents of bi-racial children, or any mix of the above. So we know.
We know what it’s like to be walking down the sidewalk and have our kids be widely skirted, or slapped. We know what it’s like to have full blown adults walk over and push our children out of swings because their kids should be in them, not ours. We’ve heard the most ridiculous statements in public transportation. We lived in the ambiance of such extreme racial bias that the word ‘genocide’ was coined in our neighborhood around incidents where one race was judged because they were not another race. And exterminated.
We were in the Middle East.
"Of all the tragic facts about the history of slavery, the most astonishing to an American today is that, although slavery was a worldwide institution for thousands of years, nowhere in the world was slavery a controversial issue prior to the 18th century. People of every race and color were enslaved – and enslaved others. White people were still being bought and sold as slaves in the Ottoman Empire, decades after American blacks were freed.
Everyone hated the idea of being a slave but few had any qualms about enslaving others. Slavery was just not an issue, not even among intellectuals, much less among political leaders, until the 18th century – and then it was an issue only in Western civilization. Among those who turned against slavery in the 18th century were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry and other American leaders. You could research all of the 18th century Africa or Asia or the Middle East without finding any comparable rejection of slavery there. But who is singled out for scathing criticism today? American leaders of the 18th century."Thomas Sowell, "The Thomas Sowell Reader”
What Americans do not comprehend is that it is a nation which seethed under slavery and continues to writhe in pain each time something happens which hurts, belittles, enslaves or justifies doing evil to anyone else. Why? Because it’s Founders risked their lives to found America on principles that were meant to better the planet. Over and over humans, being by nature evil, turned what was meant for good into evil. Again and again, valiant Americans fought to return or restore America to its high call. As valiant Americans are seeking to do today. Again.
One of the clearest current evils in America is depriving it’s children of true education. These kids are now in the streets and confused, doing battle against things that well funded organizations with hidden motives are prompting them to do. Like communism of yesteryear, they are fueling anger, putting tools in the hands of the young and telling them to dismantle America. Why? Because America HAS ideals and goals, and a vision which limits the powers of megalomaniacs in places we won’t currently name, but whom any thinking person knows of.
Part of America’s history includes temporary white slavery. Most of the white people who arrived in America in the 1600 and 1700 hundreds were “Redemptionists”. This means that they came over on a ship, and went on the auction block when they arrived. Someone who needed workers bought them from the ships captain, and they then worked until they were released. Men, women and children were sold away from each other. This horrific practice was terminated when people who had been brought over and sold as Redemtionists worked until they were “freed men” and fought to change the law so other people didn’t get “Redeemed” on an auction block. They succeeded. The same then happened with slavery of black people. The writhing and agony of it caused the Civil War. Ending vestiges of this today is way late, but could happen, if.
This IF is important. The methods that are currently being employed to end the ill treatment of one race against another need to be done with respect for everyone. To try and get supposed equality for an underdog by attacking someone viewed as an over dog only creates further conflict, distancing, fear, and a circling back to nursed wounds. It creates a ring, where observers watch the event, comment, but don’t and can’t enter in unless they are violent, biased, and biting. It achieves nothing. Anyone can know a tree by it’s fruit. Sometimes its almost laughable, like when AOC praised Tik Tok Teens and K-Pop Stans for booking free seats at a Trump rally to try and shut it down, or the local government in Seattle which is supportive of Chaz. These people are rewarding the kindergarten child who just hurt a fellow classmate. The long term consequences of stupidity will be self evident.
Wisdom is also at work in some circles in America right now. There is dialog, there is grieving, there is respect, there is friendship. One key is, there is unity. That unity is the exact opposite to the goals, intentions, and modus operandi of those who are being destructive.
We need to realize there is a force behind those who are being violent. They do not have the best interests of the Black Community in mind. They say one thing, but do something else. They pay Planned Parenthood to murder African American babies, and make sure PP is located in African American communities. They curse, mock and spit at African American policemen. They lie and say that there is no increase in Covid-19 since the riots, but then say that two days after Mr President was in Oklahoma Covid numbers spiked. They didn’t wait to find out the evidence around Mr. Floyd’s death before mobs attacked the city, but race was ignored on Father’s Day when more than 100 Black people were murdered in Chicago alone. They incite violence, but condemn self defense. They shame people who don’t agree with their rhetoric, but every phrase that is spray painted on memorials to the honor and dignity of America include the most filthy words they can think of. White people who don’t offer to vocally repent of the color of their skin are condemned. Children who are white are told they are to blame for all this, when they are likely to be children of immigrants themselves fleeing conditions of slavery globally. Rioters deface and tear down the statues of the very men and women who rose up to defend human rights when slavery was common everywhere else on the planet. They break the gravestones of those who died to protect their children, including the graves and memorials of Black Americans. The puppeteers behind this nonsense are so obvious it’s shocking that sensible Americans actually are condoning this.
Division, shaming, looting, lying. These are the new brave tactics clearly rooted in something other than the love, unity, and equality which is being demanded. The division of Americans is the goal. Its shockingly tragic that while other nations have gone down fighting, all it takes in America right now is a lying media, paid to entertain a people who have been trained to believe what media utters.
No, it’s not right that a black man died at the hands of a supposed police officer, who was also his co-worker as a bouncer at a night club where girls were trafficked. No, it’s not right that anyone is mistreated by cops, or teachers, or priests, or parents. But America is one of the only nations in the world where citizens can rise up and complain about these things, and work for Justice until actions happen, and then see change. For several hundred years the planet has looked to America to see how they will address such things. And then, often, improved their own nations, because they saw it could be done.
Let it not be said, in the future, that ignorant Americans got so tangled up in lies that they forgot that right now, this very day, hundreds of people were sold into very real and ugly slavery, which is very much alive and well. And that they could have united to fight it, to pay healing forward for others who are really suffering, but instead, we chose to sit on couches and shake our heads, listening to talking heads lie about what’s really happening, and then agreeing to disagree and split hairs for hours on social media until we need therapists … or go out and deface and take down statues of former heroes after writing filthy words on them.
None of those actions will rescue today’s slaves.
And the people paying our media to puppet and divide us are super happy about that.