Its going to bring us all down, so this white girl has something to say. And, there will be no apologies. So, blacks are pissed. Yeah, I guess I would be pissed too if “my people” had been manipulated and used to propagate an agenda. That damned slavery. Wait, what? You say the slaves were freed? Oh yeah, that’s right. That whole Emancipation Proclamation thing. That was, what, over a hundred years ago, right? So, not a single black alive today was ever a slave. Well, not in terms of how slavery is defined. I mean, nobody in this country actually legally owns another person nowadays. Still, blacks have been manipulated and used. Not just over a hundred years ago, but today, right now. By who, you ask? By whites.. yes whites, but not just any whites, a certain group of whites. I’ll get to that in a moment. You thought I was going to say the race baiters like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. Nope. My thinking is that even Sharpton and Jackson have been manipulated. They know not what they do. Well, they do. They know they are instigating, but I don’t think they know why they instigate. They just think it’s over the oppression of the roots of slavery that has brought blacks to where they are today. I don’t think that very many blacks are aware that, after slavery was ended, blacks were well on their way to doing great things. Some actually did great things. I’m not here to give a history lesson. I dont think that a single black would take heed to any lesson on black history I might offer, but the history is there. It’s not taught in school. You have to look it up on your own. Oh yeah, you get black history in school, but it’s usually in the context of either being a slave, or having emerged from slavery, or civil rights. What blacks today don’t know is that blacks were very much steeped in the traditions of familyhood. It stands to reason. Blacks are all about: that’s my brother, my cousin, my mother... and they’ll go to extremes to protect anyone they deem as family, even non-blood family. Hence, Ferguson Missouri. This is because most human beings long to be connected, and it’s that connection that has been so heinously manipulated. Whites do the same thing it’s just not so visible because, well, white families havent been so manipulated. I’m going to refer to literature here. Has anyone ever seen or read A Raisin In The Sun? The title comes from a line in a poem by one of my favorite poets, Langston Hughs, a successful black man, but I digress. It was written by Lorraine Hansberry, the daughter of well-educated, successful black citizens who publicly fought discrimination against black people during the era of segregation. The reason I bring this up is because this was the pivotal moment in black history when the real manipulation began. You see, before this era, blacks were hard working, family oriented, moral, upstanding members of their communities. But, there were boundaries that they just weren’t able to cross because of segregation. There was a need for civil rights, a very dire need. Blacks were striving to cross those boundaries, but they were striving as whole family units. If you haven’t seen or read A Raisin In The Sun, I suggest you do. That was an example of the average black family back then. A whole family unit, struggling but doing it together. Because, you see, in A Raisin In The Sun, while there was a tone of struggle for achievement the emphasis was on familial pride. That, as long as people attempt to do their best for their families, they can lift each other up. But, where is today’s black family? What happened to it? What happened to the black family is, in this struggle to breach those segregation boundaries, blacks reached out to those that made those boundaries in the first place, not at first, but eventually. Segregation was the law. Where does law come from? The government. Well, one would think that the fight would be with the law makers, but you don’t facilitate a change of the law by fighting the law itself.. well, you do, and that was a phase of it. The whole civil disobedience phase. You know, that whole Rosa Parks era? It sparked blacks to go and sit at lunch counters and use white fountains and just generally be menaces to the conformed society that existed then. But, the real pivotal moment wasn’t just then, that was just the beginning. The law had to change and for the law to change there had to be a new law.. DEsegregation. Now, I’m not anti-desegregation, by any means. I’m for it, but it doesn’t really matter because, legally, we are now desegregated. I said legally, because actually we are still very much segregated. Again, I digress. Here’s the pivot. Right in the heart of the Civil Rights Movement, government saw an opportunity to reach a whole demographic of voters. In order to do that, they had to have an offering, but that offering couldn’t strengthen blacks, otherwise the control would be lost. They had to appease the black community, but in a way that appeared to strengthen them. So, they offered a hand up. This is where the welfare system was used to its fullest capacity. I dont want to start that whole argument about assuming all blacks are on welfare, I know they’re not. Still, there is a large percentage of blacks on welfare and even those who aren’t more than likely know those that are and they empathize. Back to the pivot. Welfare is a tricky business. Along with it being a hand up, it’s also a hand out and it’s very much a political tool. You see, it’s controlled completely by the government and there are rules, set by the government, for what makes one qualified for benefits (I said benefits, not entitlements). This is where the manipulation begins. Before the Civil Rights Movement, the welfare system was already in place, and it had it’s rules. Now, I’m not trying to write a dissertation so I’m not going to get into the nitty-gritty details, but whole families had been using welfare the way welfare was meant to be used. It was a transitional program. When something catastrophic had happened and people needed a helping hand, they might turn to welfare. Not many did this because it was a matter of embarrassment to take charity. They also soon got on their feet and stopped taking the welfare, that was a matter of pride. My opinion is that it should have been long ago disassembled because it was first put in place following the Great Depression, and we were well beyond that point. But, once a system is put in place by the government it tends to linger and grow, often into a monstrosity. Anyway, welfare, well there are many forms of it, now. It was a system that wasn’t very complicated in the beginning. You had a catastrophe, you reached out to your church and/or community, and if there was nothing there you turned to the federal government. So long as you could prove you needed it, you qualified. I’m over simplifying, because this isn’t about welfare, it’s about how it was used to manipulate blacks. Now there’s only so much money in the welfare program. Sure the government can rebudget and put more funds in welfare, but the money has to come from somewhere (we know where) and it’s not always easy to do that. So, new programs targeted for blacks cropped up, still welfare, but variations of it with new rules and regulations. Still, you had to qualify and qualification still took a catastrophe. Ok, what’s a catastrophe? Well, one could be a young woman with several children and no husband to help with the income. Perfect! That’s an easy one to qualify for. By easy, I mean easy to manipulate. So, the government would help the blacks by giving them welfare, but to qualify you had to have reason. And so began the erosion of the black family. Across the land, in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement, black women everywhere were seeking assistance, but in order to do so they had to qualify and that meant turning away the men. You see, there was a whole feminist movement going on at the same time. How convenient, right? We’re not just going to give blacks a place in society, but women too.. and black women especially. The feminist movement sort of parallels all of this and it was all utilized to effectively enslave blacks once more. No longer would blacks be discriminated against because government was going to see to it that they’d get their piece of the pie. How’s that working out for blacks? Are blacks better off? Is racism gone? Seems to me, if you look back in time, between American slavery and the Civil Rights Movement, at that era in which A Raisin In The Sun took place, blacks were far better off. Aside from the segregation, which I agree was so wrong, blacks were making strides. They were finding their American dream. While we needed that moment of civil rights and it’s purpose was served, there was a very dark side to it all. On the surface it looks to be a worthy venture and it was, but that underbelly is starting to show. That underbelly of causation and manipulation. Hindsight being 20/20, I think it’s time we look back and see just what really happened. It’s the only key to unlocking what is really happening now. It’s the only way to see who is really responsible for what’s happening in Ferguson. To see who was responsible then and who is responsible now. And, just who is that? I already said government. But, did you catch where I said “government saw an opportunity to reach a whole demographic of voters”? What demographic was captured? What party did that demographic start changing their votes to? What party is that demographic still voting for? How did all this come to be in the first place? Who is really at the heart of fanning the flames in Ferguson? What party has every hand on deck to make sure that the flames keep spreading? So, blacks should be pissed. But, they need to figure out at whom they should direct their anger. Instead of being flames that are so easily fanned, they need to look at those who are fanning them. They need to get control of themselves and each other. They need to realize that this is just another manipulation, before they forever enslave themselves and the rest of us with them. tsu.co/MzAng/10286353
Posted on: Tue, 25 Nov 2014 10:00:49 +0000
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