New Carthage Chronicles

The makings of a cover up began almost immediately after the death of Trayvon Martin. It first began with the mismanagement of the investigation. There was an immediate presumption of innocence for Zimmerman and an assumption of guilt for Martin. The fact that that tests for drugs and other substances were conducted on Martin and not Zimmerman  also reflects the focus of the investigation being biased against Martin.

Sanford, Fla., Investigator Chris Serino wanted to file manslaughter charges against Zimmerman after the investigation of the incident on the day it occurred but was told not to by Norman Wolfinger, the State Attorney.

It’s not surprising that there was a shoddy and incomplete investigation of the murder of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla. The town has a history (as does most of America ) of unconstrained, unchastened violence towards Blacks. The New York Times reports on several instances of anti-black violence. In fact, the current police chief, Ben Lee (who has temporarily stepped down as chief) obtained his job after the former police chief, Brian Tooley, lost the job because of the shoddy investigation of an assault on a Black man by a Sanford police officer’s son. Not too surprising, Norman Wolfinger, the State Attorney who declined to charge Zimmerman is quoted back in 2010 as saying “It depends on what we see once we’re done, but you know the ones that obviously come to light in the video perhaps are battery, things like that, perhaps assault, felony battery…” Once you see the video, once you realize that this guy Wolfinger is still saying we have to see, you will understand that the lack of concern is not too different that the cold, cruel, heartlessness of the wickedly sadistic slaveholders of old.

Recently, there was been a buzz about a pill to curb the racist tendencies of individuals. 36 white, mostly British volunteers were given a drug to combat heart disease. While on the drug, they were given a test that measured racial bias in the test-taker. Supposedly, the volunteers scored lower, implying less racial bias, while on the drug.

Beyond the fact  that 36 is too tiny a sample to draw any significant conclusion (although they published their work anyway), questions abound. The most obvious question is, if the drug does work, what happens when the racist runs out of the drug? Doesn’t the very nature of being racist precludes a desire to even take the drug? Doesn’t the racist have a logic and value system that justifies racism? After all, if you know you are a racist, and don’t want to be one, wouldn’t you just stop? If you didn’t know you were a  racist (which is somewhat hard to believe), but someone told you that you were racist, would you want to begin taking this drug,  or continue to believe you aren’t racist?

Furthermore, why on Earth would a team studying heart conditions administer a test regarding racial bias? Certainly, to have racists view the objects of their racial hatred would start their blood boiling, but is race the most stress inducing agent in a white person’s life? It just seems to me there are a great many other issues and concerns that would cause stress which are more common parts of everyday life. Moreover, what are the implications about the researchers’ opinion about the race related attitudes of the greater white population, if their representative sample is all white and they use race to elevate their blood pressure? Is this a tacit acknowledgement that all whites are racist? If the researchers truly believe that such a small sampling can be the basis for making actionable inferences, are they painting a whole group of people in the broad swaths that disregard the individuals who aren’t reflected in the sampling?

The scenario that concerns me the most is the one where agents of some corporate, governmental or other institutional entity would seek to promote the use of such a drug among the Black population. These institutions and their Black ambassadors, under the pretense of concern over the high rate of elevated blood pressure documented among African-Americans, would attempt to get as many physicians as possible to prescribe the drug to Black people. The hope would be that Black people would not be as quick to vigorously combat anti-Black racism. Blacks still wouldn’t like the racism, they would just be less likely to do something about it. In this manner, white supremacy would be able to continue to exist and Blacks would once again be accomplices in our own oppression.

Marcus Garvey once stated (in paraphrase) that the white man’s science is the threat Black people (and white people as well, truth be told) must be on guard against going into the future. Most drugs (and a lot of foods) contain chemicals that we don’t need to live long productive lives.  More often than not, a change in lifestyle is a better prescription for normalizing blood pressure. The removal of stress and improved diet would be direct results if Blacks were to be able to pursue lives free of racism. If you want to lower the high incident of elevated blood pressure in the Black community, actively fight racism!

Today it was reported that the Justice Department ruled against the state of TexASS in their Repiglican led effort to discriminate against individuals, mostly of Hispanic genealogy, who lack the ways and means to pass identification tests. The tests stood in the way of those who would participate in the voting process and were assumed to vote for the Demoncrats. The goal of the Repiglican led legislation was to block the votes of those who would commit voter fraud via impersonation of legitimate voters.

Just as in the year 2000 during the Bush-Gore presidential election, this Repiglican legislation would have prevented millions of voters from participating in the electoral process. However, this time the effort would be to block Hispanics as opposed to Blacks, which was the case in the year 2000. In the New York Times article dated March 12, 2012, Benjamin T. Jealous, head of the NAACP, is quoted as saying it would support hundreds of thousands of Hispanics attempting to exercise their right to vote. Here is  were I have issue with this ‘issue’. Why wasn’t the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund quoted? The NAACP is on record once again in support of non-Black issues were the NAACP was created by all whites and one Black (W.E.B. DuBois), to support Blacks, when has MALDEF come out to support Black issues? Although a Hispanic issue such as this encompasses people such as Filipinos, Dominicans, Puerto Ricans and others (some of whom are certainly Black), where is the MALDEF leadership? Certainly the majority of the Hispanics in TexASS are Mexican, so, where is MALDEF?

Here, Barack Obama (by all appearances, a BLACK MAN), has his administration stake out a position that is supportive of Mexicans, and MALDEF is NO WHERE to be found. What is their response to this issue?

My point is that until there is respect and equanimity between the various groups that are oppressed by the mainstream western European civilization, there can be no mutually effective coalitions.  Reciprocity is the key to equanimity. Until the various oppressed group in America and the world support Black people, the hierarchy of racism will always be re-enforced by coalitions in that the other groups will rise because of Black efforts. Blacks are at the lowest level in this paradigm, so their rising tide will lift all the boats above us, while other groups’ tide will not necessarily raise ours unless specific action mandates it to be so.

I was recently reading a book on body language when the author mentioned the “hate stare” that some Southern whites give to Blacks. I paused and began to wonder, what could be the reason for this hate?

It occurred to me that the reason  had to be because we are no longer slaves.  If a person is  a chattel slave, they represent valuable property. Therefore, economically, it makes no sense to maim or kill a slave, because you would  incur a financial loss. This does not imply there were ‘good masters’ all over the south, because a happy slave was a productive slave. One need only look to the sweat shops and coal mine operations during the industrial revolution to see that the reverse was true. That review would provide a mountain of evidence regarding the sub-human conditions western civilization would subject workers to, and you have yet to include the record of slave conditions documented in the south.

So it seems to me that the primary reason for the hate is that we are no longer slaves. They cannot stand the fact that we are no longer legally bound to obey them. The fact that we are free and when left to our own devices are able to generate economic stability for ourselves is infuriating. They must constantly enact laws and policies to keep us repressed because the very productivity they stole for so many years would (and has in many cases already) allow us to elevate socially and economically above many of them. I think this is the greatest source of hatred. They can’t stand the fact that a Black person could end up better off than them. It represents the turning upside down of their entire world view. Black success is a mirror that reflects their own insecurities and short-comings.

The bottom line is that this hate is their problem. If they didn’t subscribe to a way of looking at the world that requires them to be on top no matter what, they wouldn’t feel like losers when others work hard and advance. It is also our problem as Black people suffer more hate crimes than any other group on a consistent basis. Moreover, nearly three of every five hate criminals is white. This is why we have to deal with their problem, it manifests against us.

The first step with dealing with any problem is to admit it. This means we must neutralize those Blacks who seek to minimize and discount the existence of racism. These Blacks are those who argue against Blacks working together to build communities that will welcome Black agendas and address Black issues. They resist any effort to encourage Blacks to develop anything pro-Black. These people are often put in position by whites to disrupt and disparage anything that geared to advancing Black people  or creating Black socioeconomic power.

Money alone is not the solution, for as Stevie Wonder once said, ” You might have the cash but you Can…not cash in your face.” Many Blacks feel if they have enough money, they look more green than Black. That may be true for the few multimillionaire Blacks who are primarily found in some form of entertainment (where the majority of them are contracted employees), but for the great majority that’s not reality. How many Black multimillionaires do you live next to? How many do you know? No, for the majority of Blacks a self-centered, individualistic attitude will not lead to the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness we all want and deserve. Besides, Black people have build economically successful communities over and over again throughout the our history in America, only to see them destroyed because we didn’t have the political power and means to protect them. Only by working together, by teaching and practicing habits that value mutual respect, education and entrepreneurship can we build the political and socioeconomic power necessary to protect ourselves, and our posterity.

Why are Black People always complaining? Because a closed mouth doesn’t get fed! If silence is truly the voice of complicity, then for the sake of truth and justice, Black People must never be silent! To be silent would only mean that we agree with the unjust treatment and false characterizations of Black People by mainstream western civilization.

Some may ask, ‘What is it that Black People want?’ In my opinion, we want the freedom to fulfill the potential that we see in ourselves, not the potential assigned to us by mainstream western civilization. We want the freedom to create our own opportunity to become what we envision. The freedom to  fight and struggle against the natural obstacles that all people must face, not the artificial obstacles purposely created to keep us in a political and socioeconomic state of disenfranchisement. Disenfranchisement that exists only to justify the world view of white supremacy, and to maintain the advantages created for white supremacists and their supporters  by the theft and exploitation of Black People, Black creativity and Black labor during the last several centuries.

I feel Black People want freedom from the anxiety and stress experienced just by living in a world pervasive with anti-Black racism. We want to be able to walk the street without fear of attack by those who seek to harm us only because of the color of our skin.  We want to be able to walk the street without fear of attack by police and other political entities which seek to threaten and intimidate us into being silent participants in our own suppression. We want to be able to walk the street without fear of attack by Hollywood and marketing images that seek to marginalize and debase Black men, women, children and our relationships with each other.

It is well know that fear produces either  flight or fight as a response. Since disrespect will always lead to violence, our path is very clear. It is also very clear that there are cycles to political behavior. As the world is embarking upon a new wave of political backlash against injustice, it is only a matter of time before new, more vigorous political groups form to fight for justice and respect. All across the world, people are rising up to fight for justice, and mainstream western civilization needs to take heed because that unrest is manifesting in the United States, the crown of western civilization.  From the Civil War until the present, the issue of Blacks in america has been the spark that has caused drastic and dramatic change in western civilization. It seems that the cycle is returning to the powder keg position. Yet there is still time for western civilization to remove the fuse! Instead of a reactionary response, america  must embark on a new path towards justice and respect for Black People. As Black People are at the bottom of the paradigm of racism, all others will benefit when Black People benefit. Therefore, western civilization must treat Black People with a new-found sense of respect and a cessation of hostilities.  Otherwise, I suspect large numbers of whites and other non-Blacks will join the call to radically re-direct the writing of the next chapter of american history. Give Black People justice. Give Black People respect. Give Black People freedom. The future is watching.