Recently that twit, Michelle Obama, made a remark that for the first time she was proud of her country, setting off a firestorm of controversy for some reason. I don't know what Obama meant and little do I care. But I can tell you what set white folk's teeth on edge. GUILT. Plain and simple. Why do they seem to think that blacks should feel the same flag waving national obsession as they do? I stopped saying the pledge of allegiance when I was ten years old. There was nobody I could ask as to why my country hated on me so much, why they wanted to destroy me wholesale, why they wanted to obliterate me, a child.
The year is 1964, and as a child in school part of our daily routine is to say the Pledge of Allegiance to the American flag. The Vietnam War is raging on, sucking up the lives of thousands of brothers, enlisting or drafted into this insane war. The civil rights movement is at it's height, with marches and sit-ins happening daily. Hoses, dogs, night sticks, were used on my people daily, black people, doing nothing more than demanding what belonged to them, the right to be free in the country they now called theirs, not through coming here with the settlers willingly, not by way of Ellis Island, and an invite, not through immigration, not through illegal immigration, crossing the border into this country. We came by slavery.
We were stolen, kidnapped, rounded up like cattle, hurled onto slave ships and dragged to this country in fear and terror, not knowing or understanding what was happening to us. Mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, grandparents, babies, children. Young, old, firm and infirm. Can you imagine what happened to you if you were found to be too old, sick, infirm? Can you? What kind of hatred and evil did it take to toss another human over the side of ship like so much unwanted garbage?
Of course you might get lucky. You might get sick from the ill treatment received on the voyage over, sick enough to die. You might get lucky enough to be able to kill yourself by hurling yourself overboard. Being really unlucky? Being raped. Being used and abused by the men of the ship if you are a female and they feel they want to do so. Was any newly captured African woman safe from the horrors of this crime?
Slavery comes and slavery goes. It is estimated that 200 million people of African decent were murdered during the course of slavery. Murder is my term, but murder is what it is. The numbers could be higher of course, but we will never know. Slavery existed in this country for 200 hate filled years, and Michael Medved need not tell us that they were years filled with happy slaves singing zippty do da as that freak Walt Disney would have you believe. He would have you believe that slaves were happy, well cared for, and that slavery was not the heinous institution we make it out to be. Dragged from your homeland by strange people; put in shackles so you can't escape; death and atrocities on the crossing; ripped from the arms of kith and kin; hard years of slaving in the fields of whites, on plantations, for their gain, not yours; no benefits package; kith and kin ripped from your arms, sold to others, never to see them again; oh happy damn day.
Slavery finally ends but the hate remains. So much so that Lincoln is assassinated. Thus begins the long journey of our nightmare, freedom. What's so free about it? Now the hatred really begins. Segregation begins in every aspect of black life. Housing, education, jobs, health care, transportation, you name it, we got Jim Crow for it. Suppressed, repressed, depressed, squashed and put down. Now even more hated than before when we were slaves, hatred is heaped on us for now merely existing.
With Dr. King and sister Rosa Parks, come hope and deliverance. Cedric the lardbutt entertainer(sic) needs to return to school to bone up on his black history studies. If Sister Parks had not refused to give up her seat on that bus on that day, his fat hide would still be riding the back of the bus. It is a moment that changed history. Dr. King delivered us from the oppression not of slave masters, but of those angry and hateful because we gained our freedom, and they still continued their anger and hatred. I should forget the ignorance of someone who didn't take time with their history or possibly didn't even care what ignorance came out of his mouth for the sake of comedy. He wasn't funny.
Unfortunately, Dr. King didn't live long enough to finish his work, and we have not continued it as well as we should have. EVERYONE has dropped the ball to a certain extent and to the detriment of us all. Racism, which is as deeply ingrained in this country as it ever was, had gone underground, under the detection of our radar, to the point that a few words said by Michelle Obama hit a nerve. Maybe she felt it the way people percieved it, maybe she meant nothing by the remark. But I can totally understand it because I lived it, felt it, that my country did not want or need my pride in it. Why, how, could I have pride in a country which openly hated me, having done what it's done to me, to my ancestors? How can I when I was never fully embraced by the country which enslaved and freed me, but still hated me afterwards? How?
Do you ever wonder why there were no blacks in Sex In The City? Because whites still can't manage to see blacks as basically normal human beings, with the same lives, same feelings, same wants and desires as their's. Guilt. It doesn't allow them to see us at all, too many times. Hate now comes from another reason as whites see it. Now that we've been free for more than a hundred years why can't we make it? Why aren't we better educated, better housed, better jobbed(!), in fact, why don't we have better everything now that we're free? And why do we keep committing so much crime, having so many out of wedlock babies, not getting married, filling up the jails? Because, tho they won't admit it, we are still locked down by their perceptions and their hatred. And their guilt.
Is any of the above what Michelle Obama meant? I neither know nor care. I do know the feelings can be out there, where they stem from, and why. I don't know if she has them so I don't claim to understand her or what she meant to say. I had been thinking about this for a long time, so she is just the catalyst for this post. I don't support her, and I most definitely don't support her husband. But I do support their right to say whatever they feel because that is who I am, and because of the sacrifice that went into gaining them that right.
I should have stated that this post was really in response to a post by Taylor Marsh on her blog, here.
The year is 1964, and as a child in school part of our daily routine is to say the Pledge of Allegiance to the American flag. The Vietnam War is raging on, sucking up the lives of thousands of brothers, enlisting or drafted into this insane war. The civil rights movement is at it's height, with marches and sit-ins happening daily. Hoses, dogs, night sticks, were used on my people daily, black people, doing nothing more than demanding what belonged to them, the right to be free in the country they now called theirs, not through coming here with the settlers willingly, not by way of Ellis Island, and an invite, not through immigration, not through illegal immigration, crossing the border into this country. We came by slavery.
We were stolen, kidnapped, rounded up like cattle, hurled onto slave ships and dragged to this country in fear and terror, not knowing or understanding what was happening to us. Mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, grandparents, babies, children. Young, old, firm and infirm. Can you imagine what happened to you if you were found to be too old, sick, infirm? Can you? What kind of hatred and evil did it take to toss another human over the side of ship like so much unwanted garbage?
Of course you might get lucky. You might get sick from the ill treatment received on the voyage over, sick enough to die. You might get lucky enough to be able to kill yourself by hurling yourself overboard. Being really unlucky? Being raped. Being used and abused by the men of the ship if you are a female and they feel they want to do so. Was any newly captured African woman safe from the horrors of this crime?
Slavery comes and slavery goes. It is estimated that 200 million people of African decent were murdered during the course of slavery. Murder is my term, but murder is what it is. The numbers could be higher of course, but we will never know. Slavery existed in this country for 200 hate filled years, and Michael Medved need not tell us that they were years filled with happy slaves singing zippty do da as that freak Walt Disney would have you believe. He would have you believe that slaves were happy, well cared for, and that slavery was not the heinous institution we make it out to be. Dragged from your homeland by strange people; put in shackles so you can't escape; death and atrocities on the crossing; ripped from the arms of kith and kin; hard years of slaving in the fields of whites, on plantations, for their gain, not yours; no benefits package; kith and kin ripped from your arms, sold to others, never to see them again; oh happy damn day.
Slavery finally ends but the hate remains. So much so that Lincoln is assassinated. Thus begins the long journey of our nightmare, freedom. What's so free about it? Now the hatred really begins. Segregation begins in every aspect of black life. Housing, education, jobs, health care, transportation, you name it, we got Jim Crow for it. Suppressed, repressed, depressed, squashed and put down. Now even more hated than before when we were slaves, hatred is heaped on us for now merely existing.
With Dr. King and sister Rosa Parks, come hope and deliverance. Cedric the lardbutt entertainer(sic) needs to return to school to bone up on his black history studies. If Sister Parks had not refused to give up her seat on that bus on that day, his fat hide would still be riding the back of the bus. It is a moment that changed history. Dr. King delivered us from the oppression not of slave masters, but of those angry and hateful because we gained our freedom, and they still continued their anger and hatred. I should forget the ignorance of someone who didn't take time with their history or possibly didn't even care what ignorance came out of his mouth for the sake of comedy. He wasn't funny.
Unfortunately, Dr. King didn't live long enough to finish his work, and we have not continued it as well as we should have. EVERYONE has dropped the ball to a certain extent and to the detriment of us all. Racism, which is as deeply ingrained in this country as it ever was, had gone underground, under the detection of our radar, to the point that a few words said by Michelle Obama hit a nerve. Maybe she felt it the way people percieved it, maybe she meant nothing by the remark. But I can totally understand it because I lived it, felt it, that my country did not want or need my pride in it. Why, how, could I have pride in a country which openly hated me, having done what it's done to me, to my ancestors? How can I when I was never fully embraced by the country which enslaved and freed me, but still hated me afterwards? How?
Do you ever wonder why there were no blacks in Sex In The City? Because whites still can't manage to see blacks as basically normal human beings, with the same lives, same feelings, same wants and desires as their's. Guilt. It doesn't allow them to see us at all, too many times. Hate now comes from another reason as whites see it. Now that we've been free for more than a hundred years why can't we make it? Why aren't we better educated, better housed, better jobbed(!), in fact, why don't we have better everything now that we're free? And why do we keep committing so much crime, having so many out of wedlock babies, not getting married, filling up the jails? Because, tho they won't admit it, we are still locked down by their perceptions and their hatred. And their guilt.
Is any of the above what Michelle Obama meant? I neither know nor care. I do know the feelings can be out there, where they stem from, and why. I don't know if she has them so I don't claim to understand her or what she meant to say. I had been thinking about this for a long time, so she is just the catalyst for this post. I don't support her, and I most definitely don't support her husband. But I do support their right to say whatever they feel because that is who I am, and because of the sacrifice that went into gaining them that right.
I should have stated that this post was really in response to a post by Taylor Marsh on her blog, here.
3 comments:
Damn Mrs. Jazzy!!
This is a post you need to send to Bill'Oliely over at Fox. Maybe he can call back his "lynching party" he has planned for Mrs. O. This pretty much sums up everything that the average Black American feels.
This is also the reason I like reading your thoughts. You tell it like it T-I-IS.
WOW! Very interesting post, thanks for letting us know what is on your mind LOL!
Peace & Love!
my patriotism ain't like your patriotism!
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