Certain politicians have mentioned, most notably President Bill Clinton, that "black folks must understand white folks' fears; and white folks must understand black folks' pain."
When I first heard that utterance, it confounded me. Fears? What fears? Why fears? When and where fears?
Pain I knew well and know very well!
Considering that white folks--whether Muslim or Christian--have explored "Darkest Africa" repeatedly; exported slaves and wild animals and untold flora from it for many years; colonized it; brutalized and exploited it, for centuries, without incident: why fear?
The only successful slave revolt--before the African American Freedom War, which is seen more as a white 'civil war,' rather than as a slave and Freedman's revolt, that it really was, cleverly dissembled--involved Haiti, culminating in its liberation in 1803.
Admittedly, Dutch slaves in Surinam fled into the jungles during the 17-18th centuries, and continued their traditional subsistence lifestyles free of whites, but fatalities there were relatively few on both sides.
Even during the formal "Freedom War" in America, 1861-1865, no cities, farms, or plantations were ever burned by the blacks and no women or children were murdered or raped, by marauding blacks, while the white men were away fighting! Why fear?
After the Union was saved, greatly due to the effort of blacks, and after white men had reconciled, having temporarily "buried the hatchet," their constitutional and legal promises and covenants made for and to blacks were repeatedly broken, without fear.
During the ensuing century of duplicity, when segregation, black codes, peonage, lynching, and legal hostility or indifference blasted their hopes, shattered dreams, and forced blacks to abandon lands, crops, and chattels in the South and to flee pell-mell in successive waves to the North and West, they inflicted no violence, during this post-1879 "Exodus" era.
Even through the Civil Rights and Black Power eras of the 1950s and 1970s, blacks' predominant paradigm was massive nonviolence. Even then, the great bulk of the violence that occurred was inflicted by police on demonstrating blacks, on rioters or on Black Panthers in urban centers.
So, again what are white folks' fears?I don't understand such "fears" as having any objective or historical basis in fact, law, custom, commerce.
Black folks' pain, though, is historic, objectively documented, and quite palpable, including the frothy kind emanating from too many slick and deceitful politicians' forked tongues!
Tuesday, November 4, 2014
WHITE 'FEARS'; BLACK PAIN
WHITE "FEARS" AND BLACK PAIN
Certain politicians have mentioned, most notably President Bill Clinton, that "black folks must understand white folks' fears; and white folks must understand black folks' pain."
When I first heard that utterance, it confounded me. Fears? What fears? Why fears? When and where fears?
Pain I knew well and know very well!
Considering that white folks--whether Muslim or Christian--have explored "Darkest Africa" repeatedly; exported slaves and wild animals and untold flora from it for many years; colonized it; brutalized and exploited it, for centuries, without incident: why fear?
The only successful slave revolt--before the African American Freedom War, which is seen more as a white 'civil war,' rather than as a slave and Freedman's revolt, that it really was, cleverly dissembled--involved Haiti, culminating in its liberation in 1803.
Admittedly, Dutch slaves in Surinam fled into the jungles during the 17-18th centuries, and continued their traditional subsistence lifestyles free of whites, but fatalities there were relatively few on both sides.
Even during the formal "Freedom War" in America, 1861-1865, no cities, farms, or plantations were ever burned by the blacks and no women or children were murdered or raped, by marauding blacks, while the white men were away fighting! Why fear?
After the Union was saved, greatly due to the effort of blacks, and after white men had reconciled, having temporarily "buried the hatchet," their constitutional and legal promises and covenants made for and to blacks were repeatedly broken, without fear.
During the ensuing century of duplicity, when segregation, black codes, peonage, lynching, and legal hostility or indifference blasted their hopes, shattered dreams, and forced blacks to abandon lands, crops, and chattels in the South and to flee pell-mell in successive waves to the North and West, they inflicted no violence, during this post-1879 "Exodus" era.
Even through the Civil Rights and Black Power eras of the 1950s and 1970s, blacks' predominant paradigm was massive nonviolence. Even then, the great bulk of the violence that occurred was inflicted by police on demonstrating blacks, on rioters or on Black Panthers in urban centers.
So, again what are white folks' fears?I don't understand such "fears" as having any objective or historical basis in fact, law, custom, commerce.
Black folks' pain, though, is historic, objectively documented, and quite palpable, including the frothy kind emanating from too many slick and deceitful politicians' forked tongues!
Certain politicians have mentioned, most notably President Bill Clinton, that "black folks must understand white folks' fears; and white folks must understand black folks' pain."
When I first heard that utterance, it confounded me. Fears? What fears? Why fears? When and where fears?
Pain I knew well and know very well!
Considering that white folks--whether Muslim or Christian--have explored "Darkest Africa" repeatedly; exported slaves and wild animals and untold flora from it for many years; colonized it; brutalized and exploited it, for centuries, without incident: why fear?
The only successful slave revolt--before the African American Freedom War, which is seen more as a white 'civil war,' rather than as a slave and Freedman's revolt, that it really was, cleverly dissembled--involved Haiti, culminating in its liberation in 1803.
Admittedly, Dutch slaves in Surinam fled into the jungles during the 17-18th centuries, and continued their traditional subsistence lifestyles free of whites, but fatalities there were relatively few on both sides.
Even during the formal "Freedom War" in America, 1861-1865, no cities, farms, or plantations were ever burned by the blacks and no women or children were murdered or raped, by marauding blacks, while the white men were away fighting! Why fear?
After the Union was saved, greatly due to the effort of blacks, and after white men had reconciled, having temporarily "buried the hatchet," their constitutional and legal promises and covenants made for and to blacks were repeatedly broken, without fear.
During the ensuing century of duplicity, when segregation, black codes, peonage, lynching, and legal hostility or indifference blasted their hopes, shattered dreams, and forced blacks to abandon lands, crops, and chattels in the South and to flee pell-mell in successive waves to the North and West, they inflicted no violence, during this post-1879 "Exodus" era.
Even through the Civil Rights and Black Power eras of the 1950s and 1970s, blacks' predominant paradigm was massive nonviolence. Even then, the great bulk of the violence that occurred was inflicted by police on demonstrating blacks, on rioters or on Black Panthers in urban centers.
So, again what are white folks' fears?I don't understand such "fears" as having any objective or historical basis in fact, law, custom, commerce.
Black folks' pain, though, is historic, objectively documented, and quite palpable, including the frothy kind emanating from too many slick and deceitful politicians' forked tongues!