Extemporaneous musings, occasionally poetic, about life in its richly varied dimensions, especially as relates to history, theology, law, literature, science, by one who is an attorney, ordained minister, historian, writer, and African American.
Friday, August 11, 2017
RENEWED ASCENT
HYMN TO OUR RENEWED ASCENT
Lacking outwardly, we all turned inwardly, into God. And multiplied.
Thus, we, discrete tribal "Africans" a/k/a "negers," negroes, coloreds, slaves, Moors , blacks, became Americans, by default, involuntarily, as a series of gruff concessions, in now-our strange, bloody land that needed our indispensable power; that needed all our other anciently renowned and praised attributes, such as our mental and physical strength; our emotional capacity for tenacity; our often imitated, celebrated, historically legendary, yes, ever amazing: intelligence, intuitions, vibrancy, energy, resiliency, spirituality, creativity, fecundity to help it, to defeat the breakaway Confederate States of America. Further, to grow its broad dominions from "sea to shining sea." So, we worked in, we sweated in, we sung in, we loved in, we birthed in, fought, died in, thrived in, disdained mass suicide in, our new land, home, our new territory .
Ruled over at first by wicked white men and their cruel white women, who brutalized us with whips, guns, chains, laws, lies, dogs, books, we observed, learned, listened. We grew stronger, bolder, wiser, defter.
Brought by destiny, over a mighty sea. Whimsy taught us to grin and bear. Hunger taught us to live and care : for ourselves and for others: be they neighbors, friends, fathers, sisters, mothers or be our brothers.
With our facile grin and bear, with our dissembled laissez-faire, we slyly displayed our "we don't care" masks, and we rose. We got up. We lifted ourselves up. We lifted each other back ! UP FROM SLAVERY!
In freeing our selves, we inevitably, inversely, saved from dissolution our nation, the United States of America, the "Union." It was lifted up, redeemed, restored as we lifted up, ourselves: we redeemed, restored it too, along with the red, white, and blue of starred-striped our national symbols and flag.
This nation was thrice rescued from martial defeat by us: in the American Revolution , the War of 1812, and again in the Civil War. So, we former, smitten, innocent slaves cemented twain entwined legacies, of dual engrafted destinies, forever.
Recapitulating: in our noble saga, we, black Americans, came up from slavery; up from Reconstruction; up from Republicans' betrayal; up from "Jim Crow," segregation; up from black codes; up from separate but equal; up from judicial pretensions of justice; up from no-education, under-education, miseducation; up from negative vaudeville lampoons of us, and burlesque stereotypes; up armed forces discrimination; up from mob-led castration-tarring and feathering-lynching-burning at the stake for ghoulish amusement, postcards, trophies of gore; up from rape; up from lachrymose dis-integration; up from white backlash and consternation ; up from hostile political, economic, social, legal-justice marginalization. We are still getting up, rising up, mounting up.
So Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Sessions, white supremacists, actual mob gangsters; drive-by shooters, and all the rest of you haters and deprecatory traducers, take due note: Africans are God's primordial people, who have been sent to earth, in this season, to re-season every leeching man-made pollution on earth, a now-wretched earth. You can hop onboard and ride along on our divine "ascent" to glory, its restoration on earth, if you act right! But if you act up: out with you ! Begone wicked unrighteous! Begone for good! God has got us. God has got this. God has you too!