1619-2019

Before Western European slavery, with which we African Americans have become most rudely familiar, the continent of "Africa" itself had been already pilloried, pinioned, conquered, and colonized by this coterie of others: Assyrian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Arab, Turk, French, British, Italian, and more, since as early as 660 BC. So the subjection and subjugation of Africa is, was, centuries old by the time of 1492, when Columbus happened upon Hispaniola in quest of East Indies. I said that to say this: we are here, still here, in the United States of America, in 2019, despite the straitened circumstances of our brutal arrival, tenure. Like thread woven in the warp and woof of an ancient loom, we have come forth anew, renewed, as "new creatures" having laved, leavened and been laved, leavened as royal Kente cloth robes. We have spun, been spun; brewed, been brewed, shaped and been reshaped by each encounter. How so? Because implicit in each contact is its counter-contact. Not only were we magnetized but we as surely counter-magnetized. They affected us. We affected them. In no way is any "contact" only one way, by definition. Influence is automatic. Breathe the same air? Influence. Touching of bodies? Influence? Eat the same food? Influence. Pray to the same God? Influence. Influence is automatic! As one waxes and the other wanes, we find we are on common planes. Whether glamorized, romanticized as seeds or spores, nations still dig on African shores, for millennia old history, theology, spoil and renown. Recovering for us, what was earlier stolen from us, by their intellectual forbears' frenzied fascination with our forbears' divine orientation, and hospitality, they thereby pay tribute to us, as well, by a sedulous irony. So as the year 2018 wanes and the year 2019 waxes, I embrace the prophecy of Genesis 15: 12-15 to the effect that after 400 years our enslaved people shall be free and our oppressors will be judged by the heavenly hand of redemption.