POST-PAN-AFRICAN

POST PAN-AFRICAN PRIVATIONS We African Americans are blessed. "Blessed" meaning that we are the offspring of superheroes, survivors of the most woeful hell ever known! "We" have come through the fiery furnaces of African enslavement's many village burnings, beheadings, death marches, family dispersions, barracoon confinements, diseases. "We" have come through, we have somehow, sometimes, survived filthy, fetid slave holds, without light, fresh air, hygiene, clean water, exercise, space, in the belly of wooden whales, slave ships, for weeks', for months'-long, voyages to New World ports from Africa's entire West, Central, Southern, East Coasts. Pan-African privation ! Women routinely were raped on board ships by sailors, officers; for pregnant women brought higher prices than those that were not--two for one price--and they will have shown fecund propensities, capable of bearing. The enforced separation of African genders from one another began on slave ships to facilitate control of each, to ease and regularize access to females, to reduce outbreaks of rebellions, their observed rapes by enslaved, outraged men, would cause. They were separated by gender to seal incipient fear and adoration of the enslavers, or to promote economy. Millions of African people of both genders did not survive the brutal centuries-long: Western European transatlantic voyages , barracoons, death marches, village burnings, beheadings, family dispersions, cultural destructions, language liquidations. Identity confounding. But "we" did . Our forbears did survive. We are irreversible proof! Once "we" were sold to "masters" upon arrival, we were further dispersed, repeatedly from evanescence family. We also had acquired value, worth, as chattels, so much worth in fact, we became more valuable than the lands we worked, crops that we produced, buildings that we built, combined! We learned new languages, English primarily or secondarily. Mostly we bided our time--notable exceptions notwithstanding, i.e. , "Stono," 1739; New York, 1741; Gabriel Prosser, 1800; New Orleans, 1811; Denmark Vesey, 1822; Rev. Nat Turner , 1831; Civil War, 1861-1865; and tens of thousands of runaways! All of life naturally seeks to escape confinement, tries to make a bid for freedom, an impulsive craving that is shared with all that breathes , be it animal, plant, fish, a desire, thirst, innate need for freedom of motion , of mind, circumstances, and peace. We are blessed! As 2019 African Americans, "this is the place for which our fathers sighed!" Being offsprings of superheroes we are superheroes! That status , that miraculous history of our forbears, is what causes the dread of us, by the descendants of those who had once enslaved, abused, raped, us. What former oppressors may not know, and what too many of us do not know is : That we now alive are surviving descendants of the most high! We are primordial, aboriginal, first. Ours is a direct line of divine descent from the Creator, of all that is, was , ever can be, in existence on earth, physical material spiritual! That is the knowledge that is "too wonderful for us We cannot attain to it" recounted in the 139:6 Psalm. "Where do we go from your spirit, where do we flee from your presence? If I ascend into heaven, you are there, if I make my bed in hell, behold, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning , and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me and your right hand shall hold me." Psalm 139:7-10. Amen.