THANK GOD FOR CELLPHONES

Thank God for iPhones, cellphones, the internet! Now we still-marginalized African American people can freely communicate , differentiate, explicate, our views, unfiltered, of ordinary facts, daily news, instances of police abuse and discrimination; primal philosophy, law, truth, beauty, love, justice, history!

PRAYER LISTS

PUTTING YOUR ENEMIES ON YOUR PRAYER LIST CAN BE AS EFFECTIVE AS PRAYING FOR YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY.

RELIGIOUS IRONY

I find it to be singularly ironic that the veritable descendants of the Ethiopian people, who invented the concept of God, the idea of God, which to them, was the acme, aphelion, perihelion Duat, of all existence, of all creation, pre-Creation, procreation , and the vortices and vertices of the stars, planets, sun, moon, earth, man, arts, crafts, sciences, philosophies, which primordial Ethiopians bequeathed to their offspring the Egyptians, who via the gods: Osiris, Isis, Horus, circumambulated the globe, planting: astronomy, navigation, agriculture, architecture, religion, reading, writing, geometry, arithmetic and more, so as to civilize the earth; would be talked down to by a bold Virginia slaveholder, Charles Colcock Jones, as though they did not know the very God that they had created in conception and that they physically embody in the flesh, in his historic book THE RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION OF THE NEGROES IN THE UNITED STATES (1842). Amazing!

RIGHT TO DEFEAT WRONG

FIGHT FOR THE RIGHT TO DEFEAT WRONG Fighting assiduity with speculation is fighting rockets with sticks and stones. Get assiduous, get sharp! Precise! Exact and exacting in all. Assiduity is being diligent in the conception, perception, processing, of things. Fighting for freedom requires faith, yes , and assiduity in the struggle. Part of the assiduity is defining the scope of the struggle, contenders , theater of struggle, method, ends. The fight for true freedom involves literally everyone, everywhere. So tenacious is the battle that no one method, one organization, person, government , religion, race can go it alone . As manufactured plastic residues have floated to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, so too have they and others breached outer space. As pollution, nuclear wastes are in the air , on the ground, underground, in outer space, on the moon, Mars, and now even on asteroids , so too do evil, racism, greed, inhumanity, saturate man's spirit , blood stream, DNA, values. Thus all of mankind, therefore all of humankind, must be recruited, and trained, inspired, deployed to fight! Fight where you are ! Fight as you are! Fight evil wherever you find it! Your soul knows, innately knows, all evil. You mind is blessed divine but your body is not, so you must strive to balance divinity inside humanity, and to avoid hypocrisy assiduously! As you live and breathe you must fight for the right to defeat wrong. You! You! And especially yes you! Amen.

DO YOU AND YOURS

Do what naturally best befits you and yours. Don't waste any of your precious time worrying about me and mine. Be blessed!

MEMORIAL DAY HOMAGE TO BLACK AMERICA

MEMORIAL DAY HOMAGE TO BLACK AMERICAN POWER Without black Americans there could not have been a United States of America. Our unique ability to engage in hard labor, our superhuman endurance, inexhaustible creative, inventive, and adaptive genius wrought the amazing economic, military,cultural dynamo that basally fueled, empowered the famously insurgent "American" colonial, domestic, territorial and international trade, industry, expansion, exploration, innovation in business, commerce, government, science, entertainment, music, culture. Without blacks America could not exist, would not exist! Earlier colonial failures attest.

beauty

CONSCIOUSNESS CONSCIENCE WEALTH

CONSCIOUSNESS, CONSCIENCE, WEALTH Wealth can be gotten by criminal mischief as well as by many lawful means. There are at least two ways to acquire riches, history reflects. Six years ago, I wrote : "One's conscience or value system is either inborn, acquired, both, or neither. Consciousness is the vital life force that animates all of life. Conscience is a subset of consciousness pertinent to human behavior. It marks “man.” All life has consciousness. But, not all life has consciences." I was recently greatly moved by Frederick Douglass' declension of "conscience" in MY BONDAGE AND MY FREEDOM'S appendix. In a speech from December 1850 he said this: "It is, then , the first business of the enslaver of men to blunt, deaden, and destroy the central principle of human responsibility. Conscience is to the individual soul, and to society, what the law of gravitation is to the universe. It holds society together; it is the basis of all trust and confidence ; it is the pillar of all moral rectitude. Without it, suspicion would take the place of trust; vice would be more than a match for virtue; men would prey upon each other, like wild beasts of the desert; and earth would become a 'hell'." Comparing conscience to gravity is particularly profound for both keep us bound to the ground until death comes around to release renown. William Wells Brown, another self-educated, self-liberated, a former slave from Missouri as elsewhere, writer, historian, freedom fighter, wrote : "The blacks have been so badly treated in the past that kind words and social recognition will do much to win them in the future, for success will not depend so much upon the matter as upon their manner; not so much on their faith as upon the more potent direct influence of their practice ." P. 821, "My Southern Home," WILLIAM WELLS BROWN: CLOTEL AND OTHER WRITINGS (2014) Both Douglass and Brown became wealthy men by the standards of their day in the 19th century. Few acts in history are comparable to the African slave trade and chattel slavery in the Americas for wanton degradation, eradication; and then elevation of people deigned to be doomed to genocide by detractors! But through it all we are still here! And by the grace of God we are still here; conscious of our conscience by divine consciousness of destiny.

"YOUNG BOY"

"YOUNG BOY" "Young boy on the go trying to be a big man. Building his house on the sinking sand. Working on his rap to impress the gals. Acting real cool to impress his pals. No job no skill no money either. Needing all but having neither! Living at home, and paying no rent . Flunking school and giving no hint, that he intends to grow into a righteous man. Just shucking and jiving and living off the land. Say young brother! Tell me what's it gonna be? How you gonna earn some dignity, if you don't accept responsibility? You know this, so don't act surprised. Dignity ain't between a young girl's thighs, nor responsibility in a junky's eyes." I wrote "Young Boy" back in 1986. I had just entered private practice of law. My friend, and brother, the man who married me to my second wife, Lyla: the late, great AME preacher, Rev. William Howard Clark, also the Urban League of Greater Kansas City President, had asked me to write something poetic to address the black teen pregnancy, sexual responsibility program, his group was initiating. I read it aloud to some adults and hardly got a reaction from them at Bill's program . But, also I later read it at Southwest High School, at a teacher's request. The kids went wild! I couldn't believe it! I didn't know what was happening! I still don't know. But I saw then that hip/hop was a powerful medium of communication among the young! 

ALL TOO COMMON CANARDS

ALL TOO COMMON CANARDS Conflicting canards confuse men, don't they? Canards are untruths, fables, fairytales, are cultural lies. "You can lead a horse to water , but you can't make him drink " is a common canard. But horses don't need to be led to potable water. In fact, they lead men to potable water in the deserts. If a horse doesn't drink that water , man can know that something is wrong with that water, and pass on its being potable or fit to drink by either one! As with the "horse and the water" canard, many more serve in cultural roles to confuse mankind. They appear to be true. They are often claimed to be true, but are not! They are but like the horse to water canard . We are the ones misled!

PROPRIETY AND SOVEREIGNTY

Dr. Robert F. Smith's acknowledgement of his "eight generations of Africans" in this country who were mentioned as co-givers of the historic debt-forgiveness grant for graduating 2019 seniors at Morehouse College speaks to a very precise knowledge of his historical antecedents . That is extremely uncommon.among all Americans of any color. Its assertion is moreover an assertion of sovereignty, of propriety of place, as United States citizens.

2 Peter 1:5-7

.2 Peter 1:5-7 King James Version (KJV) "5 And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; 6 And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; 7 And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity." After re-reading this scripture again today, I was struck. Is not virtue a necessary incident of faith? Why then need it be "added ?" Knowledge I could easily see, conceive of as being separate from faith and virtue; the acquisition of knowledge requires "diligence." Temperance (or moderation) was usually an accoutrement of knowledge, especially conferred, gifted by the graduate school of hard knocks! From temperance comes patience, a graduate degree derived from all of the foregoing: faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience. These lead to godliness, whose necessary incident , accoutrement is brotherly kindness, is charity, (love). Ultimately, as we move about, along, around , we experience , we accumulate, we associate with each of these characteristics. We may do so diligently or less diligently. But as dust, gas, air, light, earth , endure , so do lesser configurations of God's grace.

"CONSCIENCE" FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Frederick Douglass was a force of nature. More than another exalted, iconic freedom fighter , his sapient wisdom, reflected in his writings and speeches do much more than to mark the frightening road from slavery to freedom for his person. Douglass' writings and speeches demarcate, differentiate , illustrate mostly scientifically, analytically, accurately elements disassociated, distorted, demeaned in the slave in order to disable him, to reduce him, to remove him and her from the realm of divinity into the despond of depravity. "Doctor" Douglass' diagnoses and prognoses are true in 2019 as then. Truth never dies. He wrote: "It is only when we contemplate the slave as a moral and intellectual being that we can adequately comprehend the unparalleled enormity of slavery, and the intense criminality of the slaveholder..... "The slave is a man, 'the image of God', but 'a little lower than the angels'; possessing a soul, eternal and indestructible; capable of endless happiness, or immeasurable woe; a creature of hopes and fears, of affections and passions, of joys and sorrows, and he is endowed with those mysterious powers by which man soars above the things of time and space and sense, and grasps , with undying tenacity , the elevating and sublimely glorious idea of God. It is such a being that is smitten and blasted. The first work of slavery is to mar and deface those characteristics of its victims which distinguish men from things, and persons from property. Its first aim is to destroy all sense of high moral and religious responsibility. It reduces man to a mere machine. It cuts him off from his Maker, and hides him from the laws of God, and leaves him to grope his way from time to eternity in the dark , under the despotic control of a frail, depraved, and sinful fellow-man. As the serpent charmer of India is compelled to extract the deadly teeth of his venomous prey before he is able to handle him with impunity , so the slaveholder must strike down the conscience of the slave before he can obtain the entire mastery over his victim. "It is, then , the first business of the enslaver of men to blunt, deaden, and destroy the central principle of human responsibility. Conscience is to the individual soul, and to society, what the law of gravitation is to the universe. It holds society together; it is the basis of all trust and confidence ; it is the pillar of all moral rectitude. Without it, suspicion would take the place of trust; vice would be more than a match for virtue; men would prey upon each other, like wild beasts of the desert; and earth would become a 'hell'." P. 420-421, MY BONDAGE AND MY FREEDOM, "The Nature of Slavery, December 1, 1850," by Frederick Douglass (1994).

FINANCIAL ADVICE FOR COLLEGE GRADUATES

PERSONAL FINANCIAL ADVICE FOR COLLEGE GRADUATES 🎓 Having finished Howard U. in 1973, law school in 1976; having worked for government, and for myself; and my having been inspired by the startling $40 million gift of debt -free graduation purses for fellow Morehouse's men, 2019 graduates, Cornell and Columbia University's alumnus, Dr. Robert F. Smith, founder and CEO of Vista Equity Group rocks the world! He has 28,000 employees world-wide in his software technology business. I offer this free, unsolicited financial advice to you, dear reader, to all or to anyone who may care to hear. It has worked for me, or, in retrospect may have worked, had I worked it. Hindsight has a blessed 20-20 acuity. Foresight is far dimmer . Debt is an albatross, a veritable ball and chain! Avoid debt like the plague that it is, unless you have no alternatives, absolutely, even then , take out the least amount of debt consistent with your need, for the least security and pay it back fast! How do you do that? Do without the frills, spills, thrills until you can work, save, pay cash, at a discount, for the things that you may need; wants come next, not before! It would help to have a spouse who is similarly committed to your debt-free lifestyle. Thereby you can grow more quickly. Two is better than one. "What's in it for me?" is ever a fair question, whenever it comes to your cash, your time, your energy! Now, should you be blessed with a lump sum of money, more money at one time than you have ever had in your life, be especially careful of its integrity; mice nibble at mites . That means: There is no assurance, nor guarantee that you will ever have that lump-sum or greater again! First, deposit it in a great interest-bearing account. Next talk only to proven money professionals about your needs, options, costs. With priorities set, needs fulfilled, advice shared, confer again with your spouse, confide in them, pray; then, execute your enrichment plan, piece by piece, in segments; using as little of your cash as possible. "Sell'm on the scent, but never dispense any of your sweet dough until the deal is good to go!" Thereafter you can pay it forward or backward, above, and below. But pay you must! The Holy Spirit has moved in a mighty way for you, so you must do likewise for the others! Amen 🙏

ALL HAIL, DR. ROBERT SMITH

Robert F. Smith's extraordinary gift to 400 Morehouse College graduates in Atlanta, Georgia, announced on Sunday , May 19, 2019, tops any other that I have read or heard of in this age of insidious student debt. News reports say that Smith of Colorado, who was awarded an honorary doctorate degree, has agreed to pay-off the individual debts of the all-male college's 2019 graduating class of some $40 million, in addition to giving the college a separate $1.2 million! You talking about 'honoris causa', shonuff! I am stunned! Stunned as the students were stunned; as their parents, relatives were stunned! As Morehouse College administration was stunned! As the world was stunned! The only context that I have in history for such gratuitous magnanimity is Emperor Mansa Musa of Mali, West Africa, who wrecked the economy of Egypt and Saudi Arabia in his hajj to a Mecca in 1324-1325, by gifts of gold profusion, that lowered its value. On his return, he then bought it back, restoring the wrecked economies! There may be others of like, though different, generosity, like Booker T. Washington and Julius Rosenwald, who arranged for the erecting of 5,000 schools in the South, that Tuskegee's Washington's architect designed, with the money supplied by Mr. Julius Rosenwald of the Sears & Roebuck magnanimity. Rosenwald in addition to endowing Tuskegee to reduce Washington's need to travel to raise funds, built schools, shops, and teachers' homes in 15 states of the South and in 488 counties. He required the black communities to contribute labor, land and money to the process , and required the local school boards (who were racist) to agree to maintain the schools, as a condition of Rosenwald Funds gifts. Similarly, Dr. Robert Smith has asked that his graduation gift be paid forward by the Morehouse men to aid others. I praise God for this benevolent man, brother, billionaire, who also has given $20 million to the African American History Museum in Washington, D.C., more than any other donor. Smith is the Founder and CEO of Vista Equity Partners, a private equity firm that invests in software, data, and technology-driven companies. Bravo!

RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION OF NEGROES?

I was not sure what to make of the curious book, THE RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION OF THE NEGROES OF THE UNITED STATES (1842) by Charles Colcock Jones. The book was published one year after the State of Missouri (and certain other states) had forbidden the formal or informal educational instruction of black people and had completely outlawed black preachers in 1841. Of course the famous "Rev. Nat Turner Rebellion" had taken place in 1831, Denmark Vesey's, the AME Church class leader's plot, was betrayed in 1822, in Charleston, South Carolina, and the African Methodist Episcopal Church had been formally incorporated in 1816, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania after having been established in 1787. One of this curious religious book's purposes seems to be to convince Southern slaveholders to permit the religious proselytizing of their African slaves; but, if so, it can hardly expect to have been very successful, given this glowing assessment of the African people who are then enslaved subjects: "That the people of the United States indulge prejudices in respect to the Negroes, both in favor of and adverse to them, as a distinct variety of the human family and as a subordinate class in society, is a fact not to be disguised . On the one hand their ignorance, vulgarity, idleness, improvidence, irreligion and vice, are to be ascribed altogether to their position and circumstances; let these be changed for the better, and the African will immediately be equal, if not greatly excel , the rest of the human family in majesty of intellect , elegance of manners, purity of morals, and ardor of piety; yea, they become the very beau ideal of character , the admiration of the world." But for their enslavement these same Africans would be the "beau ideal " of the world? That glowing compliment is more likely to scare slaveholders, than to induce them to allow any salubrious influence to undercut their hegemonic control. More comfortable to slaveholders is this view of Africans expressed by the same author, Charles Jones: "At the head of the varieties of the human race, stands the fair, or Caucasian variety; 'which' to use the language of another, 'has given birth to the most civilized nations of ancient and modern times, and has exhibited the moral and intellectual powers of human nature in their highest degree of perfection .' At the foot stands the black or Ethiopian variety, 'which has ever remained in a rude and barbarous state; and has been looked upon and treated as an inferior by all the other varieties of the human race from time immemorial.'" P.72-73 What white people think about us matters less than what we know about ourselves. Get knowledge of self. Drop the white public relations campaign! The author quotes from an incited lying white supremacist to calumniate us; but is speaking directly when gawking at our power away from oppressive conditions! Were we to read black history and abandon "white" lies, myths we would discover that we are the true source of ancient civilizations and modern civilizations! "Modern," as in the recent development of global capitalism from our slave history on which capitalism is based. We are also the ones whose varieties of foods, music, dance, literature, is that of the world ; whose lawsuits for freedom have destigmatized and liberated the shame of black people, Chinese people, other people, and white people too! For they--white and other people--resort to the 14th Amendment and civil rights statutes (which were enacted for us, exclusively), after the Civil War, are now used by the other to a greater degree than we! Whatever the purpose may have been for Charles Colcock Jones' THE RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION OF THE NEGROES IN THE UNITED STATES in 1842, it has blessed me with insights of great value in 2019!

JAMES A. GARFIELD

I have never been satisfied with the explanation for the assassination of President James M. Garfield in 1881. Popular wags say that a mad man of deranged mind, of unknown political orientation, had shot him, out of the blue, without rationale. But reading in the BETRAYAL OF THE NEGRO FROM RUTHERFORD B. HAYES TO WOODROW WILSON (1965, 1997) by Rayford W. Logan, my unsupported suspicions begin to find a familiar footing in racism. Logan writes: "Although President Garfield was shot just four months after he took office and died in September, 1881, his brief administration is notable for a definition of the status of the Negro that has been almost entirely overlooked. On many previous occasions he had asserted that Negroes should enjoy full equality after they had been freed. He had been closely allied with Thaddeus Stevens and other 'Radicals ' who advanced a strong policy in behalf of the freedmen. In 1866, he had declared: 'I say here before this House, that I will never so long as I have any voice in political affairs rest satisfied until the way is opened by which those colored people, as soon as they are worthy, shall be lifted up to the full rights of citizenship.' As previously indicated, he was one of the few Congressmen who seemed to have remembered the second section of the Fourteenth Amendment. "It is a neglected passage in his inaugural address, however, that deserves to be rescued from oblivion. In two pungent sentences he declared: 'Under our institutions there was no middle ground for the negro between slavery and equal citizenship. There can be no permanent disfranchised peasantry in the United States.'... "Little attention was paid at the time or later to the two sentences which, one would think today, would have called for considerable comment.... "Garfield's death on September 19, 1881, deprived him of an opportunity of showing what he could do to help time give shape to the experiment in American democracy. The San Francisco 'Examiner ' of February 23, 1881, reported that more Negroes than whites has brought tickets for his inaugural ball. Colored men , in accordance with established custom, had marched in the inaugural parade. He had appointed Negroes to 'Negro' jobs--John M. Langston as minister to Haiti and counsel general to the Dominican Republic; Henry Highland Garnet as minister to Haiti; ex-Senator Blanche K. Bruce as register of the treasury; and Frederick Douglass as recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia. Perhaps Garfield's most significant policy was his alliance with the ex-Confederate General William Mahone of Virginia, leader of the Readjusters in that state." P. 38-39, 43

PAIN AND MEMORIES

I was greatly saddened to read in elementary school about the disassembly and reassembly of ancient Egyptian monuments to escape the rising of the Nile River in the building of the Aswan Dam. This was in the early 1960's. I read it at James Milton Turner School in Meacham Park, Missouri, St. Louis County. I read about it in the "Weekly Reader," a grade school newsletter. Why, I asked myself, would there be a need to destroy the integrity of these thousands of year old structures, simply in order to generate more electricity? Could they not have done something else, instead, of destroying antiquities? I was hurt by this knowledge, but I was also gratified to know about it. And, because I was hurt, by the knowledge, I remembered it! At around the same time, I saw a World War II movie at the 66 Drive-In, with my family, starring the "rat pack"--Sammy Davis, Jr., Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, etc. I was again hurt, when Sammy dove on a German hand grenade that had been thrown into their midst! He, the only black guy, died to save them. They avenged his death by killing those Germans, but Sammy was still gone, dead. And I was saddened, hurt, so I remembered. There is an association with pain and memory that transcends time and space and the circumstances;doubtless the same is true with pleasure and memories for each of us..

GOD CAN REDEEM SATAN

GOD CAN REDEEM EVEN SATAN Several days ago, I wrote (and was roundly criticized for writing) that God could even redeem, grant salvation to, Satan, the fallen angel. Later while reading about Origen, the earliest Christian philosopher and theologian of the Second and Third Century, who was an African, from Alexandria, Egypt, I learned, acquired, some additional support. Origen is the author of the epic Christian work, FIRST PRINCIPLES, and other works. Origen was also "anathematized"--condemned by officers as an apostate -- three hundred years after his death by the Catholic Church in 553. I have read FIRST PRINCIPLES. I learned that Father Origen (undeniably a founding prelate of Christianity) is alleged to have written about the redemption of Satan by God. This fact probably contributed to his removal from among the church saints! And precipitated his denial. God created Satan as God created everything else, me and you, too. If "sin" is redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ, as our faith says, and since Jesus is "the only begotten son of God," then, Satan, who too is a son of God, Job 1:6, can by the spirit and blood of Jesus, like us, also be redeemed, saved by God. I later analogized the Parable of the Prodigal Son to Satan to show that: as his earthly father had rejoiced to see the return of his long lost son, no less would our Heavenly Father rejoice to restore the stature of his long lost son, Satan. Luke 15:11-32. I know that this may be difficult for some to accept. We all have been taught many false doctrines, lies, myths about everything from black history, unto our relationship with God. Indeed, our identity as "gods," Psalm 82:6, has often also been misrepresented as "human." So, too, the admonition to "be perfect, as our father in heaven is perfect," Matthew 5:48, we are told does not mean what it says! It best befits us "gods," spirits, energy, rather than humans; for being created by God, we are subordinate only to God! God, literally has no competition; having existed from "everlasting to everlasting", Psalm 90:2. Satan, as some creeds falsely claim, is no actual competitor of God, nor is death, any true competitor of God, both being but mystical entrepôts to God in another dimension well beyond our comprehension. These are asserted facts, "Satan" and death; since energy is forever. We, whatever we be, are but additional elements in the eternity of Almighty God, who has no competition from any other person, place, or thing. "God," was originally conceived by ancient African people, who were the very first people, and who were the only people on the planet. Well before mutations, generations, cross-pollination of all others, we were here for many many millennia. To the ancient sages, God is and God was the ultimate ideal and the irrefragable pattern, template of all in existence, before gender, color, and before any other apostrophic personification of mankind. God preexisted" and therefore created what we know as time and space. God created all things, including matter, energy, time, space, life. I do not represent any of this to be true, much less the truth. But if it gets you to investigate the facts for yourself by research, comparison, and prayer, I will have done my job! Amen.

CHILD IN THE WIND

CHILD IN THE WIND The solar system obeys laws. So does integumentary within it: sun, planets, moons, gas , dusts, vapor. None of these exercises discretion. None of these has free will to itself. But some men who are, materially, among the very least these, are of the "belief" that they enjoys "free will" unlike the greatest of these: the solar system . We are who we are, because we are what we are, by nature, intrinsically, like them. Because human belief, like the wind, blows wherever it pleases, John 3:8, man's freedom to say that he believes in this or that, or disbelieves this or that, is also part of its intrinsic wind blown nature. I am a child in the wind like you, and it pleases me to muse, think, meditate, of these things of God. These thoughts have recurred to me from my reading of John Milton's classic, PARADISE LOST (1667), wherein he writes: book 5: "Evil into the mind of God and Man May come and go, so unreproved, and leave no spot or blame behind: Which gives me hope That what in sleep thou didst abhor to dream, Waking thou never will consent to do." And more pointedly Milton writes: "Happiness in his power left free to will, Left to his own free will, his will though free, Yet mutable; whence warn him to beware that he swerve not, too secure: Tell him withal his danger, and from whom; what enemy, Late fallen himself from Heaven, is plotting now The fall of others from like state of bliss; By violence? no, for that shall be withstood; But by deceit and lies: This let him know, Lest, willfully transgressing, he pretend Surprisal, unadmonished, unforewarned. So spake the Eternal Father , and fulfilled All justice..." P. 50, 53

OLD AGE BLESSINGS AND ISSUES

Some of us are blessed to see old age. Fewer of us, however, are able to sustain monthly living expenses in old age. Fewer still are elders who can abide extraordinary expenses into old age. So, younger people, if you are blessed to reach old age, retirement age, and to self-sustain ordinary living expenses, be sure that you make provision for the extraordinary expenses; they will surely come with the rising sun that arises to bless day.

BLACKBEARD

Blackbeard the pirate is said to have had a hideout in coastal North Carolina. Other pirates, who were more fortunate and literate than he, set up their piratical havens in Virginia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York. As representatives of Western European crowns, their "piracy" was to acquire gold from the land, rather than from the Spanish Main, or each other at sea. Sir Francis Drake and Sir Henry Morgan were other British pirates whom historians remember more kindly than they do Blackbeard or Edward Teach, of Bristol, England. Letters Marquis and Reprisal are in the United States Constitution as carryovers from the era of official piracy approved by governments. Pirates, of course, are despicable , except when they steal, rob, kill for governments, religions, or to live. One man's piracy is another's life. To speak directly "Thou shalt not kill" does not apply in war, nor any religious holidays or when needed! Consequently former pirates were frequently forgiven by their crowns or governments for ghastly deeds. "Blackbeard", Edward Teach, had evidently fallen from royal favor, so he was killed in 1718, before his form of egalitarian piracy involving his use certain recaptured slaves from cargo holds as "equal" crew members could become vogue. Meanwhile other English pirates who settled on land, stole it from the natives, whom they robbed and killed or enslaved with the blacks to enrich England, until true to their piratical heritage and traditions they saw fit to sever ties with their "Mother Country" after the 1772 James Somerset slave-liberation decision threatened their colonial power, profits, empires in America! So, one need no longer wonder what manner of men would or could stab in the back, again and again, betrayal by troth, repeatedly, those who had done them no harm; such men, such people, are pirates! What is worse, such magisterial "pirates" as these were they who actually slew Blackbeard, on royal command, who were in character worse than Blackbeard; who had at least merit-based parity among his "pirates" such as the Founding Father pirates of North America never had, dreamed of, cared for!

CONFESSIONS

CONFESSIONS Dr. Leon Wright of Howard U. had attained the depth that only one in 10,000 Buddhists monks attained. Dr. Lonnie Shabazz, minister of NOI Temple #4 in Washington, D.C. had his doctorate in mathematics, who wrote in equations for my insight . All of this was well and good. But I had been teethed on Jesus Christ, at my mother's knee, at my father's side, having witnessed the power and the glory of the Holy Spirit for myself. So when the stuff got deep, really deep, I could but call on none other than what I know and I knew . That said, I have also been blessed to address Muslims, Christians, Universal-Unitarians, Ancient Egyptian mystery cults and more; blessed to break bread with and to feast with them . I have celebrated my spiritual kinships with my fellow men in my essay, "Exhalations from My Soul," in my THE NILE REVIEW newsletter that I published 5 years. Muslims have given me Qurans and said I sounded like a Muslim minister. Fellow Christian pastors have told me that I was really a Baptist minister disguised as an African Methodist Episcopal pastor. I took it all in stride, then and now, knowing that we occupy but one planet; all descending from African genes; that as tectonic plates move and continents pull apart, so has man been destined to overspread one earth under one sun and one moon. One man, one woman, sun, moon being divinely mathematical, biological, physical, philosophical, apostrophic, foundation for us all. Amen.

THE PLANTER'S ROBERT SMALLS

'THE PLANTER'S' ROBERT SMALLS One of the shrewdest, smoothest slave escapes from the Deep South that I have ever read of involved Robert Smalls of Charleston, South Carolina, on May 13, 1862, aboard side-wheel steamer and armed dispatch-transport, "The Planter." Robert Smalls was the ship's pilot, although the was also a slave. He knew the shoals, eddies, shallows, tides of the tricky coastal waters and the signs, signals, semaphore of Confederate shippers and forts. Smalls and his family, his enslaved shipmates and their families, 16 people all total, took "The Planter" , with Confederate flag flying, and signal whistle blowing, past curious Charleston's infamous big cannon batteries and forts, evading mines, disguised in the 4:00 a.m. darkness of morning as the ship's captain and officers out on a morning run. The captain and crew were not aboard, having arranged to spend the night in town for entertainment. Smalls knew this. Captain and crew had done it before, trusting that Smalls and his enslaved shipmates would take care of things, as they always had done before perfectly. No less perfectly, this time, Smalls and crew swung swiftly and quietly into action, according to their plan. First, they got their wives and children aboard securely, safety; then, they secured their transport , artillery and ammunition safely aboard, they looked about in all directions; ate breakfast; cast off! Once they cleared Confederate cannon range, they surrendered this 308 ton gift to the Union Blockade armada, lying just outside of Charleston harbor under a white flag of truce to the startled Union ship's captain. Mission accomplished ! I have read of many exciting slave escapes, all daring, but few so harrowing or gripping! Both Smalls and the Planter enjoyed a momentous history after the amazing escape, a portion of which I quote from Wikipedia: "After his escape, Smalls served as a pilot for Union ships in the Charleston area. He was eventually assigned to serve aboard Planter again. On December 1, 1863, Planter was caught in a crossfire between Union and Confederate forces. The ship's commander, a Captain Nickerson, ordered him to surrender. Smalls refused, saying he feared her black crewmen would not be treated as prisoners of war and that they might be summarily killed. Smalls took command and piloted the ship out of range of the Confederate guns. As a reward for his bravery, he was appointed captain of the Planter, becoming the first black man to command a United States ship.[2]Smalls served as captain until the army sold Planter in 1866 after the end of the war.[1]" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Planter_(1862)

Angolan book woman

AMERICAN INCOMMENSURABLES

AMERICAN INCOMMENSURABLES By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman Wednesday, July 04, 2012 I first consciously encountered the word “incommensurable” while reading Plato’s The Laws, a treatise on nation-building in his hypothetical, ancient Greek nation of “Magnesia.” My next encounter with it was in Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia: The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, a mathematical, mechanical masterpiece founded upon esoteric Biblical wisdom. To be used by such icons of world intellectual tradition, automatically places this very rare, recondite word in the ionosphere of incomparable scholarship. But, it was not until afterwards, as I was feeling its presence, and intuiting its unnamed application, in Frances E.W. Harper’s wonderfully redemptive, Civil War-era novel, Iola Leroy,Or, Shadows Uplifted, that I was inspired to write about this profoundly provocative and mysterious word, “incommensurable.” Whether Ms. Harper belongs in such august company as Plato and Newton is for the reader of her novel to determine. Her poetry and her prose impress me! Com·men·su·ra·ble (k-m n s r--b l, -sh r-) adj. means:1. Measurable by a common standard. 2. Commensurate; proportionate. 3. Mathematics Exactly divisible by the same unit an integral number of times. Used of two quantities. Based on this definition, simple fractions would be mathematically incommensurable, because the integers producing them are NOT “exactly divisible by the same unit an integral number of times.” Whether or not something is measurable by a “common standard”—another definition-- is more problematic, because “common standard” is subjective. For example, what is the “common standard” of beauty or courage or freedom or justice or intelligence? These value-laden qualities or virtues are, per se, “incommensurable.” Yet, a “common standard” is imposed upon such words, concepts, and people, with procrustean efficiency, regardless of variations or consequences. Such societal, normative impositions are rarely challenged by those most adversely affected, by those most detrimentally afflicted, usually. The word, “Incommensurable,” does much more than negate commensurable quantities. Beyond negation, it also debases, deprecates, demeans, and dehumanizes. It denies substance to its objects. Its diminutions, in fact, plumb the depths of metaphysical abnegation, transforming matter into antimatter! Beyond zero, its objects represent negative forces which require quarantine. This amorphous concept has suffused philosophy, mathematics, science, as well as African American literature millennia apart. Yet, in a matter of less than a month, we—me and “incommensurable”-- had met thrice, in widely divergent contexts: Plato, Newton, Harper. “How curious,” I mused, “this must mean something. Let’s write about this incommensurable ‘tri-incidence!’” Yet, how can anything existing on earth be really and truly incommensurable with any other thing existing on earth? If it exists on earth, isn’t it necessarily commensurable with all else that exist on earth? Is not Earth-life, itself, the “common standard” of each thing’s existence? Space, time, motion, matter define the physics of life on earth, per Newton. Hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen define earth’s elemental chemistry. These are common to all things. Christianity agrees: “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called; and whom he called them he also justified; and whom he justified, them he also glorified.” Romans 8:28-30. Yet, generations of American ‘Christians,’ curiously, have been among the most strident, incommensurable of creatures by so readily demonizing others! The word “incommensurable” means “adj. a. Impossible to measure or compare. b. Lacking a common quality on which to make a comparison. 2. Mathematics a. Having no common measure or number of which all the given lengths or measures are integral multiples. b. Having an irrational ratio. n. One that is incommensurable.” There is a dimension of life, “The Soul,” per Plato, with priority and dominion over physics and chemistry! It is the domain of the spirit. It is the unknown and unknowable source and end of life, from which everything has come and to which everything returns! Also, known as the Unmoved Mover and the Uncaused Cause, this Spirit has innumerable names. I simply say “God” or “Amen.” Plato wrote of “the Gods” repeatedly in The Laws. They define the parameters of morality. Newton’s esoteric Biblical references in the Scholia of his Principia are nuanced, oblique and intrinsically laced within his mathematical demonstrations. Prudence demanded such seclusion, given his contemporaneity with Galileo, and the mortal risks he faced in light of his own “apostasy.” The Holy Spirit is the centerpiece of Harper’s trope of the black slaves’ awakening, acceptance, and affirmation of their inherent worth as God’s creations, before, during, and after the Civil War. It addresses, centrally, the dilemma of “colored” children raised “white”, on a remote Red River, Louisiana plantation with black slaves. After their white father’s death, they brutally discover that they are themselves ‘colored.’ This ‘shadow’—their ‘Negro’ race-- deprives them of their patrimony under Louisiana law, as well as their status as ‘free.’ The novel explores their dislocations, dangers, flirtations, and restorative familial resolutions, within that transformative era freedom for the oppressed. That above-referenced “unnamed application” of “incommensurable,” redolent of Plato and Newton, read and felt by me-- an attorney, African Methodist Episcopal preacher, historian, poet, science student, and author-- is from Frances Harper’s Iola Leroy, or, Shadows Uplifted (Dover Publications, Inc. Mineola, NY: 2010 ; an unabridged republication of the second edition published in 1893 by Garrigues Brothers, Philadelphia). That potent and portentous excerpt is below in bold italics: “I think,” said Dr. Latrobe, “that we are right in suppressing the negro’s vote. This is a white man’s government, and a white man’s country. We own nineteen-twentieths of the land, and have about the same ratio of intelligence. I am a white man, and, right or wrong, I go with my race… You speak as if we wronged the negro by enslaving him and being unwilling to share citizenship with him. I think that slavery has been of incalculable benefit to the negro. It has lifted him out of barbarism, and fetish worship, given him a language of civilization, and introduced him to the world’s best religion. Think what he was in Africa and what he is in America!...” “Don’t you think,” asked “Dr. Gresham, that we have been too hasty in our judgment of the Negro? He has come handicapped into life, and is now on trial before the world. But it is not fair to subject him to the same tests that you would a white man. I believe there are possibilities of growth in the race which we have never comprehended.” (emphasis added) “The negro,” said Dr. Latrobe, “is perfectly comprehensible to me. The only way to get along with him is to let him know his place, and make him keep it.” Dr. Latrobe is an unapologetic racist! Voter suppression is justifiable against ‘the negro,’ this being a “white man’s country and a white man’s government.” The white man owns 19/20’s of the property, and owns that same amount of intelligence, says he. Enslaving the negro “was of incalculable benefit to the negro,” according to Dr. Latrobe. Not sharing citizenship with the negro is perfectly normal. He also claims that “whites”—“introduced him [the negro] to the world’s best religion. Think what he was in Africa and what he is in America!...” Latrobe’s racial banalities were quite commonly held in that era. Their residue lingers, flaring up especially during election cycles, contaminating each new generation. But, Latrobe’s blatant racism has, thankfully, morphed into latent racism. It is fueled by the clash between such unresolved national subtexts as—on the one hand: certain whites’ subconscious guilt, their dissembled deceit, and backdoor betrayals of “the Negro;” and-- on the other hand: unresolved black grievances, unfulfilled promises, and governmental refusal of compensation for the deprivation of “commensurable,” if not “equal,” legal, political, economic rights. Our national “center of forces” to use Isaac Newton’s phrase is reposed in our founding documents, whose centripetal forces pull on this nation’s political/economic infrastructure, viscera and conscience, inexorably. Dr. Latrobe was right about this nation being, historically, a “white man’s country.” Yet, it was the black man’s indispensable loyalty, labor, energy, and inventiveness, which are inseparable from, and incommensurable with, that fact. Two political compromises in the 1770-1790’s established this as a “white man’s country.” The first compromise was in the original draft of the Declaration of Independence, itself. Therein, any reference to ‘slavery’ was purposefully omitted. And wisely so! Slavery had been out-lawed in England in June 1772 in the case James Sommerset v. Charles Stewart, http://medicolegal.tripod.com/somersetvstewart.htm 4 years before the slaveholding colonies declared independence by and through a moneyed cabal of Southern slaveholders and Northern merchants. The second compromise was in the United States Constitution, itself, in Article I, Section 2, Paragraph 3, where blacks were given only fractional political status, 3/5’s of a man, for purposes of enumerating, and, thus, determining the extent of Southern congressional representation and of direct taxation: “Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.” This fractional allocation was also effected by the same moneyed cabal of Southern slaveholders and Northern merchants, as had excluded mention of slavery from the Declaration of Independence. So, “the negro’s,” fractional constitutional status, made him an “incommensurable” denizen from the very ‘birth of this nation.’ White men were made whole persons, but not all others. Given such incommensurable status, Frederick Douglass’ biting inquiry in his 1854 speech, “What to the slave is the Fourth of July,” is understandable! http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=162 President Abraham Lincoln is popularly perceived to be a ‘friend’ of the negro, known as “The Great Emancipator” in American history. Yet, this quote from Lincoln sounds very much like Frances Harper’s character, Dr. Latrobe: "I will say, then, that I am not nor have ever been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the black and white races---that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with White people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the White and black races which will ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together, there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the White race." -- Abraham Lincoln, "Fourth Lincoln-Douglas Debate, September 18, 1858, Charleston, Illinois," in "Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings" (New York: Library of America, 1989), p. 636, and in Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Volume 5, page 371 These sentiments by Abraham Lincoln were expressed in 1858, over a year after Justice Roger Taney in 1857, had held similarly in the infamous Dred Scott v Sanford decision. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott_v._Sandford Therein Dred and Harriet Scott, former Missouri slaves, who had also lived in “free states” and in territories not yet states, were turned back in their bid for freedom that other Missouri slaves had routinely obtained through “slave-litigation.” The profligate denial of the Scotts’ bid [“That the black man had no rights that the white man was bound to respect”] http://home.earthlink.net/~ynot/slacases.html somewhat hastened the eruption of Civil War. Abolitionist patriots like John Brown eventually decided to pursue armed struggle, in order to extirpate the baleful blight of slavery from the country. First, Brown and his family moved from Ohio and fought in the Kanas-Missouri “Border Wars.” Then, later, he liberated a score of Missouri slaves and personally took them to Windsor, Canada and freedom from Missouri through Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, and Michigan on a 1200 mile trek via the “Underground Railroad. Finally, having resolved to die as a martyr for freedom, his now infamous, sacrificial raid upon the national armory at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia in October 1859, elevated him to revolutionary sainthood, even though he failed to secure arms for a planned slave rebellion utilizing the Allegheny Mountains’ crevices. But, in spite of John Brown’s vain heroism, it was Abraham Lincoln’s mundane election in 1860 that was the final straw for the insatiable South. If, in 1861, the South seceded in the face of such truculence, exhibited by Roger Taney in 1857, and by Abraham Lincoln in 1858, what level of racial prejudice, of racist rabidity did it actually possess? To what could it be compared? Lerone Bennett, Jr., the former Senior Editor of Ebony Magazine, and author of such books as Before the Mayflower, and Forced Into Glory, has written relentlessly about Lincoln’s racism. But, conceding Lincoln’s and Taney’s racism, the South was determined and delusional! “My way or the highway!” was its creed! So, the “Freedom War,” as slaves termed it, came! The slaves, themselves, by escaping to Union lines eviscerated Lincoln’s desultory peace overtures toward the South! The slaves were waging their own “Freedom War” under the cover of the broader Civil War conflict! Initially, they ran away, or sailed away. For example, in May 1862, the slave, Robert Smalls, stole “The Planter” a Confederate steam-powered warship of which he was pilot, from its Charleston, South Carolina, harbor and utilized his intricate knowledge and skill to sail her past Confederate mines, and batteries at Ft. Sumter and Ft. Wagner, into to a shocked Union blockade beyond. He took along his family and his enslaved crewmen and their families, under a white flag, in predawn hours. http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/civil-war/1862/june/robert-smalls-planter.htm That amazing feat startled the nation, and delighted the Union! I t should have been an omen to the South. Earlier, three male slaves had escaped from Confederate fortifications they were building by rowing themselves across the James River to Ft. Monroe, Virginia, in May1861, where Union Gen Benjamin Butler would term them “contraband of war,” in legal parlance. Butler, a lawyer, would refuse to return them to a Confederate officer, who sought them under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, due the state of rebellion then extant. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/magazine/mag-03CivilWar-t.html?pagewanted=all Later, the First Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry, created by Kansas U.S. Senator, James Lane, fought and won the Battle of Island Mound, at Butler, Missouri, in October 1862, against Confederate bushwhackers, at least twice its size, in defiance of Lincoln’s policy forbidding black troops. http://www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?marker=54126 So, in these and myriad other ways, the slaves’ self-help insurgency continually forced Lincoln’s political hand! His Emancipation Proclamation, of January1, 1863, freed no one, but it was great symbolic drama, which was widely celebrated as the herald of a new day by escaping slaves and by abolitionists: those lecturing, legislating, and writing, and by those in uniform fighting! The Dred Scott decision has never been judicially overturned. Instead, it was nullified by an estimated1,000,000 combined casualties and fatalities in the Civil War , 1861-1865, proving that the black man was, indeed, entitled to much respect, whether “incommensurable” or not! That historically condign, judicial decision was functionally superseded by the 13th Amendment which freed the slaves, the 14th Amendment which gave them due process of law, equal protection of law and privileges and immunities, and the 15th Amendment which gave them the right to vote. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War No amendment gave the freedmen land, supplies, tools, back wages, restitution, or grant money. Nor did any ensuing law or judicial decree make them commensurable to white people socially, politically, or economically. This financial dearth, this property poverty, this want of means and measures left the freedmen in a state of economic dependence upon their former masters, upon vengeful, returning rebels, or upon swindlers and hucksters of all hues and varieties. The Bureau of Freedmen and Refugees headed by Union Gen. Oliver Otis Howard helped some freedmen temporarily to adjust to their new-found status, providing food, shelter, and schools, most prominently Howard University in Washington, D.C. But, politics shut down the Freedmen’s Bureau too soon, Congress having appropriated too little for these millions of landless and penniless people, without whom there would have been no Union! Soon, white men reached political rapprochement to abandon the freedmen to the South’s laws, customs, remedies, in exchanged for federal power. So, once again that cabal of Southern landowners and Northern merchants combined to cripple the black man’s independence and vitality for the white nation’s benefit! The phrase from Harper’s character, Dr. Gresham, “But it is not fair to subject him to the same tests that you would a white man” is the application of “incommensurable,” sensed, felt, and used herein. Equals may be “fairly” subjected to the same tests. But that is not so for un-equals. And, it is even less so for incommensurables—those for whom common measurement is literally, historically, impossible! In fact, due to the effects of black chattel slavery, followed by unrestrained white terrorism by government officials and private citizens on the federal, state and local levels, it was sagely predicted that blacks would become “extinct” by some so-called “experts!” Wrong! Blacks are not bison. They are descendants of this planet’s original man. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recent_African_origin_of_modern_humans From these “Africans,” “Ethiopians,” and “Egyptians”, all other homo sapiens evolved, along with all other civilizations, wherever situated. The proof of their mettle is evidenced by their tremendous capacity to suffer, to love, to endure, to create, to fight, and to procreate, notwithstanding centuries of horrendous oppression. Their faith in God was their not-so-secret weapon. As Howard Thurman writes in Jesus and the Disinherited, slaves saw through the “white man’s preachers” and would “steal away” into bush arbors, away from white folks’ prying eyes and ears, where they would praise and celebrate their God in their own way, through preached word, spiritual music, and personal testimony, focused on freedom! Worship was hopeful and cathartic, as Benjamin Mays writes in The Negro’s God, published in the 1930’s, based on songs, sermons, poems, prose, prayer. Blacks’ innate divinity fueled the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s. It was “led” by Dr. Benny Mays’ gifted theology student at Morehouse College, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who founded the Southern Christian Leadership Council. King used “the sword of the spirit” to trounce “Jim Crow,” and massive civil disobedience to demolish segregation. Even so, centuries of discrimination, poverty, imprisonment, lynching, forced mass black migration into Northern ghettos where chronic unemployment, and depersonalization had a deleterious impact upon these “Exoduster’s” from Southern peonage and oppression! Dr. King’s remedies availed not in these teeming northern ghettoes. Here, traditional Southern values that had defied slavery, and defeated Jim Crow evaporated into the illusion of liberty. So, not only did Dr. King’s strategies not work, but even less effective were more militant approaches pursued by the Black Panther Party, Nation of Islam and others. The notion of “incommensurability” had entered into the blacks’ spirits! After assassinations, exile, and imprisonment robbed the Movement of its best leaders in the 1960’s, those left behind attempted to employ racial quotas to rectify undisguised systemic discrimination, or its more discreet twin, latent discrimination. But, Labor union funding and Jewish philanthropy—the primary sources of their organizational income-- balked at mathematical racial quotas as hurtful to their members’ interests. So instead of hard quotas, “discretionary goals and timetables” –non-mandatory and advisory only—were used to impart belated quasi-proportionality to future: jobs, private contracts, government grants or contracts. Mathematical quotas had been rejected or termed ‘reverse discrimination’ by cynical courts and critics, as well as faint-hearted “leaders”. Thus, “incommensurabilty” continues between the wealth of the two groups and in certain other indices, including that of the spirit. Meanwhile, perversely, Blacks pushed ahead in the misery index, disproportionately, leading in incarceration, unemployment, homicide, poverty, and educational deficits. At the base of it all is the enforced “incommensurable” relation between blacks and whites in America. Simply put, in America, “whiteness” is property, as UCLA law professor, Cheryl Harris, brilliantly proves in her famous Harvard Law Review article. Conversely, “blackness” is property’s antithesis in America! http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=927850 Beyond cavil or quibble, the history of the “negro” and of “whites” in the United States of America reflects a purposefully designed and implemented national construct produced by powerful moneyed interests to exploit “the negro’s” labor and produce for the sole benefit of privileged “white’s.” “Whites” are another designed class, part of that same national governing construct, comprised of traditional European combatants, who became “white” allies upon immigration to America, and powerfully privileged! Ultimately, this arrangement worked well for the ruling cabal. It facilitated their rule over both groups, white and black. America from the middle 1660’s forward, whether as a British colony, or whether as an independent nation, since 1789, was designed by laws, mercantile custom, force, violence and deceit to oppress “the negro” and to keep him down on the bottom regardless of any individual merit, as attested by Dr. Latrobe. This master-slave relationship is and was, at bottom, economic and has remained so since 1789, when this country was founded, through 1865, when the Civil War terminated the formal master-servant relationship. From 1865 through 1876, there was a much-too-brief “Reconstruction”—“Restoration” is more apt term, since it restored the rebels’ full rights, lands, powers, privileges. Meanwhile the blacks were handed the allure of Republican politics as the pathway to freedom. The ensuing “Jim Crow” era ended with the passage of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act, and the Voting Rights Act. The resulting Affirmative Action era continues with and through the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States in 2008 through today! His epochal election, and reelection, notwithstanding, Blacks remain, arguably, pragmatically: incommensuable, economically, legally, and politically! Given this “Incommensurable” situation, Robert Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television has proposed to Congress the following: 1. Allow black businesses to be eligible for government set aside contracts if they own 10 percent of a business rather than the existing 51 percent rule due to the 10-to-1 wealth gap; and significantly increase the dollar volume of set aside contracts for Black businesses across all government agencies. 2. Encourage majority-owned businesses to invest in black-owned companies by deferring the taxes on the economic gain similar to the FCC "tax certificate program" which motivated major media companies to sell to minorities. 3. Allow African American families earning less than $250,000 annually to defer federal income taxes, without interest, provided tax deferrals are placed into a 401(k) type savings account which can only be drawn out at retirement or upon death at which time the government would be reimbursed for the deferred taxes. The gain on the 401(k) investment would be available to the families at retirement or passed on to future generations. 4. Create a Treasury-backed fund to securitize short-term borrowing or emergency loans made by minority banks or other lending institutions to Black families provided these loans are marketed and made in a regulated and transparent manner. The securitized loans would encourage banks and lenders to make short-term or emergency borrowing available at reasonable rates and end "payday" lending as we know it today. 5. Require large banks under the Community Reinvestment Act to fund a nationwide marketing campaign targeted to the Black community with a focus on financial literacy and savings. To this outstanding list, I would add a one-time economic stimulant of $2500 per individual tax payer, regardless of race, which will boost the economy greatly through consumption, investments, and savings both short-term and long-term, while it helps to erase debt burdens and restores faith in government. In this manner, black American “Incommensurables,” their bane of poverty and stigmatization—their “shadow”-- having been “lifted,” will remain such no more.