The White Boogeyman

Someone accused me of blaming all the black community’s problem on the “white boogeyman”. Instead of immediately responding I had to think about the definition of boogeyman, an irrational fear of a spiritual aberration or anomaly usually from a child’s perspective. I had to take a moment and realize the disservice I had done to my black brothers and sisters. You see, I had no idea all the brothers and sisters who languish in jail were there because of my childish, irrational fear of a white spiritual aberration. I didn’t realize all the brothers who had been shot and beaten by police were the victim of my childhood nightmares. I didn’t realize all the black people who suffer from a lack of medical care, educational opportunities, employment opportunities, and all the other stuff I rant about on a regular basis suffered from these situations and conditions because none of it is based on reality.

I’m mistaken about the “white boogeyman” because white people are just dying to give black people the equality they deserve as fellow human beings. When black people were in Africa and ran across the white merchant who just so happened to have dealt in human cargo it wasn’t real. He was probably there just to offer them a free lifetime vacation in the new world free of worries and subjugation. I guess the Africans were so grateful for the ride that they just volunteered to be enslaved and work in the fields for the rest of their lives until they dropped dead.

And when people decided they had enough of volunteering for slavery white people were bending over backwards and recognized the freedom of black people without a single complaint or anything else that may have triggered a civil war. All the abolitionist had to do at the time was ask all those black people to stop volunteering.

And when the white people had to force black people to stop volunteering to work in the fields it was the white people who had to force the black people to vote because black people wouldn’t hear of it. On voting day black people by the hundreds were heading north to Canada to get away from the voting booth. The history books had it wrong, Harriet Tubman wasn’t trying to free black people from slavery. She was taking black people to the north to get them away those voting booths. Why Jim Crow was a program to get the black vote.

And white people were begging black people to integrate into white American society back in the 1950s. That Montgomery Bus thing was just more evidence of how black people just refused to get on the bus and support the poor white bus company that treated every passenger equally. The bus company had to sue the black community to prevent black people from sitting at the back of the bus and force them to sit side-by-side with the white riders.

And that whole civil rights struggle was just another big misunderstanding. Didn’t those black people realize that those friendly white people were just trying to cool them off as they were trying to make their march to Selma? And all those police dogs without muzzles were there so they could throw Frisbees and play along the way. The Birmingham Four were the victims of a mistaken address and the white people were actually trying to catch up on a demolition job by working a little overtime that Sunday morning. And all those white people weren’t harassing the Little Rock Nine but cheering them on as they made their way to the high school. Dr. King was shot in a hunting accident Dick Chaney style. And Medgar Evars was shot by a man who was trying to clean his loaded rifle while squatting in the bushes in the middle of the night. And that syphilis experiment down in Tuskegee? I’m sure the nice white people would’ve stopped those black men from secretly and willfully infecting themselves. The Alabama Governor that stood in the doorway was simply welcoming Alabama State’s first black student.

When someone proposed the Civil Rights Act back in 1964 it was passed the very next day without a single protest from the white community. White people everywhere celebrated while black people had to suffer the indignity of a law forcing them to be more equal in housing, employment, and etcetera. And black people were protesting against all that affirmative action so they wouldn’t have access to jobs and such. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

White people everywhere want black people as their neighbor or coworker or fellow student. Cops are so happy to see black people walking through white neighborhoods that they’re always offering them a free ride and a tour of their police station with guess accommodations.

Black people are never passed over for employment or promotion. And black actors and actresses simply refuse to work in television and that’s why there’s only one black character, if any, on television shows. The roles slated for black characters are always deep and meaningful without any cooning or other ghetto, stereotypical, or “colorful” behavior. Black films are embraced by the white community and that’s why black films are such a staple in Hollywood. Urban black communities are thriving with black businesses that rate in the billions of dollars and the black community has equal representation throughout corporate America, the entertainment industry, government, and every other sector of society.

White people never subjugated black people. The black community has wrongfully identified white people for problems that were far beyond their control. There’s no such thing as a racist white person in a position of authority that can negatively impact the black community. Therefore, I must apologize profusely to the white community for my irrational fear of white people who, if history is any indication, has nothing but the best intentions for the black community. And I apologize profusely to the black community for our perpetual state of subjugation that must be the result of my irrational fear of the white boogeyman.