The Good Old Days

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It is simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been so credulous.” – Carl Sagan

The last time America had no laws protecting black people white people were trying to do their best to try and make the black community’s life as miserable as possible. White people were lynching black people who were trying to do little more than live their lives without drama. Back before there were civil rights laws giving black people some protection white people were free to exclude black people from employment and educational opportunities. Courts were no help. White men like James Ford Seale were free to kill black people without any fear of retribution from the short arm of the law. And the fact that there were a few black people who were able to prevail despite the unfavorable conditions they faced doesn’t mean that there wasn’t a problem. A lot of people worked hard and a lot of people have died in order to obtain the laws that give the black community some protection. So it really would be a shame to simply dismiss their sacrifices in the struggle between the black and white communities.

For some people, the modern interpretation of the struggle between the dominant culture and the black culture has been minimized as little more than black people trying to play the race card anytime something doesn’t go our way. It is true that many black people are far too quick to holler racism whenever they find themselves in an unfavorable situation. This is an unfortunate circumstance because these examples of black people crying “wolf” are the fuels used by the people with a white mindset to push hard to nullify any and all claims of discrimination by the black community. These people constantly walk around in a fog or with blinders to the reality that the black community suffers from real subjugation. Because of their choice to exercise a rather limited understanding of these issues these people have the opinion that a rollback of the various laws implemented to keep racial discrimination in some kind of check and put some kind of fairness in a widely distorted playing field would be a good thing. The proper way to combat racism is to keep from looking at race. Racism would just go away if we would stop pointing it out.

Interestingly, people forget what life in the United States was like for the black community prior to us actually looking at and confronting racism. This country was as far as can be from any racial harmony. Take for example the institution of slavery back when we didn’t have civil rights laws. If I’ve interpreted history correctly, black people were being bought and sold like so much cattle. It is true that at this time in our inhumane past practically nobody was making claims of racism in the nation’s various courts. For many people in the dominant class, race, mindset, or whatever classification one deems applicable, it was an ideal time for race relations. White people were being served and black people were doing the serving. A white man who didn’t even own property had the authority to control black people just by the fact that he was white. This was a fond time for many white mindset people.

Laws were enacted to bring this type of discrimination to a halt. People didn’t have the integrity or sense of community to stop themselves. Nobody was saying something as asinine as the best way to stop slavery was to stop looking at the institution of slavery. Laws brought the enslavement of black people to a slow halt. The country had to go to war before people would give up their ways of discrimination.

However, the dominant culture adapted to the new conditions and enacted various forms of Jim Crow. Black people couldn’t vote because their grandfather didn’t vote back when he was a slave. Or black people couldn’t pass the literacy test administered only to black people so they couldn’t vote. Interestingly, illiteracy also plagued the poor white community but somehow they were immune from the literacy testing. Black people didn’t have any recourse when we were constantly being passed over at the all white company or school. Black people had their property destroyed by white vandals. Our black ancestors were not free to live where they wanted. The black community had to make due with our own schools that were separate from white schools and pitifully unequal. And this was another fine time for a lot of white people.

Laws were enacted to bring this type of racism to a halt as well. Nobody was saying the best way to fight housing, employment, or educational discrimination was to stop looking at Jim Crow laws. Change was implemented to bring these practices to an end. But again the dominant mindset adapted to the new operating environment. A psychological reprogramming of the public has taken place. There was a time that white people would have been embarrassed to have one of their own caught hanging nooses from a tree or publicly venting a discriminatory rant. There was a time when a white person busted for using the word nigger or buckwheat in reference to a black person was publicly castigated. A white man with a radio show calling black women nappy headed whores would have been asked to leave before he could finish his sentence.

But now people come out defending these people’s right to be as racist as they want to be. What is even worse is when black people come out of their place of hiding to defend white people who are advocating the subjugation of the black community or promoting racial stereotypes. A racist white man has the right to tell his son he can’t work for him until he stops dating his nigger bitch girlfriend.  The busted racist gets his black preacher friend to tell the world despite what everyone heard that this is a good man who doesn’t have a racist bone in his body. Forget the evidence that plainly indicates a racist vein. A white man using his radio show to call a predominantly black organization of women basketball players a derogatory slur is given a pass because the black gangsta rapper who gets his money from the white music industry is paid to make misogynistic music about black women. A popular white actor show up for a news conference in black face and his black actress girlfriend defends it as just a harmless prank. And let’s not forget the harmlessness associated with little white kids hanging nooses in school yards.

The economic disparity between the white community and the black community is growing on a daily basis and is picking up speed. Black people suffer from higher incarceration rates. The black community has a much higher percentage of our population unemployed or without adequate medical coverage. Black people suffer the worse in any statistic people wish to use to measure their relationship to the dominant whole. And this is the case when we have laws in place that are supposed to help close this gap between the two races, or at least try to keep it from expanding.

So now the public is supposed to believe that dismantling the little safeguards we have in place now is supposed to make things better for all. This is nothing more than the fruit of the psychological programming taking shape and manifesting itself. Now, people are free to practice their subjugation of the black community and they can do it while convincing people that looking at the racial makeup of a company or an institution of learning is akin to keeping racism alive. And the amazing thing is that people buy this argument. And what’s even more amazing than that is the fact that black people buy this argument as well. Many of our ancestors died trying to get us the little protection that we have now enacted. But I guess these black people feel that the black people who died in the struggle for the black community were mistaken. But that’s okay! These blacks, along with a number of other people who share their pro dominant culture mindset, will have an opportunity to rollback the clock so we all can get back to the good old days where we didn’t pay any attention to issues of racism.