If prostitution is the oldest profession, then the slave trade and racism runs a pretty close second. People being brought and sold as commodities, is as old as the day is long , and unfortunately, still very much a thing. There have always been slaves and slavery in some shape form or fashion , and I don’t see it going away anytime soon. If you are one of the Biblical types, then slavery started in the garden and its master was sin, so always been around. I know that is a pretty grewsome opening statement, but now that I have your full attention, let’s just look at a few things and no!, not all about slavery and absolutely nothing to do with prostitution ☺️ I want to welcome you guys into a little introspection. I don’t go out of my way to be controversial, much the opposite. I don’t really bite my tongue and I have constantly encouraged certain people to stop reading if they find the content offensive or not to their lacking. I have said before, that God has prevented me before from publishing certain content, because it was probably more harmful than anything else , and you could completely forget about being helpful and up lifting.☺️ I don’t use hot button phrases and I try to not to use certain words that could be taken as inflammatory, and at the same time I will not sit silent on certain topics and issues that I believe are more aimed at tearing down our once great Nation. I can not and will not be silent less, I become part of the problem. All that being said, I want to warn some of you that you are probably not going to be happy with me on this one. I’ve been asked before could I lie to a dying person so that they could have a more peaceful death. I want to say that would be a hard NO, and I know on some level that sounds extremely harsh. I’m also the guy who doesn’t feel sorry for a sports team who looses a close one in overtime. My belief is that if you handle your business during regulation time , there would be no need for overtime or the heart ache that may accompany that. ☺️☺️I say a hard NO, based on something that I had shared some time back about my bio father’s mother, so my paternal grandmother. I didn’t honor her request for closure at the end of her life. I’m not even going to say that I’m standing on principle, I just feel as if it’s just one more non truth thing in life. Well , you may be wondering where all this going and now I maybe wondering that myself. ☺️☺️I guess earlier last evening I found myself being a total and complete hypocrite. I violated the truth that I just said that I couldn’t do. No !, no one is dying, but the principle is very much the same. This is about me being a coward and feeling very conflicted . I will double back to the conflicted part in a bit. I have someone who I consider a friend, we haven’t walk through fire together or even so much the thick and thin, but a friend, nonetheless. This is a very beautiful woman who, where if I was wired differently would be a super catch for me, but I am who I am, and we are not a match. . She is also an inspiring writer and I have had the privilege to read over some of her material in the past, and more so more than anything else, I respect her. Today she sent me a piece of her work to read and asked me my thoughts on it. I didn’t lie to her because it was very well written out and it was most definitely thought provoking, and organized well. I told her that it was a literary masterpiece and on some levels that is absolutely true. I remembered that it was something that I had read before, about a year ago, so I ask her had she had made revisions to it and then she sent me a copy of the original, which is apparently what she had shared before. It was well polished but the central theme and thought process behind it was the same. I know that I have written things and set them aside for a while and sometimes gone back to them and other times not so much!. Well it’s been at least a year since she first shared this piece of work with me and I’m trying to read it objectively and critique it without giving much consideration to the content. In my head it was coming across like one of the movies from the French Can film festival that the elites says is some kind of generational work of art that will be appreciated for decades to come. In the mean time , most of us just don’t get it. We don’t get the story line, and if we do, we find it boring or something completely unrelatable. They say that a picture is worth a thousand words and sometimes in writing it comes down to the content, and in this case I found the content a little on the offensive side and I truly don’t get offended easily. The content was what I would consider racially charged. It contained information from multiple time periods and she attempted to link them together as one continuous story. It further went on to drop some pretty heavy names. They were all referred to by just their first names as if you didn’t recognize the struggle or were unaware, you would not have a frame of reference for Harriet, Angela, Sojourner, Turner, Malcom ,and Martin. If you didn’t know, Harriet Tugman, Nat Turner, Malcom X, and Dr. King. I’m not even sure that some of these names should even be mentioned in the same sentence together . I say that because of these individuals call to arms, were so very different. I remember Dr King as a visionary and Malcolm X, was more so a revolutionist, and while there is the possibility of one person being both, that was not true for these two men, especially with Dr. Kings , none violence stance. I talked about how unrelated things sometimes congregate in my head together, so maybe for this author that maybe the case as well. I’m going to talk around this piece of work/ art, because I don’t want to further popularize it. Now, I have no problem with anyone making a buck, and that is what has happened here, she has merchandising that goes along with her work in the form of T shirts and hats,, if it was something that I agreed with, I would say kudos and great job! However, I must say that it slaps me in the face much like Trump’s MAGA hats. I want to say if this country is your home, then you are aware of our roots, our successes, but we usually more so focus on our short comings and failures. I believe that slavery in the U.S was a scourge on the tapestry of something that was so brilliant, that it has never been duplicated and I’m referring to the Democratic Republic that the Founders left us with. Slavery was a huge black mark , not the only one, but one that can never be overlooked. If by a show of hand ,,I asked how many of you were familiar with the riots that took place in Wilmington back in 1898, I think not many. It was another dark day in our history where evil reign and over sixty African Americans lost their lives at the hands of white supremacist and Klansmen .Most probably more so may remember Rodney King, back in the 90s. I just feel like taking a very unfortunate incident like, the church shooting in Charleston almost ten years ago and attempting to connect it with the riots from the late 1800s and pointing back to slavery in the south and saying that it’s all connected is just a travesty. I think that we can frame things in any context that we wish, however to me it’s an oblique asserted effort to keep race relations a hot button and a topic that we continue to poor gasoline on, instead of pouring water on it , to put it out. I do remember that during the Civil Right movement, that there were white people who died as well in an attempt to make sure that we all got those inalienable rights that the constitution speaks of. And during those darkest days, weren’t the majority of the abolitionist who were trying to free slaves of a lighter complexion? . In my mind the argument of taking the abolitionist from the 1800s and the pro white Civil Right workers from the 1960s and lumping all of them together and trying to say that all white people are some how “woke” or racially color blind, would be ludicrous, because we wouldn’t have systemic racism in this country, but we do. So I don’t think that we can make the argument in the opposite direction either. There are two things that perplex me a little bit about all of the racial discussions. First up, I know that ancestry. Com has made it more knowledgeable, but I think that less than five percent of African Americans can name anyone in their family line who was actually a slave. On the other side, I’m not sure how people who don’t even know if their family owned slaves or not are supposed to be some how accountable for something that happened over a hundred plus years before they were even a twinkle in their daddy’s eye, not even God does that. I remember back in the eighties , when Jessie Jackson ran for President of the United States and I believe his campaign slogan was “Keep Hope Alive “, but some forty years later seems the only thing we are trying to keep alive is the hatred. I guess since I’m in the deep end of the pool, I might as well take a couple of laps, so this is where ,I probably get some of you really hot under the collar and you may want to join me in the pool, but remember, we can’t take turns holding one another under the water☺️☺️. Hatred vs. Heritage ,I’m not sure about inanimate objects projecting racism. So if seeing a confederate flag makes me feel racism, then me staring at a hundred dollar bill should make me feel rich? , is that really how that works?. I think that it is complete lunacy with all of the statues, flags, coming down, the renaming of everything from schools, naval war ships to military bases. All through scripture it talks about markers to help us to remember. We don’t have to celebrate the broken and dark places in our past, but we sure as hell, need to remember where we have come from and thank God that we aren’t there anymore, and that is worth celebrating. I’m completely aware on a person level, as how we can’t move forward, if we are constantly hold on to the past. I still remember the first time that I came eyeball to eyeball with racism and it probably wasn’t what I was expecting it to be and it completely caught me off guard. In my early twenties as a restaurant manager, I had an encounter with a little girl, maybe six or seven years old, and when I couldn’t grant her request, she dropped the “N” word on me. I was completely floored, and completely sadden, because at that young age, someone has taught her to use that word. See ,the framework is much the same ,someone had taught her hatred, based on skin color and I believe that is what this article does as well, it keeps hatred alive and trains the next generation that they have some how been disenfranchised. I keep hearing stories about how hard it is to be a black man in America, just as it is our cross to bear. This country is just full of opportunities, I didn’t say it was easy, but for people who wish to apply themselves, there are great opportunities, and probably more so than anywhere else on the planet, again I didn’t say easy. People flock here from the four corners of the world just to get a shot at a better way of life . I’m not a pie in the sky kind of guy, but if you choose to dwell on the negative, then it will become a self fulfilling prophecy that it is to hard, and that the world has some how singled you out and is against you. Oh, yes I’m familiar with social economics and the weight it brings to bear, but we need to work hard to make the system better and in the meantime, find a way to make it work for yourself. I want to say that the key is education, but not just academically. We should never put a cap on someone’s dreams, but everyone is not going to grow up and be a world class athlete or entertainer. We need to get our kids to focus on realistic goals and that starts with Math and Science, and Technology. I’m not trying to beat anyone up here, but if we teach something other than hatred disguised under the banner of revisionist history, because the forty acres and a mule thing is just not going to happen. I just think that we are better and also know better than to just keeping all the racial stuff in overdrive. There are people who garner great fame and political power by keeping us at one another’s throats , telling us the whoa is me story, over and over again from different angels. If you are unfamiliar with the name Marcus Garvey, look him up, he started a back to Africa movement, but didn’t see many takers, nor should there have been. This is our home and we should be proud of our accomplishments and our heritage. There is something so powerful to be able to say that my forefathers were slaves, but look at what we have overcome. That is and can be empowering, opposed to believing that someone has their metaphorical foot on your neck and you can’t get up. If you in anyway feel put upon , disenfranchised or at some other disadvantage, the best solution to overcome that is to go and be successful. When we seek to keep the race thing at the forefront, I just think that we are going the wrong way or direction. Some of you may have recently heard about Walmart, Target and other retailers closing stores in certain areas, that may have seem to hurt certain demographics, but in these areas the municipalities have decided that they aren’t going to prosecute shop lifters who steal under a thousand dollars, so what course of Action would you take if in these retailers shoes? . That is just an example of us going in the wrong direction or way, and we need to remember that every action comes with a reaction. Again!, a little long and I’m sorry, so let’s see if we can wrap this up. I had mentioned about me feeling a little conflicted and let me tell you why. I think for me to put my friend on blast, or anyone else for that matter of fact is not helpful, unless I’m in the business of burning bridges, which I am not! I want to keep communications open and hopefully at some point we may have a meeting of the minds. Dialog is important. In this meeting, I may get to see their point of view better or vise versa, but at least we aren’t shutting down and digging deeper trenches or higher and thicker walls. So, I guess what I am saying is that I want to preserve the friendship and not loose it over ideology. I’m going to end this by resurrecting Dr. King’s dream of people, all people regardless of where they fall on the rainbow kaleidoscope of pigmentation., that they would be judged by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin.
