BLACK AMERICA: I STILL HAVE JOY
May 31, 2020
Between the 14th and the 19th centuries - some 500 years - as many as 14 million men, women, and children were brought, bought, sold, or murdered as slaves in America.
14,000,000. 14 million.
That time, those centuries when entire families were rounded up then decimated, I had nothing to do with. Zero. Nothing.
14 million black souls were sold for pennies, or hundreds of dollars and are living, breathing ghosts, even now. Phantasms still nude and chained. Vestiges that still haunt America and won’t let her go. That hard past and the present are tied to America’s future. Millions of visible scars can be healthy reminders of unspeakable pain our nation is still passing through.
That was a brutal time when white slave traders - the kings of the new world economy - stormed onto or were welcomed into the African continent by tribal leaders who sometimes sold their own people and also became rich in the process.
The New World took all the slaves it could buy, steal, and kidnap.
African nations sold as many Africans as they could capture, and would barter, or bundle more for a better price.
Greed and money lust infiltrated societies and the capturing and selling of black people made them slaves and the practice made their rich owners even richer.
Fast forward to 2020, and the violent riots engulfing some of America’s cities and towns. The desperate desecration of neighborhood stores, police stations, and private property.
Intentional protests that may have been born in peace, but have morphed into chaos and rage: An all-consuming fury.
Young black people have grown up hearing stories of systematic racism. Painful, hurtful, and inciting memories passed down from great grandparents to grandparents, to their own parents, and then, finally, to the young people enraged on tv today. They carry posters and signs with words damning white America and the system of law enforcement that has a long history of physical abuse and deaths that are disproportional towards blacks. Numbers don’t lie and neither do percentages.
I’m a journalist by trade, utterly ignorant of the plight and pain of black America. I can talk about it and I can write about it, but the truth is I will never fully grasp the horror as black Americans do. Wounds created 500 years ago were never cauterized and are still bleeding out today.
The black and white image of well-dressed black men and women protesting peacefully is from another era. They locked arms and carried children and believed and prayed that America would soon set them free. Black hymns soared from spirit-filled churches and spilled over into America’s streets and the people wept and sang, “I Still Have Joy.”
Orly Salinas is a #bilingual #freelance #journalist formerly with #NBC #ABC #CBS & #FOX [email protected]