Reluctant Optimism About Change
There seemed to be very good reasons for African Americans to be optimistic. The murder of George Floyd by Police Officer Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis prompted protests throughout the world, and included looting and rioting in numerous American communities. Blacks, Whites and Browns shoulder to shoulder protesting and chanting against racism in unison, slogans such as: “Black Lives Matter” and “White Silence is Racist Complicity”. A number of Captains of industries in the background harmonizing their dollars in support of the movement. This is cause for optimism.
This time, people are feeling and saying that, there is something different about this ground swell of protesting, looting and rioting! The millennials are making racism a human transgression, a problem for all to solve. It seems like they want America to be true to herself. They don’t want to take this baggage into the future, on their watch as future leaders.
“No Justice no Peace”, “Liberty for All”, “One People One Nation” this is a sampling of slogans and signs that are being carried by mostly young European American families and non-African American citizens which give the impression of a common consciousness that melts them into: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
Optimism says, this civil outburst will result in African American lives in par with European American lives; which means improved quality of life for all Americans in accordance with the Preamble to the constitution of the United States. Civil unrests seem to suggest that there is a human spirit that agitates regardless of race, when other human predators attack the quality of life of an individual or a race of people. It would not be farfetched to state that “Quality of Life” is a determinant of wealth, if not wealth itself to which the constitution has laid the foundation via the Preamble.
Reluctant Optimism says this is good but not new. There is a history of European American activism against maltreatment of Africans and there are also racist and supremacist forces that have been forever present and actively combating against these good will and benevolent people, Racists used to call them “Nigger Lovers”. These ugly words were morphed into “Liberals”. A term we are using so loosely today to include everything “not Conservative”.
Record shows that, there is a history of Global European Activism in regards to Africans maltreatment dating back to the “Red Cockades” and “Les Amis des Noirs” in France and England. These activists along with economic considerations prompted England to lead all other nations in the abolition of African slavery and human trafficking in the Atlantic Slave Triangle. Reluctant optimism appreciates progress without jubilation. It does not underestimate the persistence of evil forces embodied into racists and supremacists against humanity, while praising and encouraging the efforts of their allies.
Optimists usually love to point to patterns of progression in society. Gone are the days of slavery, Jim Crow, and segregation and stories of Black abundance in this new era have taken their place. After all, we had President Obama, look how far we have come! Oblivious, to the American society with all its pillars of power moving at warp speed as the most powerful nation on the planet, touting as lovers of freedom, while its key institutions organically designed to continually suppress the upward mobility of African Americans in the aggregate.
Reluctant optimism understands that the contributions of African Americans are not yet part of the national consciousness. Their contributions have not entered into the Education System which would facilitate European American allies to carry the message trans-generational that African Americans deserve honor, respect and dignity based on their contributions to the foundation of the Pillars of National Power. Most Americans have forgotten Africans contributions to this nation; as the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt who enslaved the Hebrews because they forgot the contributions of the Hebrews.
African Americans still painfully watch generation after generation of newcomers right away start enjoying unearned benefits like President Donald Trump’s grand-father arrived from Germany as a barber in 1885. His mother emigrated from Scotland in 1930. His First Lady just arrived in 1996. We can also cite: Newt Gingrich’s family came in 1885, Rick Santorum’s family came in 1930, and Ted Cruz’s family came in 1957. They all came last but yet served first, moved to the front of the Bus, at the head of the line in the bank, protected by the police and the justice system.
Today shamelessly, these newcomers are leading the charge to continue the suppression of African Americans, who have been producing and contributing to the nation for over fifteen generations. They have blocked from their psychic that African Americans’contributions in sweat, blood and tears have been weaved into this nation’s genesis and are indistinguishably part of its foundation. African Americans are being persecuted by the same institutions that have been facilitators of wealth, justice, health and welfare for non-Africans in this society. This has amplified frustration, pain and anger for African Americans, who remain trapped in a quagmire of institutional racism that keeps them in a Third World condition as the Servant Class in this First World Society.
U.S. Companies and Big Corporations have joined the chorus. They have realized that continued racism could become a costly endeavor in a not so distant future. They have vowed right away to spend millions, overall billions of dollars to combat the evil of racism. Today, the fearless youth of Whites, Blacks and Browns have given pause to the Old Guards of the Racist System and the Trumpian Oligarchs who promise billions of dollars, plus changes in policies from the political elites, create the current forecast of optimism; just a forecast!
These companies smartly tried to avoid a dangerous flash point in our social system that potentially could become bigger and costlier than what occurred between April 12, 1861 to April 9, 1865. A fight that started to combat the Separatist traitors of the South with their Stars and Bars; Africans in slavery quickly became the principal reason for the fight, although the economic value that the slaves represent was the truer motivator. Here is my assumption of the simple analysis the U.S. Companies and the Big Corporations have made:
According to historical data, before the Civil War the U.S. Government debt was $64.8 million. During the Civil War the debt grew quickly. At the end of the Civil War the cost was $5.2 billion that dwarfed the government debt at that time. That was then. Now, the Federal debt at the end of fiscal year 2019 was $22.8 trillion. We don’t need to be geniuses to see that there would be a multiplicative impact in trillions of dollars to the economy, if this history of 1861 to 1865 were to repeat itself. Immediately, after the traitors of the South were defeated, in 1865 a process to transform Africans after 246 years in slavery, into African Americans was introduced as the Civil War Amendments: 1. Thirteenth Amendment freed the Africans from slavery, December 6, 1865. 2. Fourteenth Amendment granted the Africans citizenship, July 9, 1868. 3. Fifteenth Amendment gave the African Americans the Right to vote, February 3, 1870. 4. Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 removed Barriers to African Americans enfranchisement in the South; ninety-five years after the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified. This is an extraordinary reason for reluctant optimism.
History has shown that African Americans proved to be desperately hopeful and unrelenting optimists. As slaves, they worked under the hot sun and on muggy southern plantations for centuries while their wives, sons and daughters were savagely abused in every
way imaginable. Under these conditions they sang the blues and spirituals. They remained hopeful and survived. They valiantly fought in all the wars of the country here and abroad while being oppressed on both fronts; the Theater of War and being incapable of protecting their own families at home. They endured with the hope that their proven loyalty, and the so called Christian Love would prick the heart of their oppressors. But No, oppression persisted and morphed into police brutality, school to prison pipeline, economic disparity and a number of institutional biases and persecutions that gnaw away at their quality of life.
“Reluctant Optimism About Change” is a condition and a state of mind rooted in a deep awareness of the State of Africans globally. It is an awareness of a struggle that seems to have existed for a long time in humanity. It seems evident that a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) has been already instituted, that the further your physical characteristics are from the Europeans, the worst you will be treated from the rest of humanity. It seems to be universally established and accepted that Africans are the furthest away in the racial spectrum from the Europeans. So, when natural resources have to be apportioned amongst the human family, the stage is already set, expectations have been accepted, coalitions have been formed and everyone falls into place with the pre-understanding that Africans should be last. This SOP seems to work the same, even in time of calamities when kindness and civility should be apportioned.
Full optimism will be achieved, when African Self-Sufficiency is part of the perceived solutions being discussed, with the preconceived idea that the Africans hearts, minds and hands should be employed and deployed to assess their own environment, organize their assets, to feed themselves and their people spiritually, educationally and entrepreneurially to achieve honor, respect and dignity. It is complicated. The state of African Americans should not be measured just in terms of money but self sufficiency to project relevancy. Although, you can’t take money out of it. I believe it can be described based on what is missing, even if an African American has money; honor, respect and dignity are missing. This condition may have been exacerbated beginning with the introduction of slavery in the New World.
What was removed to make Africans in the Americas or New World Africans trans-generational slaves? Their spirit was broken which was the source of their belief system. The knowledge of themselves was effaced; a key component of vision development in their decision-making Process. Their entrepreneurial ability was overburdened, hampered and their own self-interest of profitability for those of their community was disadvantaged in a capitalist system.
Given all of this it’s reasonable to ask: How can a people obtain honor, respect and dignity where their labor and contributions are consumed and then disregarded? This maltreatment has been passed on to African American descendants. Similarly, the wealth the Africans have produced continued to be passed on to European American descendants and non-African people. Thus, the lack of honor, respect and dignity for African People have been weaved into the psychic of the Supremacist European Americans and their allies. Thus, real change will come with training and education to win hearts and minds of the majority of Americans while African Americans themselves should continue to strive to project honor, respect and dignity through organization and production to self-sufficiency.
LTC Berthony Napoleon U.S. Army (Ret) Founder and CEO Five and Two Solutions Group Inc. "Build the Youth to Build the Nation"