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most of us are slaves already ...
As to whether I "get it" about racism - I can have only just begun to get it ... and doubt that I can really ever get it fully - not without living the experience first hand as you have done - but what I can do is talk about what I see, what I have come to understand with the help of other people who have done harder work before me, try to awaken someone and attempt the "each one teach one" strategy and hope it makes some difference to someone, saves a life, saves a family. Yet there are other levels of our "circumstances" and I wonder if Marcus Garvey maybe had the better idea - that a people, any people, need a true homeland - land IS central to any level of sovereignty after all, and until people are possessed of their OWN PLACE - even if it is just one acre for a family - I am not sure anyone can be truly free, with exception of the odd person who shuns any and all possessions and simply wanders the earth. What I think is that it COULD be possible that at some point, Americans might consider something like your idea for reparations, but ... and this is a pretty big but: I am not sure any of us will have a United States of America very much longer in which any of us could ever come together in that way. We ARE going to have to come together in SOME way in order not to lose what we and our ancestors have created and struggled to maintain here - whether as freemen or as slaves, we all did struggle in some way to make this country what it became (not necessarily what it is right now) - whatever color, whatever economic level - because the forces which decided not to pursue armed struggle against our new nation in the late 1700's have been working quietly ever since to subvert what was created here, and it looks to me like they have nearly won their battle against us. The worst part of it all may be that because we never yet have figured out how to come together as *Americans* ALL - in spite of race and class, religious and political differences, and all the other "isms" and contentions - we may never be able to because the opportunity to exercise our freedoms will be gone soon. Every once in a while I hear something that is just so plain obvious that I ask myself,
"How could I be so dumb?"
... and I had one of those moments recently. The Founding Fathers of this country decided that our *inalienable rights* were granted by God, which means that government - legitimate or otherwise - CANNOT deprive us of our rights, because no government ever GRANTED those rights ! ... yet if you listen today to the average person complaining about "government eavesdropping" and The Patriot Act (those who are even aware of PA), and all the rest of our "loss" of rights and freedoms, you hear someone talking about what government is doing TO them, what government is taking *away* from them
... and I admit I have done that too, forgot what I knew, but there we are. We have forgotten, collectively, those of us who ever knew, that our rights were NEVER *granted* to us by any government, and because we have forgotten that simple fact, we have allowed our friends and neighbors to be oppressed - in other words, LACKING those very same rights some of us took for granted - whole groups never able to fully OWN those rights in this racially divided, and class divided, society, and because even those of us who "enjoyed" our PRIVILEGE forgot the origin of our rights, and some of us participated in preventing people among us from ENJOYING their own God-given rights, we will probably all "lose" our rights practically speaking, and maybe, in the end, that is not such a bad thing for those of us who have not had the backbone to remember, and practice, KNOWING that "all men are created equal" and stand up to make sure what we knew was what we practiced as a nation. Optimistic as I try to be, there are too many active fronts now where we must wage some "war" against those who oppress us, and too many of us are already "schizophrenic" or otherwise mentally damaged from what we have been through, whether racial discrimination or war, marginalization and criminalization, and other damage, so that even if we win battles on one *level* I am not sure we can remain free in the face of powerful forces arrayed against the common man, and woman, and I wonder if we are not already, most of us, slaves to those forces.
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Contributor's Note
Agree or disagree, I hope you will join our discussions.
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This intel was contributed by jamonbo
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May, 2012
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