Been waiting for you....
I'll be 73 next month. That means that my mother, born in Missouri and grew up in Arkansas, was only allowed to go to school for about four to six weeks out of every year. She made it to 10th grade! And, then was forced to stop that cause she had to help her mother (born in the 1880s) with her younger siblings, and because the white boss man plantation owner demanded that she "chop" cotton and do all whatever other farm work needed tending to year round. It was called "share-cropping." My grandparents supposedly would "share" in the profits of crops at the end of the season as per a "contract" between them and the white boss man plantation owner. They had to "rent" their shanty, tools, seed, animals, etc from that same white boss man who would not charge them upfront or monthly, but on credit which became due at the end of the season. He kept the books, of course; and each and every year, no matter how good or bad the farm did, my foks were always in arrears, and had what little money they made deducted from their pay. Somehow that always ended up still owing the white bossman owner --every year.
My father was born in Homer, Louisians, and was subjected to the exact same "system" until he and two of his brothers refused to continue to share crop. He was only allowed to attend school until the third grade, and was thus "functionally illiterate" all of his life.
A white lynch mob got after them, but they ran into the swamps and woods and hid for two weeks before hopping a freight train going North. That's how I came to be born in Indiana.
He worked in a filthy, suffocating iron foundry for 44 years, but made sure that his kids went to school. And graduate.
When he died in 1989, all he had as his legacy was a couple of cars and a 50-year-old house in the ghetto. His five kids got nothing.
I'm telling you this not to "educate" you about the lives of black people, but to point out that my family's story is typical of just about all black people in this country. This is not about the past but the future. You white people took my father's time, my mother's time, my grandparents time....and want to pretend that you have not benefited from all that stolen time, from your perfidy, your collective "white" family's perfidy.
I don't give a single damn about whether you feel "guilty". And, see that's the problem with you guys: You think (or want to think) it's all about you as individuals, as sole actors in the world. YOU did not own slaves. YOU did not mistreat black people. YOU did not attempt to lynch my father. You did not segregate us. YOU did not deny us mortgages and "redlined" us into ghettoes which "the system" created.
Yet, you have benefited from all of this shit, whether YOU wanted to or not, whether YOU know it or not.
Finally, if you are serious (and I doubt that you are), do some serious reading, studying, and thinking before you publish such tripe.
No need to respond, cause I am tired of you guys willful ignorance.
