Legions Of Young Whites All Across America Marched For Social Justice, Now Republicans Are Panicked…

For many migrants arriv­ing in the United States regard­less of col­or, pre­con­ceived notions abound about one of the old­est indige­nous peo­ple in the coun­try, speak­ing of African-Americans.
For those peo­ple, the white­washed American pro­pa­gan­da against Blacks has long pen­e­trat­ed their per­cep­tions and influ­enced their think­ing all the way back in their coun­try of birth.
“Blacks are lazy; they are crim­i­nals, they are unwill­ing to pull them­selves up by their boot­straps, they refuse to take advan­tage of the oppor­tu­ni­ties avail­able in the country.”[sic]
I, too, felt that for far too many African-Americans, the pos­si­bil­i­ties in America were untapped and unexploited.
Today, I still believe that despite what obtains in the way of obsta­cles, a greater effort to over­come is nec­es­sary to once and for all change the over­whelm­ing bal­ance of pow­er tilt­ed toward whites.
I hold those sen­ti­ments because I believe that any­thing else is a fool’s errand that will not change blacks’ eco­nom­ic or social plight in the United States.
The pur­vey­ors of the anti-black pro­pa­gan­da nev­er both­ered men­tion­ing that their dis­dain and deri­sion for the work eth­ic of blacks start­ed after they stopped work­ing for free.
And so, the con­tin­u­a­tion of neg­a­tive per­cep­tions against blacks in their own home­land is con­tin­u­al­ly assured because of the sys­temic cam­paign against them by their own gov­ern­ment and people.

Whether on the moth­er con­ti­nent or in the dias­po­ra, African peo­ple have been placed at an extreme dis­ad­van­tage due to European crimes against them. For well over five (5) hun­dred years, begin­ning with the Portuguese Bartolomeu Dias, the African con­ti­nent was pil­laged for its resources, its peo­ple mur­dered, raped, bru­tal­ized, and had all kinds of crimes com­mit­ted against them.
Almost five and a half cen­turies after Bartolomeu Dias first des­e­crat­ed the con­ti­nent with his pres­ence; lit­er­al­ly, every European nation, both great and small, became excep­tion­al­ly rich from their plun­der and exploita­tion of not only the African land but the African people.
Having mur­dered count­less mil­lions, stolen their wealth, stolen their cul­tur­al her­itage & tra­di­tions, lied about who they are, raped and sodom­ized them, enslaved and com­mit­ted all kinds of heinous acts against them, one would have thought that descen­dants of those who per­pe­trat­ed those acts of sav­agery would feel some shame.
As I con­sid­er this sub­ject, I won­dered how could they not feel shame?
Then it occurred to me that if their ances­tors had it in them to do the things they did to our ances­tors, why would I expect their descen­dants would have the capac­i­ty for shame?

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In the United States, lit­er­al­ly every attempt to give the recent­ly enslaved blacks a chance at sur­vival was erased in 1877 after the peri­od known as recon­struc­tion end­ed, while Rutherford B Hayes, a Republican, was in office.
Jim crow laws were ush­ered in across the south, which made the lives of the recent­ly freed blacks just as bad as when they were under the bondage of forced servitude.
Even though the war between the Union and the Confederacy effec­tive­ly end­ed slav­ery as it were, in the north and oth­er parts of the coun­try, black peo­ple were hat­ed and treat­ed no bet­ter than in the south, where jim crow was the law of the land.
Across the coun­try, in every state, racism was entrenched in gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy at all levels.
In hous­ing, edu­ca­tion, health­care, food qual­i­ty, employ­ment, polic­ing, and every oth­er gov­ern­ment sec­tor, blacks were red­lined and seg­re­gat­ed to sec­ond-class sta­tus as a mat­ter of gov­ern­ment policy.
It was gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy to restrict the rights of blacks then; it is gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy to restrict the rights of blacks today.

And so it remains, in the Senate, peo­ple like Mitch McConnell, Tom Cotton, and oth­ers are vehe­ment­ly opposed to the teach­ing of race in classrooms.
In many states, par­tic­u­lar­ly those run by Republicans, there are efforts to remove any teach­ings about race in schools.
If their actions were right­eous, why are they opposed to young peo­ple learn­ing about what they did?
The Associated Press report­ed that teach­ers and pro­fes­sors in Idaho will be pre­vent­ed from teach­ing stu­dents about race. In addi­tion, Oklahoma teach­ers will be pro­hib­it­ed from say­ing cer­tain peo­ple are inher­ent­ly racist or oppres­sive, whether con­scious­ly or unconsciously.
Tennessee schools will risk los­ing state aid if their lessons include par­tic­u­lar con­cepts about race and racism.
Governors and leg­is­la­tures in Republican-con­trolled states across the coun­try are mov­ing to define what race-relat­ed ideas can be taught in pub­lic schools and col­leges, a reac­tion to the nation’s racial reck­on­ing after last year’s police killing of George Floyd. The mea­sures have been signed into law in at least three states and are con­sid­ered in many more.
Education Weekly said thou­sands of schools across the coun­try might soon be forced to upend cur­ric­u­la, dis­con­tin­ue eth­nic stud­ies cours­es and anti-bias train­ing for teach­ers, and shut down class­room dis­cus­sions on Black Lives Matter and oth­er race-relat­ed events like the insur­rec­tion at the U.S. Capitol and mur­der of George Floyd.
That’s because a wave of leg­is­la­tion in some states aims to severe­ly lim­it how teach­ers and schools address race — a cam­paign that dis­trict lead­ers and experts say would squash a range of efforts to root out dis­crim­i­na­tion, bias, and racism expe­ri­enced by stu­dents of color.

As Republican leg­is­la­tures across the coun­try embark on a scorched-earth assault against vot­ing rights aid­ed by the Roberts Supreme Court, those same states are also active­ly engaged in white­wash­ing history.
They intend to scrub the geno­cide their ances­tors per­pet­u­at­ed to give them the advan­tage they now enjoy.
They argue that peo­ple are not respon­si­ble for the crimes of their ances­tors, even as they take more steps to lim­it and cur­tail the rights of the descen­dants of those peo­ple on whom they per­pet­u­at­ed those crimes.
The amus­ing thing is that as it was when they were com­mit­ting the lynch­ings and oth­er mur­ders, so too were they opposed to black edu­ca­tion, while at the same time they took pho­tographs so they could gloat over their gris­ly crimes.
How do they expect that they are going to stop the free flow of infor­ma­tion? Are they count­ing on black peo­ple’s con­tin­ued reluc­tance to be educated?
I’ll tell you what scared the hell out of them. It was the legions of young white men and women who marched for racial jus­tice last sum­mer after Derek Chauvin and his cohorts lynchedGeorge Floyd.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.