The road to hell

20th February 2017   ·   0 Comments

By Edmund W. Lewis
Editor

Some people don’t know when to quit.

I thought about that recently when I reflected on some of the groups that present themselves as racial healers and reconciliation agents.

Never mind that this nation has never completely come clean about what it has done and continues to do to people of color or that the oppression, exploitation, marginalization and extermination of Black, Brown, Red and Yellow people has never really stopped.

Never mind.

Let’s just all join hands and talk about our struggles, hopes and dreams and sing a chorus or two of “Kumbaya.”

There won’t really be anything that even vaguely resembles substantive change and it is misleading to talk about restoring justice when justice never really had a chance to take root in the United States. But at least those who organize these gatherings will feel better about themselves, earn a little cash and add to the confusion of the masses.

Perhaps that’s the point.

Nobody is really taking about ending systemic racism and white privilege or sharing decision-making power with nonwhite people in the U.S. It’s all about presenting the appearance of moving beyond the schism of race without ever really addressing the source and aim of white supremacy. It’s a way to placate oppressed communities and distract people from fighting to end income inequality, mass incarceration, educational apartheid, unconstitutional policing, taxation without representation and a host of other societal ills.

In the meantime, the rich get richer and the poor — many of whom are Black, Brown and Red — remain shackled by chronic poverty, underemployment and all the other conditions associated with living at the bottom of the socioeconomic pole.

The system of racism/white supremacy was not constructed or conceived overnight, so it would be naive for anyone to think that it can be overcome or undone overnight or with a series of feel-good sessions and retreats.

It’s especially interesting when major foundations with gigantic reservoirs of cash decide to spend money on feel-good initiatives with little potential of making a dent in the mountain of inequities and injustices rather than use those funds to create better-paying jobs and job-training programs that lead to economic empowerment and financial independence in communities of color. Oftentimes, it seems like these foundations would rather spend millions of dollars on the salaries of so-called organizers and specialists rather than on the people trapped in dead-end. low-wage jobs that leave them with very little to show for their hard work at the end of the pay period.

One of the more interesting aspects of most racial healing and reconciliation initiatives is that they focus on securing forgiveness from those impacted by the system of white supremacy rather than finding a way to convince those in power to end the oppression of people of color.

Imagine how effective these initiatives would be if they had the capacity to end, for example, the mass incarceration of Black people in New Orleans or the slaughter of unarmed Black and Brown men, women and children by law enforcement officers across the U.S.

You don’t get to hear much in these initiatives about how little is being done to address the importation of drugs and guns into communities of color or to address the oppressive conditions often found in privatized prisons. Nor do you hear much about how national lawmakers and Supreme Court Justices continue to chip away at the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act.

Let’s all just get together and sing Bob Marley’s “One Love” or Louis Armstrong’s “What A Wonderful World.”

There’s no silver bullet, mystical potion or magic word that can undo a centuries-old, complex system of racial oppression and white privilege that has seen the rise and fall of many nations and continues to give people of European descent an unfair advantage in virtually every facet of human existence.

Thanks to people like Dr. Neely Fuller and the late Dr. Frances Cress Welsing, we know that white supremacy is a byproduct of white fear of genetic annihilation based on the fact that Europeans are a global minority whose numbers continue to decrease as the number of melaninated people grows exponentially.

This is why you saw the harsh and draconian practices used to control the Black majority in apartheid-era South Africa and why you see a new push by whites in the U.S. to maintain control of the nation as their numbers dwindle in the 21st century.

White supremacy isn’t like a bad cold or a bad habit. You can’t just wish, sing or love it away. It has to be addressed head-on by people who understand the nature of white supremacy and how pervasive it has become.

We didn’t get into this situation overnight and won’t get out of it overnight. You can’t just wave a magic wand and make systemic racism, economic injustice, inequity, mass incarceration and other societal ills vanish into thin air.

Good intentions, sincere apologies and heartfelt gestures can’t dismantle a system of racial domination and privilege that compelled the Vatican to plunder ancient Kemet’s sacred artifacts and never return them, that motivated Italians to “steal” a two-ton obelisk from Ethiopia and that brought the imperialist powers of Europe together to carve up the African continent like a sweet potato pie.

Good intentions can’t make France, the U.S. and other Western countries stop blackballing and undermining the Republic of Haiti because the enslaved Africans of that nation had the audacity to overthrow its French oppressors much like France and the United States had done to gain their independence.

Good intentions, pretty words and media events can’t make the City of New Orleans stop framing Black people for murder, practicing unconstitutional policing and mass incarceration, blocking Black and Brown contractors’ access to public bidding contracts or building schools for Black children atop toxic landfills.

Hell, good intentions and positive thoughts have not even been enough to persuade those in power locally, nationally and globally to recognize and respect Black, Brown, Red and Yellow people as free and equal human being with certain inalienable rights given to them by the Creator.

It just doesn’t work that way.

If all it took to rid this city, state, nation and world of the system of white supremacy was a conglomeration of folks singing, chanting, wailing, twerking and wobbling in a circle, Black people would have been free a long time ago.

Shame on the local business community, local elected officials, foundations and hand-picked Negroes for trying to force this illusion of a city brimming with justice, equity, democracy, transparency and racial understanding down the throats of New Orleanians.

You can fool some Black people sometimes. But you can’t fool all Black people all of the time. All power to the people.

This article originally published in the February 20, 2017 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.