It is estimated that 2% of Black people voted for Mr. Walker in the 2022 elections. That means that 98% of the million plus Georgians who voted for him thought that Black people do not care that a public servant is incapable of uttering a sentence that make a single point. That 98% thought that a person who is incapable of detecting hypocrisy in himself is fit to be a senator. That 98% can be expected to have thought that the choice of the disgraced former 45th president was worthy of respect.
The long hard road to human decency
There is such a long hard road ahead of the American people and if one is non-white there is little comfort in hearing “we’ve come a long way “.
The day the British Empire announced the end of slavery has come and gone 188 times and the descendants of both slavers and slaves seem not to have committed themselves to a realistic new arrangement. The Brits have kept their grip on the lives of the emancipated with the consent of succeeding generations by means of a snail-paced empowerment, leading many of us in the emancipated progeny to utterly reject the French, Canadian, American and British imagination of freedom. The creative spirit and process have provided valuable sustenance for the unfinished journey into a dignified liberation, against the conservative values of yesterday’s greatness.
Making music from steelInspiring generations
The British government gave my ancestors neither hoe, cutlass, bucket or land when they proclaimed emancipation. A few brave women and men knew it and have been the inspiration for alternate forms of civic society. People who are just waking up in Barbados and Jamaica to weak-kneed parliamentary democracy are not much of a role model for the generation that will lead Black people into their own just, pluralistic and indigenous communities.
Waiting for others to define our future is a waste of time. It is the reason that Black people are still divided, inspired by the leaders of the same kind of government that enslaved us in the first place. Luminaries of the struggle in North America and in the islands of the Caribbean over more than 40 generations may look like flickering candles in an age when the Holy See travels to Canada to apologize for its role in a horribly immoral colonial enterprise. May the lamps surviving among us change the course of education and empowerment.
People with no expertise in God’s business or medical science have been feeding us deadly junk about how triumphant life can be and encouraging people to be afraid of a vaccine. If their eyes were more functional than an idol’s they would see that the already miserable life of many is grinding to a halt. Black people living in fear is a joke. Would it not be a wonder if we could forget that “Black and proud” leads nowhere.
Who was it that has stood by watching their own politicians, their own police, their own preachers, and their own “businesses” kill, steal from, and destroy African Americans?
What is next!
Many antivaxers are fear-mongers, fully engaged with the sorcerers of our times. Moses and Aaron were not afraid of Pharaoh. The early disciples of Yeshua were not afraid of Rome or Jewish authority. We can vote with our feet and the ballot box.
“Then I will draw near to you for judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers and against the adulterers and against those who swear falsely, and against those who oppress the wage earner in his wages, the widow and the orphan, and those who turn aside the alien and do not fear Me,” says the Lord of hosts.
Malachi 3:5
Right or left wing “discussion” of covid19 is likely to be disinformation and their heroics are likely to be more genocide aimed at people who only want to live. Living in fear and mistrust can hardly be called life, and is more nightmare than American dream. The image at the top of this post came to me in the last few days – I am not interested in knowing who sent it – but that “never forget” mindset is pure bitterness and loss of humanity. Really? Never forget? What’s next? Be afraid of the bank, the church, the government, the restaurant, the school and the great outdoors?
When the King of the universe announced that Gentile lives mattered does any one remember what the fallout was? Was there any reason for anyone to say “all lives matter”? Our moral guide tells us that lying is abominable and the American legislation that makes lying to the FBI a crime is the glory of the bottom of the civilized barrel.
Watered down to vanity
The standards of justice have been a word game for most of my short life and the biblical record shows an early departure from philanthropy and hospitality. The biblical narratives show that even when cautions abound about the treatment of servants and foreigners the oppression permeated society all the way to the exile of Judah. Humans have been more interested in their finances than in the liberties provided in law (Jeremiah 34:8ff)
The fallout of getting the Gentile mission under way was the absurd attempt to turn the church into an imitation of Judaism. Paul talks about it as a “thing sneaked in” while Peter talks about it as “a dog returning to his vomit for seconds”. The lives of Gentiles are valuable without comparison to Jewish lives. The lives of Africans are valuable without comparison to other lives.
“All lives matter” is the opening salvo from people who want to deny the fact of their own virulent cowardice and are ready with talking points that do not address their own fingers dripping with the pie of superiority and discrimination. Next on their agenda is “blame the victim”: Black people are responsible for their plight. Perhaps there is a story about the oppression of White people by people of African descent.
We can imagine that these “All Lives Matter” activists were never “Black and Proud” and were never convicted about the abuse of Black people. Listening to them talk about blackness is not a great use of our time. If they had the liberation of Black people on their front burner they would generate a set of proposals instead of finding fault with various expressions by leaders of Black Lives Matter. They are the hot air outfit; mercenaries for the misguided evangelical caliphate.
When we say “Girls deserve to be educated” and you tell us “Boys deserve to be educated” whose side are you on?
Life is Fun, But Not a Joke 