In last week’s column, I revealed the first part of my Black History Month lecture for the House of Grace was hacked by an army of racist roaches.
They interrupted frequently and really showed their stupidity and contempt for God and country whenever I introduced an unflattering—albeit truthful– fact about the founding fathers and the evolution of American apartheid.
Ironically, they drowned me out even when I provided a controversial statement supporting the theory that slavery is condoned in the bible.
Had they shown any modicum of respect for a religious service, they would have also heard me theorize how the Confederate States of America had a legal right to succeed from the union.
But being the bigoted dastardly beetles they obviously are, expecting them to be any more than I have grown accustomed to, was wishful thinking, at best.
As such, I used last week’s column to reveal what they missed during the initial lecture and after we jumped ship and established a new Zoom linkage.
Likewise, I will use this week’s column to summarize part two of my lecture.
Since I am being scrutinized and recorded, who knows, maybe these scum will learn something if I use second-grade English.
- For most of my life, I was in denial. Still, I finally accepted dozens of scriptures that either condone or justify slavery, including Ephesians 6:5, Titus 2:9-20, Colossian 4:1, and 1 Peter 2:18.
However, there are also verses that either requires slave owners’ to treat their slaves humanely or call for liberation. In fact, a cornerstone of Jesus/Yeshua’s teachings was to love your neighbor (even if he lived in a hut on your plantation), aid the poor and suffering, and liberate the oppressed, starting with his first ‘sermon’ as described in Luke 4: 18,19, and Isaiah 61:1,2.
There is also scripture denouncing greed—capitalism—which is referred to as the ‘root of all evil.’
This concept appropriately applied to most slave owners, including most founding fathers and presidents serving before the 13th amendment.
- While slavery may have been a ‘cultural’ reality, racism is not.
In fact, ‘race’ is never mentioned in anybody’s bible, including the one penned by Thomas Jefferson.
Nor are there references that Whites were made in the image of God (Nyame). That lie was often cited by the racist roaches who tortured, raped, and mutilated their ‘property,’ along with the insane belief that Africans had no souls.
What is factual is that (wo)mankind was created in the likeness of Nyame (God’s African reference). He/She was Negroid. The first human was born in Africa and given the name Lucy. And if there was an Eden, it was located along the Nile. Those theories must be factual since they were confirmed by White anthropologists. And as everyone knows, that makes the conclusion legitimate.
Of course, had a Black anthropologist made the discovery, Lucy would have been named Lakeshia, and the garden would have been a ghetto.
- While it has never been challenged, many legal scholars believe the Confederate States of America (CSA) probably had a legal right to secede from the union.
In fact, the CSA was not the first ‘confederacy’ to consider doing so.
During the Thomas Jefferson administration, a group of New England states held the ‘Hartford Convention’ to discuss seceding from the union. Paradoxically, they sought to form a separate nation for precisely the opposite reason Southerners would do a half-century later.
These northern ‘traitors’ believed the federal government undermined state rights and specifically mentioned the Virginian politician and slave owner Jefferson’s tyrannical conduct.
One of the secession movement leaders, which would have included a half dozen northern states, including New York and New Jersey, was Rufus King. Yep, the same guy the Milwaukee School Board honored by naming a school after, a high school I attended for three years.
- You can debate the predominance of slavery as the cause of the civil war. Still, a fact that can’t be disputed is that many, if not most, union soldiers believed they were fighting to preserve the union, as Abe Lincoln posited.
In fact, various accounts reveal most union soldiers said they would not have fought if the civil war was about abolishing slavery. Not only were the majority of northerners apathetic about slavery, but it can also be assumed most were racists, believing Africans were inferior.
Moreover, there were several riots, including one in New York (which was reenacted in the Martin Scorsese film, “The Gangs of New York”), to protest the draft.
And you would be hard-pressed to convince me these Northern liberals did more than tolerate the presence of Black folks. According to various accounts, many draftees hated their enlistment under any circumstance and took out their frustration on the conflict’s symbol. An undisclosed number of Black men, women, and children were tortured and lynched during several violent protests in the north, which also served to fuel racial animosities.
- While it is often overlooked, numerous reports and journals provided by independent foreign observers, journalists, and abolitionists in early American society, declared that racism ran rampant in the north.
Numerous reports theorize Africans were better off in slavery than as ‘free men’ in the north, where they were confronted by a system of apartheid that would make South Africans blush.
Segregation, discrimination, and poverty were off the charts, and ‘Jane Crow’ made her presence known decades in the North before laws were implemented in the South by her brother, Jim.
- White Supremacy was the norm in both the north and south.Several of the founding fathers were bigots, including Jefferson, Ben Franklin, and George Washington, which cannot be denied. Most Whites, who would be considered liberals by today’s standards, believed that Africans were inferior.
Lincoln said during a speech in 1858 that we were too ‘stupid’ to be given the vote and should be restricted to second-class citizenship.
Franklin, one of the revolutionary war architects, was quoted as saying there were “too many ‘Nigras’ (n-word) in New England,” and that America was a ‘White country!’
Jefferson, who put a different meaning to the concept of a ‘founding father,’ denied a request from Haitian revolutionaries to assist them in throwing out the French colonists on that island nation. Jefferson believed though it would be morally correct to do so, it would probably inspire Black slaves in America to seek their freedom.
- Christianity took two different paths in America, with African slaves and free Colored Americans viewing the religion through different prisms than Whites. For members of our tribe, Christianity was a religion of hope, patience, and liberation.
Most White Christians’ theology spanned the gamut, from denominations that followed the New Covenant of Jesus and His call for the universal brotherhood, to a doctrine that supported White Supremacy. Ironically, most of the founding fathers were either followers of that racist philosophy or were agnostic. Several were deists.
- What we would today call ‘conservative churches’ not only condoned slavery but posited it was the will of God. Congregants believed God was a White man with a flowing beard much in the image of Uncle Sam, empowering those created in His/Her image to rule the world, having power over all creatures, including the subhuman Black, Brown, and Yellow people. They similarly took that position when it came to women, who they kept powerless and subservient.
The common rationale was, as one Christian leader explained,
“[Slavery] was established by decree of Almighty God … it is sanctioned in the Bible, in both Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation … it has existed in all ages, has been found among the people of the highest civilization, and in nations of the highest proficiency in the arts.”
Or, as Confederate States of America President Jefferson Davis noted,
“… the right of holding slaves is clearly established in the Holy Scriptures, both by precept and example.”
On the other end of that religious spectrum were the progressive denominations like the Quakers. They posited that God (Nyame) created but one race and that slavery was a sin and an afront toward God Almighty. Those who supported it and racism would eventually end up in Hell wearing gasoline drawers.
- Many progressive Christians believed that America’s evil character would not be exorcised by prayer alone but should be eradicated with blood.
Although raised in a Calvinist household, John Brown proclaimed those who supported the institution of slavery were enemies of God. He said God had chosen him to be the match that would set off the TNT that would end slavery.
The dichotomy of the vastly different interpretations of the Gospel splintered America, then and now. This dichotomy was best summed up by Frederick Douglass, who once declared,
“Between the Christianity of this land and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference—so wide that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as sinful, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one is of necessity to be the enemy of the other.
“I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ; I, therefore, hate the corrupt, slave-holding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason but the most deceitful one for calling the religion of this land Christianity…”
Chances are you won’t find anything mentioned in my lecture offered in government schools.
Sadly, only His-story is taught in government indoctrination centers (also called ‘schools’) which, unfortunately explains what happened in Washington D.C. in January.
And as it has been said, those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Hotep.
