I just cannot let things go. And I know that I cannot go on a one woman ‘set the record straight’ crusade, but on the other hand, I just gotta call out mess when I see it. And so, without further ado here is another chapter in my never ending quest to awaken the brain dead.
I was reading a blog post titled, “Is The Media The Real Enemy of America?… Take a Closer Look…” and I took exception to some of what I read and I posted a comment. And as usual, things deteriorate after I comment. I wonder, why is that? I really don’t. I know why. That was rhetorical, of course. But before I digress any further, this is what I took exception to.
Reince Priebus, White House chief of staff, firmly suggested we take seriously Trump’s authoritarian statement of the media being the enemy of America. In actuality, these journalists who Trump so routinely lambasts, the result of his fantasy notion of a dark covert operation enacted to depose him as the reigning king, are in fact, not our enemies at all.
Seriously? “The media is not our enemy?” I almost broke down and wept over this little jewel. Since when has the media spouted anything other than recycled garbage? The media, as we know, is owned, lock, stock and barrel by a few corporate moguls who are quite determined that the American populace should remain clueless and unaware of what is really going on. We have been fed fake ass news for decades. It is only with the advent of the internet that we have been able to, thanks to alternative news sites, get some idea of what is actually going down. The ‘mainstream media’ has never been our friend and for once, Trump was right, the media is our enemy!
Below is the comment that I posted to the blog.
This entire post is absolute hypocrisy and an absurdity. The media is anything but fair and balanced. The media is owned by a handful of corporate moguls. There are no independent, unbiased newspapers, TV news shows and the like and I just love the last sentence:
“we must discern between what our country has always stood for since the day our forefathers set foot on our golden shores, as opposed to Trump’s vision of America”
You mean when some men and their women who were fed up with paying taxes in England embarked on a journey to find another land to lay claim to, kill off the majority of the original inhabitants and then go in search of free ‘slave’ labor to build up said stolen land? Is this what you meant by ‘our forefathers set foot on golden shores’? Because my forefathers were slaves and this shore was not so ‘golden’ to them since the ‘forefathers’ you speak of were themselves, slave-owning hypocrites who loudly spoke of ‘living as free men rather than die as slaves’ all the while brandishing a whip over the heads of their slaves. Talk about hypocrisy, this is the very definition.
I have never seen so many ‘white’ people up in arms over what epitomizes them in all my days. Trump is every single last one of you if you were to be honest. Look in the mirror, Trump is staring right back at you! And this is why when you look at pictures of the protests, hardly any ‘Black’ faces are in the crowds. We deal with all of you ‘Trumps’ on a daily basis and see no need to protest Trump. What would be the point? He is everywhere we turn and not just in the Oval Office.
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Of course, all hell broke loose after that! And below is the response to my comment.
Since you have chosen to turn my blog into a racial issue, I feel it only fair to respond. I do have to ask first. Is this what you always do? Sounds like maybe. Contrary to your belief, I do not see Trump when I look in a mirror. I see the opposite or I would not be so adamant in my stance against virtually everything he stands for. It would appear to me, since you have lumped me under your single myopic category of “all white people”, perhaps you are the one who needs to spend some time in self-reflection. You’ve made your racial overtones quite obvious even though the intent of the article had nothing to do with racism. Yes, I fully understand there were slaves in early America, just as there were in Africa, the UK, and throughout Europe, but to hear you explain yourself, every white person alive today is somehow responsible for these atrocious sins of the past. I agree the actions of our forefathers were inhumane in this respect and it makes me quite ill to think that any human, anywhere, possessed such a high level of immorality as to enslave another human, regardless their color. Did you realize that many of the Irish were also held as slaves? Some of them were my relatives so I guess I should lash out at people living centuries later as well. But I won’t though. I am astute enough to realize these people had nothing to do with that, and I am certain if I were to ask them, they would agree how horrible it was.
I prefer to think the world has moved forward since those days, but some people can’t seem to get past things that happened way before they were even born. Our forefathers were wrong. So was the rest of the world at that time. Despite the fact, they came to America to escape what they could no longer contend with in their countries of origin, and yes, because of the historical times they lived in, slavery was an unfortunate part of that. It took many years to right the wrong of slavery, and many “white people” died in the battles for their unconditional freedom. In fact, most of the soldiers who gave their lives for the abolishment of slavery were white.
I served in the military for 14 years and fought side by side with people of all colors. We had each other’s backs and we never questioned where we individually came from, what our religion was, or where our ancestors were born. None of that mattered. We were simply people, united together for the same causes. We had no vision of black versus white. Most veterans don’t, but I’m sure you never served so you probably don’t realize that.
As far as the media goes, as I have written about before, they all lean either left or right which is why it is so imperative to read more than one sources take on something before determining an educated appraisal of the truth. They all report about the same things so it shouldn’t be all that difficult for you to do.
Please. Next time you choose to respond to one of my blogs, how about staying on topic and not taking things where they were never intended to go. Trump does that.
And just so you know, I, or anyone else for that matter, cannot change the color of our shoreline.
Peace to you and yours. And I truly mean that.
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And the blog author did not finish there. Another post was put up titled, “Racial Tension in Trump’s America. What Are You Going To Do About It?” and I got an honorable mention. I am feeling quite humbled. I am such an inspiration to many, it would seem. I just love it.
In a previous blog, I made reference to America’s golden shores as being the landing place of our forefathers, using a description I have heard repeated many times throughout my 65 years, not giving the phrase a second thought. However. America’s forefathers were not the focus of the blog, and it had not a thing to do with our shoreline. It was about the media. Who to believe. Who not to believe. It’s a question on all of our minds.
As has become increasingly the norm in this year of your higher power 2017, one reader chose to hang on the words “golden shores”, using this strictly literary phrase as ammunition for twisting the media related blog into a racial onslaught. Needless to say, I was caught way off guard.
I declare, I seem to catch people off guard all the time! I am SO bad!
This person stated how the golden shores were not so golden for slaves who arrived chained and shackled in the hulls of huge sailing vessels. How can anyone with half a heart disagree? I certainly can’t. Maybe Ben Carson can since he believes these “immigrant” slaves were so full of hopes and dreams they were about to burst. The person’s response did not stop there, as you will read in a direct quote below. All this being said, I can in no way assume responsibility for the sins of anyone’s past.
No, he cannot be responsible for the ‘sins of anyone’s past’ but he can be responsible for when the present is a reflection of the past and there really is no difference between the two. So, I shall just post my response to this.
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Well, I guess I should thank you for the honorary mention but there has been racial tension in America long before Trump stepped foot inside the Oval Office and if anyone is not aware of this, then all they need do is to unbury their head from in the sand. Racist drug policies are responsible for why 2.3 million mostly Black men and women are cooling their heels in ‘for profit’ prisons.
When crack was first introduced into ‘Black communities’ decades ago, there was no hue and cry over this. It was decided that a ‘War on Drugs’ would be declared and those who were addicted would be locked up along with those who sold the drugs. Now, along comes heroin in rural ‘white’ America, and now, the addiction of white folks is a most horrible ‘medical’ epidemic. It is now time for the CDC to investigate and report its findings on what is killing ‘white’ folks all across America; especially in areas that normally are not perceived as problematic, unlike the inner cities. Heroin has been problematic for the city of Baltimore for decades and no hue and cry was raised over this because of who resides in Baltimore; namely Black people. But everyone gets their panties in a bunch when drugs start killing ‘whites’ and don’t lock them up, get them some help.
Everything in America IS about race and there is no escaping that fact, if your head’s not buried in the sand, that is. You cannot escape this. And I also noticed how you go on and on about your military service. I would never, ever thank anyone of any skin tone for their so-called ‘service to this country’ because what service would that be? Heading over to foreign lands to kill people who have personally done you no harm? Operating a drone from thousands of miles away from a target that’s been declared, a ‘bug’ and watching a ‘bug splat’ once that drone has struck its target and those surrounding it which has also included innocent women and children attending wedding parties in Yemen and Afghanistan?
And if anyone is unsure as to why America’s military is still in Afghanistan, then, please feel free to read any one of my many posts about the fact that poppy production has skyrocketed in Afghanistan since U.S. and NATO forces arrived and took over. Please feel free to read my post, “The War In Afghanistan Is Not Over!” and please, don’t stop there.
I suppose you have never heard the word ‘gentrification’ and so you don’t know what that means. Gentrification is when rich ‘white’ folks declare an inner city, that once housed mostly Black folks, to be the new ‘promised land’ for them and so they promptly increase rents by building high-end condos, thus making it impossible for those who used to reside there to continue. Washington, D.C. is no longer known as ‘Chocolate City’ for this very reason. The Black people who used to live in D.C. have had to either become homeless or flee to southern states and I do know that many of them did head south and right into even more deep-seated racism because I am from the south and so I know about this, first hand. The Black people who remain in D.C. are in homeless shelters because D.C. has always been their home and they cannot think of going anywhere else. Besides, what would be the point when gentrification is rearing its ugly head everywhere?
The Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Brotherhood and other skinhead groups did not just start up when Trump was elected. And who instigated the racial tensions that result from Klan marches through main streets in cities in America? If slavery and all it entailed is over and done with, then why was there a need for a Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and his non-violence stance of marching to gain Civil Rights for Black people? And who shot him? If whites were not so racist and racism was actually annihilated with the so-called ending of slavery, then there would have been no Jim Crow laws on the books. There would have been no ‘colored only’ signs and Selma-to-Montgomery marching, Black church bombings and I suppose Dylann Roof is just a figment of my imagination, but isn’t he the one who went inside a church and shot it up and killed nine Black churchgoers? I do believe this happened long before Donald Trump was residing in the White House. And Tamir Rice was gunned down two seconds after ‘white’ cops showed up as he was playing with a toy gun in a park and yet whites take their children to gun ranges and it has been reported that a white child shot the gun range instructor, but no one shot a white child holding a gun, did they? But I suppose you think that Tamir Rice would have been just fine if he had taken his toy pistol to a gun range. Yeah, I’d buy that.
So no, I’m not the one who is perpetuating racism, bigotry and prejudice. We all know who is but you don’t like what you see when you look in the mirror and that is not on me. You own this and you know it. I cannot deny you a loan because I don’t own a bank. I cannot deny you housing because I don’t own an apartment building. I cannot experiment on you because I am not a doctor. But all of these things happen to us because we, ourselves were owned and as we all know, the slaves were kept dumb on purpose and what has changed because even you must have heard of the school-to-prison pipeline whereas inner city children are being sent straight from the classroom to a jail cell because education in inner cities is sadly lacking and that is why private schools are all the rage among whites who can afford to send their children to those schools, Black people cannot because we are busily fighting against discrimination in the form of loans at banks called ‘predatory lending’ whereas Wells Fargo deliberately steered prime mortgage loan borrowers who were Black to subprime mortgage loans even though they qualified for prime mortgage loans and those who worked for Wells Fargo called the Black customers, ‘Mud people’ and called the bad loans they gave them, “Ghetto Loans.” Now, how is that on us? I could go on and on, but some people, like you, refuse to see what is right in front of you because when you do, you must then acknowledge your role in all of this because believe me, those who enslaved my ancestors, their progeny still have that same mindset today. You are one and the same. And I stand by that statement.
You titled this post, “Racial Tension in Trump’s America. What Are You Going To Do About It?” and so am I to believe that my comment on one of your previous posts is the reason for this? I am not that naïve.
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Let me just add that I don’t go looking to get into arguments. I really don’t. And I am not at all trying to be confrontational. What I am tired of is the fact that when we look around us, we cannot help but see that many of our problems stem from the fact that the more things change, the more they stay the same. If ‘white’ people were in fact any different from those they are descended from, would this country be in the condition it is in today? Slavery did not go anywhere. Prison is the new slave pen and cops are the slave patrols because there are millions of Black people locked up behind bars and for what? Because they got high? Because they sold a dime bag of weed? Uh…no! It is because the ‘whites’ still maintain that Black people should toil for nothing. ‘Whites’ still maintain that Black people are not truly human. And why to this very day, do ‘whites’ have a problem with our identity? They cannot figure out if they should call us niggers, negroes, colored, African-Americans or Blacks. Why is that? How many labels or identifiers have the whites had in the past four hundred plus years? We are still dealing with labels and identifiers but we are to believe that we are being treated equally because the ‘whites of today are so different from their ancestors?
Why is that if we have come so far since the first slave ships arrived on the shores of this stolen land? If today’s ‘whites’ are so different from their ancestors, then why has the Klan not disbanded? Why are we still watching Klan members march down main streets in ‘post-slavery/racial’ America? Why is it that every day some ‘white’ cop is beating the shit out of an unarmed Black man, woman and child? Why is it that every single time the U.S. Department of Justice gets off its ass long enough to investigate police departments all across America, the U.S. Department of Justice comes back with a ‘scathing’ report that states what we all know; that the police department investigated was rife with legitmate police brutality complaints, police misconduct, racial profiling and the list is endless and these ‘crimes’ are overwhelmingly against descendants of slaves? Which brings me to another point, if you want to call me something, then call me what I am, a descendant of slaves because that is exactly what I am. But you won’t do that because it reminds you of how I came to be here and you want me to believe that my ancestors immigrated here alongside yours. You’re even trying to re-write history books to include this. Just ask Mc-Graw Hill textbook publishers.
So, yeah…let’s keep spreading the lies that slavery is over and racism exists only because I want to blame all ‘white’ people today for what their ancestors put into play hundreds of years ago. No, I am blaming you for continuing to perpetuate what your ancestors put into play because if you weren’t still doing it, then why is there a school-to-prison pipeline? Why are those cops who are your brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, mothers and fathers killing mine? Why is there gentrification? Why was crack just fine when it was introduced into Black neighborhoods and incarceration was touted as the cure but now that ‘whites’ are overdosing and dying of heroin, that is a medical condition that needs some understanding and rehab? Why are the slave patrols, now known as cops, not found guilty of murder when they kill innocent Black men, women and children? Why are millions of Black men and women sitting in ‘for-profit’ prisons? Why is TV ‘whitewashed’ just as (HIS)tory is? Why are Black people the continued subjects of medical experimentation? Just ask Johns Hopkins Hospital why they are being sued for a lead paint study whereas they only used Black inner city children and this occurred recently? And why did they conduct experiments on Henrietta Lacks’ cancer cells without her knowledge? Why? Because she was a Black woman, but in the eyes of today’s ‘whites’, she was still not human and her relatives are also suing the hell out of Johns Hopkins Hospital. So, don’t give me any bullshit about my throwing you lot in with each other because if you did not belong there, we would not be in the condition we are in today, still enslaved!
And one final observation, why throw in that little message about there having been slavery in Africa, the UK, and throughout Europe?
Yes, I fully understand there were slaves in early America, just as there were in Africa, the UK, and throughout Europe
That does in no way negate the fact of slavery in America. I am not in Africa, the UK or Europe, I am in America and so my scope is limited as to what I can speak of in Africa, the UK, and throughout Europe. So, I guess what you are saying is that since there was enough slavery to go around, why shouldn’t America take it up as well? Oh, we all know the answer to that. America was damn sure as hell not about to take the ‘high road’ and still hasn’t!
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