Saturday's Morning Advocate
5/11/02
Some things can't go unsaid
As a rule, I try not to respond to letter writers who take a position different from mine. Such diversity of thought is healthy, especially when that opinion shows some rational and cognitive skills.
Most times I am even willing to ignore those ideas that seem to have oozed from under a rock in some faraway Never Never Land.
But there are occasions when a position is so appalling and offensive that it merits some response, especially when it seems it has become a malignant theme infecting some people's minds.
Such was the case of a recent letter to the editor. The writer took issue with a column I wrote last month noting that April 2002 is the 500th anniversary of slaves in the Western Hemisphere.
The letter writer claimed that black Americans should be thankful that their ancestors were captured and became slaves in America. Otherwise, we could still be back in Africa.
The writer asks where I and other black Americans would be without slavery "and furthermore without the inherent goodness of the United States of America."
These are the same tired statements that black people have heard for years, but usually not from other blacks. So I assume that the writer is not black.
Given the inhumanity of slavery, its stepson Jim Crow, U.S.-bred terrorists called the Klu Klux Klan and the law enforcement-condoned lynchings and killings, black people are just lucky to be alive.
Given the writer's screwy analogy, some Native Americans are better off now that their ancestors were slaughtered, their women raped and their land taken, otherwise other Native Americans wouldn't have it so good operating gambling casinos.
The letter writer went on to give the impression that a united country worked together to end slavery. As most, if not all, historians remember it, the South had seceded because it wanted to keep slavery. More than 620,000 of this country's residents killed each other before the "peculiar institution" ended.
The writer's claim that black Americans owe a "debt of gratitude" implies that black people are somehow ex-officio or secondary members of this society. How can that be, when black people have tilled the fields and waged war for this country?
The South was virtually built on the backs of my lucky ancestors.
People like the letter writer fail to remember that his ancestors were immigrants to this country and did not bubble up here through some sort of spontaneous generation.
DeWayne Wickham, a columnist for Gannett newspapers, asked an important question recently: "Would the racial composition of this country look more like that of Latvia without the flow of slaves that first reached these shores in 1619 and the resulting institution of slavery. ... Or would a voluntary form of immigration have brought many Africans here and planted the seeds for a far different relationship between blacks and whites than now exists?"
And what would the great African empires and cultural centers of the continent have been able to achieve if Africa had not been robbed of millions of its young men and women?
Even in Louisiana, we are wondering whether we would be a better state if we could keep our great young minds that are leaving for places that don't have La. at the end.
Who knows, without slavery I might be head of some democratic nation in Africa. Or my parents could have immigrated here, and I could be writing a column for a newspaper.
America is where black people live, as much American as anyone else. There is no one we need to thank for being here, no more so than the letter writer.
Black Americans live with as much pride in this country as anyone else. Why else would my father have fought in a war knowing that once he returned in the 1950s he could not live where he wanted, nor eat where he wanted or get a bank loan.
Black Americans love their country. But to throw our arms around the notion that slavery was our ticket to the good life is an abomination of sane thought and the respect due the millions who perished on the way here and who died making others rich while they lived a couple of sugar cubes better than the plantation's mule
11/02
5/11/02
Some things can't go unsaid
As a rule, I try not to respond to letter writers who take a position different from mine. Such diversity of thought is healthy, especially when that opinion shows some rational and cognitive skills.
Most times I am even willing to ignore those ideas that seem to have oozed from under a rock in some faraway Never Never Land.
But there are occasions when a position is so appalling and offensive that it merits some response, especially when it seems it has become a malignant theme infecting some people's minds.
Such was the case of a recent letter to the editor. The writer took issue with a column I wrote last month noting that April 2002 is the 500th anniversary of slaves in the Western Hemisphere.
The letter writer claimed that black Americans should be thankful that their ancestors were captured and became slaves in America. Otherwise, we could still be back in Africa.
The writer asks where I and other black Americans would be without slavery "and furthermore without the inherent goodness of the United States of America."
These are the same tired statements that black people have heard for years, but usually not from other blacks. So I assume that the writer is not black.
Given the inhumanity of slavery, its stepson Jim Crow, U.S.-bred terrorists called the Klu Klux Klan and the law enforcement-condoned lynchings and killings, black people are just lucky to be alive.
Given the writer's screwy analogy, some Native Americans are better off now that their ancestors were slaughtered, their women raped and their land taken, otherwise other Native Americans wouldn't have it so good operating gambling casinos.
The letter writer went on to give the impression that a united country worked together to end slavery. As most, if not all, historians remember it, the South had seceded because it wanted to keep slavery. More than 620,000 of this country's residents killed each other before the "peculiar institution" ended.
The writer's claim that black Americans owe a "debt of gratitude" implies that black people are somehow ex-officio or secondary members of this society. How can that be, when black people have tilled the fields and waged war for this country?
The South was virtually built on the backs of my lucky ancestors.
People like the letter writer fail to remember that his ancestors were immigrants to this country and did not bubble up here through some sort of spontaneous generation.
DeWayne Wickham, a columnist for Gannett newspapers, asked an important question recently: "Would the racial composition of this country look more like that of Latvia without the flow of slaves that first reached these shores in 1619 and the resulting institution of slavery. ... Or would a voluntary form of immigration have brought many Africans here and planted the seeds for a far different relationship between blacks and whites than now exists?"
And what would the great African empires and cultural centers of the continent have been able to achieve if Africa had not been robbed of millions of its young men and women?
Even in Louisiana, we are wondering whether we would be a better state if we could keep our great young minds that are leaving for places that don't have La. at the end.
Who knows, without slavery I might be head of some democratic nation in Africa. Or my parents could have immigrated here, and I could be writing a column for a newspaper.
America is where black people live, as much American as anyone else. There is no one we need to thank for being here, no more so than the letter writer.
Black Americans live with as much pride in this country as anyone else. Why else would my father have fought in a war knowing that once he returned in the 1950s he could not live where he wanted, nor eat where he wanted or get a bank loan.
Black Americans love their country. But to throw our arms around the notion that slavery was our ticket to the good life is an abomination of sane thought and the respect due the millions who perished on the way here and who died making others rich while they lived a couple of sugar cubes better than the plantation's mule
11/02