The Effects Of Racism Are Still Real
“Many Americans of African descent are only two to six generations removed from the longest, most dehumanizing system of enslavement ever practiced in the history of humankind. To suggest that it all be dismissed or forgotten in a new mythical post-racial America (without the proper attention to its seriousness) is a return to the old premise that African descent people are less than human.” (1) Good Ole Boy, President George W. Bush, commenting on the regional poverty in New Orleans said, “And that poverty has roots in a history of racial discrimination, which cut off generations from the opportunity of America. We have a duty to confront this poverty with bold action. So let us restore all that we have cherished from yesterday, and let us rise above the legacy of inequality.” President Bush left out the word “ongoing” before “history.” As Dortell Williams points out, that bold action Bush talked about never happened. Why not? A post-racial country requires a change in both conscience and consciousness. This is no different than what is required to go from sickness (racial) to health (post-racial). Acknowledgements must be made, medicine must be taken and all the infection must be removed without delay, not in a “we've made progress” sort of way. A people and a country that has changed its consciousness from racial to post-racial will automatically remap its relationships with everyone in all ways so as to ensure the intentions of post-racial become the new condition that everyone experiences. This is not the case in countries where the suboptimal worldview is the rule. (2)No Longer Post-Racially Confused
America is not even post-gender, not even in terms of the White woman so how the heck can they get past race when they can't get past gender for the women they are married to and who are their sisters and daughters. The world will never be post-racial anywhere where the majority of humans lack sufficient knowledge of self to self-correct, thus revamp all its racism sustaining institutions. If America was post-racial, it would fight every instance and indication of racism just the way it pulls out all the stops to find someone who kills a White cop. Instead America defends White males appointed as cops who are merely citizens with the same mindsets as the non-cops. If this was not true the cops and/or the citizens would behave very differently when racism reared its deadly head and very differently to dismantle all the debilitating continuations of racism everywhere that deteriorate the quality of life. Just as nothing is post-sickness or considered cured until all infection is removed, so also is the case with racism. America will never be post-racial until all remnants and legacies of racial discrimination are stripped from society and ripped from society until the society transforms itself into a civilization. At this very moment of your reading this message, society still has a firm grip on “keeping things just the way they are” with one hand and “racism as a means to achieve this end” with the other hand. These two, are in fact, what allowed American society to exist and flourish in the first place. Race, racism and miseducation are nourishing notions to the suboptimal lower self oriented American culture.Behavior #21 of Ways To Counteract Racism reminds us: Stop pretending Human Racism White Supremacy does not exist. Post-racial does not exist.(1) Myers, Linda James, Ph.D. & Speight, Suzette L., Ph.D., "Reframing Mental Health and Psychological Well-Being Among Persons of African Descent: Africana/Black Psychology Meeting the Challenges of Fractured Social and Cultural Realities,"The Journal of Pan African Studies, (2010, June), vol.3, no.8, p. 69.
(2) Paraphrased from Van Sertima, Ivan, Egypt, Child Of Africa (Transaction Publishers 1994), p. 473.
