For some Americans, Jesus is their avenger. I lived among Americans who refused to read and to understand the foundational history of this country. They were never hesitant in informing me of my ignorance. How I wasted my time with books. I needed to read on Jesus! Jesus has everything under control!
The conversation quickly turns to "criminals," "domestic terrorists," "evil doers." It's understood that such people reside in the war-torn streets of Chicago, my birth town. The whole of Chicago, too, is a "ghetto," and as and, as one former neighbor made clear, there's a fear of what the "ghetto" represents. Or rather, there's a fear of a perception that all ghettos since the beginning of time have been inhabited by Black Americans.
Given that I was born and raised in Chicago, I must think negative thoughts about white Americans. I see whites as racists and, as a Black, I don't recognize that the real racists are Black Americans. If I'm residing in a predominantly white town, far from Chicago, then I want to be among whites who know Jesus. I want to end my days no longer a "taker." In other words, I want to be "saved" from being a taker!
And the kidnapping of Africans, the capturing and trafficking of human beings, the shipping of human beings as if cargo across the Atlantic, the auctioning of human beings, and the selling and buying of human beings, is that not a form of taking?
I wasted time and energy trying to explain that the very land free Black labor afforded individual whites to become wealthy and, therefore, create for the New England colonies a kingdoms of cotton, tobacco, and sugar, and rice was stolen because it was occupied by millions of Indigenous people. I tried to explain that those Indigenous human beings, like the Africans, had civilizations, land, cultures, traditions, beliefs. They had gods too. Above all, they had communities, villages, tribes, families, children. They believed in a future, too; however, the future was taken from them.
Perhaps, a reading of other books, outside of the bible?
And the retort: Hadn't I learned a lesson? I became part of the left-wing, academics cabal whose agenda was to contaminate the minds of young adults, white, of course, with books written by people on the lunatic left. Radical, dangerous people! Haters of white people and all white people have accomplished! Had I not been an Affirmative Action student and then a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) hire as a professor? A taker?
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