Reflections on the July 4th

"Israeli Navy detained former US congresswoman and Nobel Prize laureate Cynthia McKinney and twenty other human rights activists on board a relief boat outside Israel's territorial waters on Tuesday as they were heading to Gaza on a humanitarian mission" 

For me, a Black man in the United States, there is nothing to celebrate and be thankful for because it’s the 4^th of July or Independence Day. The Stars and Stripes flew over the slave plantations, not withstanding being a symbol of downpression for people of color that were free in those days, where laws could be enacted to crush them in the fledgling United States at any time, to reign in the uppity “Negras” whenever whites felt threatened.

Voices that recount this history are being muted by the false pretense of a post racial society, carried out by our “educated” youth. Never mind our children have not really been educated in decades, only taught to “parrot” the information pitched to them in their classrooms. Gone are the days when a teacher would stand up and say “I don’t believe you are learning anything if you don’t challenge what I am saying up here.”

I remember a time when men and women, mostly of my father’s generation, would walk about proudly hoisting up Old Glory, because they lived most of their lives during the Jim Crow era and felt entitled to do so since the sacrifices they made to participate in this American experiment could have cost them their lives.

Today, I have been to international events where Black youth raise up Old Glory or the Union Jack as if these are the standards that have set them free, never realizing the domestic and imperialistic pressures these two flags symbolize. Just proud to be an American or Brit and never really knowing why they feel the way they do.

As former congress woman of Georgia, Cynthia McKinney sits in an Israeli jail, these young hoisters of the Stars and Stripes are silent. Cynthia McKinney is a non image in their heads being pushed out by images of Drake, Soldier Boy or Beyounce coursing over the synapses of their dependent minds. Minds dependent upon marketing to tell them what to think, what to wear or who to support. Speaking of such, President Obama, the progenitor of this new post racial America, smiles and speaks with a forked tongue of the recession slowing, and in the next breath saying unemployment will probably reach ten percent by next year. Yet, stands quiet on the imprisonment of a former congress woman and candidate for president of the United States.

So, I hope the American people enjoyed their hot dogs, hamburgers and ribs. Danced, sang and drank in the worship of the false belief that America is free from mother England and ignore former congress woman McKinney who’s operating on the true principles of freedom and helping others when they are in distress. Israel can run amuck as they will, ignore international law, and crush other human life and not a word from the supreme leader of a post racial United States.

Comments

[Asabagna]

Well stated!