Humor or Racist?

Our human nature tells us its good to fight against evil. But white slave masters and their Christian brethren in the KKK never saw what they were doing as evil. So they treated blacks fighting for freedom as criminals; worse than criminals. They hung them on trees, knowing that Jesus had been hung on a cross. Why would you ever want to do that to someone if you had sympathy and love for Jesus?

I bring up religion because it is a central part of this story. Martin was from a religious tradition that emphasized peace and love. The idea of turning the other cheek was powerful... but for who? The person striking or the person receiving the strikes? You have to wonder.

The ideas of MLK were based on being a good Christian. Malcolm wasn't a Christian. And in fact Christians weren't Christians; historically speaking. During the dark ages this was clear in the Crusades and Inquisitions. But black people following Christianity internalized the mindset of Jesus in response to oppression while Muslims were informed by the teachings of Muhammed who was much more of a warrior while Jesus was the lamb that was slain; sacrificed for the world.

Black people were sacrificed to help build the country while someone else reaped the profits and have held those gains ever since. The mind of the proverbial black man is split between all these attitudes. It wants to love all people and forgive. It doesn't want to see any group of people or judge them the way he has been judged. But it is not fully sane to live in this world where you are good to everyone regardless of how they treat you; just so that you can make yourself more accepted and acceptable, making all the effort to please, through your submission and assimilation, the very master who immorally abuses you. That is acting more like an animal than a man. But that was expected of black people and so black people had to become good at pretending. Some are better than others at this.

Malcolm had to pretend for awhile and discovered he simply didn't have it in him. And so he became uncomfortably bold, saying the things in public that the proverbial black man was thinking. People found his honesty refreshing because if he said he didn't want to attack whites then they could trust that wasn't the plan. And of course there was never a plan for any kind of revenge. But even with survival there could not be a cohesive plan because black people were too busy supporting and being Christians or supporting and being Muslims. When Malcolm talks about Martin keeping the people defenseless one has to wonder why the country has a holiday for Martin but nothing for Malcolm because that wasn't their hero. He did nothing to work for or support society's agenda; that which was most convenient.


But being like too opposite poles of a battery, the power of Martin pushing black people towards positivity of heart but negative results vs the power of Malcolm pushing black people towards negativity of heart but positive results because he was talking about economics, one can see how the two could never be allowed merge the positive heart with the positive economics. If Martin stopped being 100% Martin and Malcolm stopped being 100% Malcolm... it would be bad for white supremacy. And that's what was starting to happen. Martin realized that asking for equality would only come on the terms of whites and it would never come if they didn't want it and it would be hard for them to want it if it meant giving up their advantage. But he lived long enough to see integration being used against black people because the ownership... the thing most important because ownership yields control, was going to stay with white supremacy. Malcolm had already understood that black people needed ownership and the best way was to buy and run things ourselves so that we could control our own money and maintain our own economic environment. But what he was missing was what he saw in Mecca, where he got to see a bigger world than what he experienced in America. Seeing muslims of all races showed him the potential white people could have and allowed him to raise his expectations, which were previously low because of the whites he had dealings with before. So the two men came from opposite ends and moved in opposite directions until they met in the middle.


Cheap Labor was always the name of the game. But poor whites hate competing against it even though they reap the greatest benefit from shopping at Walmart. Rich people don't need discounts on these everyday household items. But if discounts drive the poor and middle class to shop from the same source then rich get richer because there's only a handful who are rich and they all invest in companies that make money from the consumer market (or defense).

So the hatred that some whites feel is born out of that fear of competition. They don't want to lose their jobs so they wanted freed slaves to go back to Africa instead of competing with them in America. But their problem should have never been with Africans but with the rich who could get away with paying less for the same jobs and if that's the only way a black person could expect to get a job, was to take less, then less money > zero each and every time. So in effect, what poor whites have been competing with, is the very shadow of their own creation. We all reap what we sow. And once rich people discovered cheap labor overseas they went overseas so if freed slaves had gone back to Africa they would be taking even more American jobs because their cost of living wouldn't be nearly as high and they could therefore survive much more easily on lower salaries.

So knowing that rich whites will simply go overseas to replace any American worker they can by exploiting the costs of living (that they contribute to by adding to inflation), this means whites are hating blacks and latinos for NO REAL REASON. And like the documentary says, black people really do NOT hate whites no matter how it looks otherwise.

I think one of the best lines in the documentary was talking about how when white people say "give me liberty or give me death", because they fight back, violently, "the entire white world applauds" (around 26min). So it's frustrating... very frustrating... when you're trying to restrain the urge to be like the rebels in Star Wars, even when it seems like sometimes its the only way. And I say this, not simply as an African American, but a human who has read and heard tales of the multitude of tragedies that was the relationship between Europeans and Native Americans. I'm not sure, sometimes, whose fate was worse. But the sentiment expressed by the MAGA throngs tortures the souls of all these people who were sacrificed for Europeans to have this nation and all of its wealth. When you read the history books in school it doesn't really tell you the story. It tries to make it seem like "indians" were the bad guys when we all know that they taught European settlers how to survive. We celebrate that fact every year and yet there is no yearly acknowledgement of the massacres and the cowboys made into heroes for fighting the indians so that their lands could be stolen.

And these things are called conquest... like it makes it better if there's a big battle. That's like saying the Death Star was cool and any planet destroyed by it, it was their fault for not having their own moon sized space laser. These tribes weren't united and ready to defend against a massive group of settlers who were united in their invasion, nor was there big battles in which losing Africans were turned into slaves. The people at the wrong end of history are having to pay for these acts; they and their children and their children's children's children. And a lot of people have had enough. I don't know what form that resistance will end up taking but I know that if black people hated whites it would have already gone to the most extreme, most violent form, many years ago. At the same time, any such resolve is tempered by the insanity of religious sacrifice in exchange for a better future in the afterlife. But if too many people stopped suddenly being kept in this slumber, if they got tired of waiting for people to choose not to be racist or choose to stop teaching racism to their children, conflict is inevitable. But that conflict doesn't have to be black vs white. And so whites who aren't racist simply need to make the choice not to stand behind and support those who are because that's what's keeping racism in place. That's what's frustrating the black man.