Why do White and Black leaders assume the Black community has waved a white flag of submission? However, we do raise questions about what is being planned for us as if we had, as seen during the various “summit” decision meetings (see my columns of May 1 and 15, 2014).
We are a community under siege: inadequate education, few jobs, no meaningful plans for the future beyond endless planning meetings of Black and White do-gooder talk leaders on how to continue obstructing our access to equality and opportunity, on how to set us aside to make room for others, of how to plan the kind of genocide/extinction “round ups” discussed at decision “summits.”
We celebrated our nation’s independence July 4th. Frederick Douglass, arguably the most famous fugitive slave of his day, asked in a historic speech, July 5, 1852: “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”
Douglass gave a ringing affirmation of America’s ideals of freedom and liberty, left stalled and unfinished while slavery and racial discrimination existed. Being neither despairing (he was hopeful, due to the principles laid out by the founders in the Declaration and the Constitution that he saw as affirming the truth of liberty and equality) nor was he unduly negative (slavery was a fact and the slow pace of abolishing slavery was maddening).
The Minneapolis weekend of the July 4-6, certainty sent a chill through the very fiber of Minneapolis (nine shot, two killed, all within a period of 12 hours, Star Tribune, July 7, 2014. Our columns of May 1 and 15, 2014, reported on planning “summits,” which viewed only a small number of African Americans acceptable to the White and Black leadership. That was a shot across the bow of the Black community, exploding especially before our young and elderly, viewed as expendable.
Why did the mayor and police chief think their July 9, 2014 walk on our streets would give our community under siege a sense of protection and leave behind equal opportunity? They came. They walked and talked. They left. Status quo neglect of community remained.
Black Americans did not slip into this country in the dead of night, or behind dark clouds of benign neglect, or by climbing over or crawling under fences. We have served this nation in war and peace, in growth and prosperity. We have shed our blood in the defense of our nation. And yet, today, in this city, we have the impression that Whites assume we are waving the white flag of surrender, that they can, unopposed, adopt policies of nullification and reversal as the appropriate order of the day. But we will be damned if we are to turn our backs and leave the struggle only half completed.
Our obligation is to protect our freedom, our franchise, our future. Our children are being mis-educated, under educated, or not educated at all, as they are dismissed, betrayed and violated.
Submission is not within our community and civil rights DNA. We continue to dream of being treated with respect and afforded equal opportunity based on the content of our character, not denied due to the color of our skin.
We, the sons and daughters of the African, understand when there is a plan and mission afoot to marginalize us and remove us from the American scene, and, in this case, from the city of Minneapolis, Minnesota. We who believe we are equal to all will not let attempts at genocide and extinction happen on our watch.
May God save and protect our future and help prevent the flag of surrender from being forced upon us.
Stay tuned.
For Ron’s hosted radio and TV show’s broadcast times, solutions papers, books and archives, go to www.TheMinneapolisStory.com. To Order his books go to www.BeaconOntheHillPress.com.
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