A Nation of Cowards

The unbridled firestorm of controversy that immediately flared up in the wake of recent commentary about race offered at a Black History Month celebration by Attorney General Eric Holder is indicative of the delusional veracity that has become a mainstay of American life. In other words - 'Thou dost protest too much!' At the same time, the hasty assertion that the election of Barack Obama is an indication that the nation has suddenly metamorphosised into some kind of "post racial" or "color blind" society is simply ludicrous. There is absolutely no indication that would even begin to suggest that we are currently anywhere near becoming a society that is actually ready to deal honestly with its cruel and often inhumane past. This of course is what truth and honesty would naturally require. Without this, without the collective courage of the American people to look their history square in the face, there can be no going forward on any meaningful racial discourse. As a matter of fact, the widespread knee-jerk condemnation of Attorney General Eric Holder has only served to further illuminate the truth of his assertion; that on matters of race, we are indeed a nation of cowards.

People often ask me just why it is that I seem to spend so much time writing about the victims of lynch mob violence. To this I say to them first and foremost it is because these people usually could not speak for themselves. As a matter of fact, mine is actually the first generation of African Americans that could tell these stories openly relatively free of violent reprisal. This is how ubiquitous the actuality of racist violence has traditionally been in American life. Let us not forget that Mary Turner was just 21 years old and eight months pregnant when she was lynched by a mob of more than one hundred people. Her only crime was that she spoke out in anguish over the senseless murder of her husband; who had actually committed no crime at all. For this, Mary was kidnapped, she was tied upside down by her ankles to a tree, and after being doused with gasoline, she was set on fire. In the midst of her incredible pain and suffering, a man came forward brandishing a large fishing knife which he used to literally cut the baby out of Mary's stomach. The un-born child gave out a little cry of life as it fell to the ground. Immediately, another man came forward and crushed the baby's skull with the heavy heal of his boot. Yet, another cried out: "Did y'all hear that Nigga wench scream!" By this time, the large crowd was ecstatic with cheer. A bizarre look of sexual glee adorned their faces, and several people took trinkets of Mary's mutilated limbs back to their homes. Usually by the time that I have finished recalling the intimate details of this event, there is one of two reactions. Oddly enough there are always those who seem to react as if the mere recall of such gruesome violence is a somewhat personal indictment. Strange isn't it? However, most others usually have completely lost all sense of what it was that they were actually asking of me in the first place. A look of confusion always seems to cloud their faces as they are forced to grapple with what is for many an almost inconceivable series of events. Yet, they happened, as violence of this magnitude was at one time all too common in this country. Nevertheless, it is indeed a hard chore for many to grapple with this history. Americans are not used to this level of candor simply because for decades these issues have been cleverly pushed aside and forbidden outside of the private anguish of generations of Black people. All the while, racism is treated like some kind of deformed child that the nation has kept hidden in the basement. Of course we all know that it is there, but we really not supposed to talk about it.

There is however another more pertinent rationale for my continuing commentary on the evils of lynching. It is because as strange as it may seem this evil continues to play a prominent role within the culture of the United States. Even today, Black men, women, and even children continue to be lynched in cities and towns all throughout this country. Although the perception has been neatly manufactured that this inhumane American tradition somehow just suddenly vanished in the aftermath of the righteous heyday of the 1960's freedom revolution, truth be told, no one ever said that it requires a rope and a tree to lynch someone. As a matter of fact, all that one needs is an immoral measure of disrespect for the natural human rights of another human being. For decades, the horrible epidemic of police killing Black people at will has continued unchecked from coast to coast. The cop on the beat, with a badge and a gun is actually the most powerful member of what appears to far too many to be a Criminal Justice System that has been nothing but perfectly worded. From a little five-year-old boy who is shot dead in South Carolina simply because one police officer said he "twitched in the wrong direction" to a sweet 92-year-old grandmother in Atlanta Georgia who is literally assassinated in her own home on Neal Street, simply because an officer or two felt compelled to meet their monthly quota. Nonetheless, it often seems as if far too many in this country just don't get it at all. When the right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness are denied to one of us, they are in danger of being lost to us all. From a human rights perspective, at this point in our history, it is altogether rather unconscionable that any Black community within the United States is still actually patrolled by police officers who do not live within that neighborhood, or look like any of the residents. It is a fundamental principle of international law taken for granted in most civilized nations around the world. Yet, there exists no other community within this country where such an egregious and unremitting disregard for human rights is so casually on display. It is like giving a pedophile the keys to a daycare center.

Nevertheless, instead of making an honest effort to truly deal with this stain upon the integrity of American values, over the years Americans have simply engaged in a cowardly exercise of tricknology. Led in fact, for the most part by the collusion of an elite Negro Talented Tenth cabal backed by White liberal philanthropic hegemony, the language of racial discourse has been cleverly distorted; whereas now the victims of racist violence are shrewdly converted into the actual culprits. Language is used to oppress, by confining the entrance into where one buys into an idea. That which was once deemed racistly motivated, focusing upon the mind of the perpetrator, is now called racially motivated, as if the race of the victim is inherently criminal and the casual factor of the violence in the first place. It is a neat trick, which only servers to distort reality and to exacerbate racial animosities. This is a part of the game that is played using tricknology in order to avoid any truly honest discussion of race. Nowadays, most accusations of racist abuse are met with one of two approaches. The person making the observation is accused of either 'playing the victim' or of 'playing the race card'; as if to mealy speak of such things is now deemed politically incorrect. Then, there is of course the chorus of people who feign personal injury claiming that they are afraid to say anything for fear of simply being accused of being a racist. This assumes of course that it is actually that difficult to split the difference. Give me a break!

Ironically enough, on the very same day that the Attorney General made his remarks, the New York Post published what was just the latest in a disturbing plethora of racist images comparing President Obama to a monkey. Over the last two years Barack Obama has received over 500 death threats. Countless incidents have been reported throughout the country of the President and even the First Lady being lynched in effigy. Just last weekend, Dean Grose the Republican Mayor of Los Alamitos, a small Southern California town sent an email to his constituents depicting the front lawn of the Obama White House as a watermelon patch. Nevertheless, for the most part the corporate press in the United States has completely ignored this angle of the historic campaign. Just as Hitler propagandized the degradation of the Jews, these images were used during a sadistic era in American history that claimed the lives of thousands of innocent Black men, women, and children. For many, it recalls that moment when Mary Turner twisted in agony while being tortured, as the baby was cut from her stomach and dozens of people cheered in ecstasy. But, this is something that we are not really supposed to be talking about; least we unduly provoke a mountain of White liberal guilt. However, truth be told, the effort to appease White liberal guilt is littered with the battered remains of countless numbers of Black people.

This week we also learned that once again the United States Government will boycott the historic UN Conference on Racism. This conference nicknamed Durban Two after the groundbreaking 2001 conference in South Africa will take place from April 20 - 25 in Geneva Switzerland. But, the United States will not be in attendance. For the second time in eight years our government will refuse to participate in this event simply because most of the world has unanimously come to equate Zionism with racism. America shall stand back in protest even after the recent violence of the Israeli Government towards the Palestinian people made it rather difficult to distinguish whether these were atrocities defining Nazis assaulting Dachau in 1939 or Zionists attacking Gaza in 2009. This unhealthy pathological allegiance to a rogue government overseas, to the amazing tune of 10 million dollars each day of American tax payer's money in aid, and the failure of the US Government to stand up for human rights at home, is why this nation continues to fall short as a true beacon of liberty and justice in the eyes of the rest of the world. It is because quite simply on matters of race we remain essentially a nation of cowards.

Author/Publisher T. S. Aschenge is a Freelance writer who lives and works in Atlanta Georgia. His website is called: I CAN WRITE THAT 4 U! http://okwriteit.wordpress.com and his Blog is IF NEAL STREET COULD TALK! http://ifnealstreetcouldtalk.wordpress.com