Institutional Racism

Racism is a society norm built and based on the institutional structure of our United States.

And we all (being citizens) feels that we are well within our rights to live (blindly as we are) within the reams of that structure, without being called out about it or without it being called to conscience.

We live how we have been taught to live for generations; it is our traditions and should not be questioned. The present statutes of our society were built on this racism as if it was the construction material of the time.

However it is not only taboo to speak on it, but also to claim, deny, or admit it.

The basic set-up of our society, it's hierarchy, as well as it's structure, and it's foundation has been built and solidified on what we allow and not allow certain races, religions, cultures, and or sexual preference persons to be, do, or say, what he or she may be included in or excluded from.

It is not for any small reason or any short rhyme why we;

The United States have yet to have had any one other then an all white male leader in the nearly seven hundred year history of this country.

Why in a place that less then a quarter percent of it people are of the majority persuasion (white) it still refers to the other seventy five percent as the minority?

Suppressed, oppressed, and depressed....

The simple fact that we have written laws to remind us as a (country) how to conduct ourselves in these situations, is a testimony to the fundamental institution of racism, that has been accepted with out question by the masses.

Evolving into a podium of levels that includes even the minorities them selves.

Enticing us to take false pride in the simplest of things that we ourselves have no control over. Like our color, our shades, our hair texture, who or what we pray to or for, who or someone chose to sleep with, what country someone, mother and or father originated from and a full gamut of other genetic or heredity make-ups.

It is to wonder how long the citizens of this country can hold out accepting his and her fore fathers ill gotten inheritance and believe that it makes them a better more up standing person, believing everything would be better if the minorities could just forget and forgive not only the unacceptable behavior that led to the profit but his and her unacceptable behaviors with continual statements such as "they should just get over it and focus on working harder to better them selves" or "if they just stop looking for hand outs" or "that's just the way things were then". If we are to accept how things were then, we are now force to reckon with or at least make our peace with the injustices that our past has cost each of us collectively.

Every institute and institutional value that we possess is at least partly what we have inherited and partly what we have endured, which is in turn a direct cycle of what we have again inherited.

If my great grandfather: who was a slave was not allow to learn to read and write, it was instilled in him that there were more important things then reading and writing and he then learned that he could and would survive without those skills, and if he did then so could his sons or daughters and so on and so on, and so on. Until hundreds of years later we can still count back in our lineage generation upon generation that has not finished high school never mind college. And when we reach one that succeeds in the quest, they are considered the outsider, the other, the preppy, the one that think that he or she thinks that they are too good etc.

A few decades ago we were never encouraged to celebrate our youth educational achievements. We saw them as something to fear, a reason for them to be harmed, jailed or killed (fearing that the authorities would think that they did not know their place.) as much as we see your dropouts today.

As sad as it may be we foresee our young black men going to college more for football or basketball as if there is a course call Black sports 101.and the prerequisites are to be a black male, over 6 feet tall, trying to escape a project or single parent home.

When in fact (back then) if we were allowed to educate ourselves without the fears and burdens of taking from our families much needed food, money, and or manpower. We too could be from a long line of Doctors or Lawyers with a family practice of sixty plus years. We too could have had the option to raise our children in family homes one generation after the other, own land, buildings and businesses that were to be past down one generation after the other etc.

However all of this did not happen without us, me the Black woman and you the Black man. It is we who has the most work to do. We must know this because it is I and my fellow man that has the most to lose and the most to gain. We have to make the changes, we have to teach our youths, we have to inspire, we have to condone, we have to condemn. We have to set the standards and raise the bar.

We have the strongest, boldest, biggest, intelligent males in most the animal kingdom. But now if we can just get them to live productive and long enough to call them men...

Teach them to love their woman (no matter what color) to love their fellow man, to love them selves. It not enough to stay alive but you must be man enough to keep your fellow man alive.