ClydeStyle

Tag: slave

  • Modern day house slaves function like their past counterparts

    During slavery, house slaves were unique in that they could live in the Master’s house and always be in close proximity to the family. They would learn domestic skills like cooking, cleaning, and even child care. Sometimes, the slaves would be taught how to read. Definitely, these house slaves had greater benefits than being just a field slave that worked outdoors.

    House slaves dressed better, did not have to work as hard, could get scraps, and other items considered trash by the Master. Life was definitely better.

    But at no time did the house slaves have any influence over the Master, nor could they even express their opinions. When the Master did something that they didn’t like or agree with, they’d better just keep it to themselves. The wrong kind of expression on your face could end in a backhand by the Master if he thought he wanted to say something about his actions. So the house slaves were just that – a slave and they had no opinion or independent thoughts of their own that they could express.

    In Congress these days, we have seemed to resurrect the house slave. Republicans in Congress, instead of serving at the pleasure of the people who elected them, are now serving at the pleasure of our new dictator, Donald J. Trump. He is never challenged, questioned, or  advised even when he makes a decision that violates the constitution.

    Now, let’s not be nieve and think that Democrats have no house slaves because they sat back and allowed Joe Biden to leave our border wide open. They didn’t wave or salute. Trump has been a bit outrageous with his latest decisions, and the recent town hall meetings in Republican districts have been very vocal about their concerns over Trump’s decisions.

    The bottom line is this: We can not properly implement democracy if the checks and balances won’t hold the line. In other words, Congress has a job to do, and it is not to be the Congress for the president, but for the people. We voted for representatives who would be the voices of the people. Our country has lost sight of this. If we continue down the current path, it won’t be long before we are all house slaves or we really have an insurrection.

  • History is who we are and why we are the way we are

    Martin Luther King Jr. famously said, “An injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” He said it as more of a war cry to call activists and those who care to a sense of urgency regarding injustices. The idea is that if it is allowed in one place, it can be in all places. So then, let us rise up against injustice when we see it because it’s only a matter of time before injustice affects you!

    Injustices have been fluent in America since 1865. That date should sound familiar because it was the year President Abraham Lincoln signed the emancipation proclamation, which freed the slaves in the south. Shortly after this, Lincoln tried to establish a bank for former slaves, but its white board of directors took the money and lost it on bad investments. There was no accountability.

    With the end of slavery in the south, accountability was emancipated completely. Treating a black person wrong was always acceptable as punishment for ending slavery. The time immediately after slavery was very telling because lynching immediately became popular once slavery ended.

    Bastard children, often called mulatto back then, were the result when white men raped very young black girls and impregnated them. These kids were often made orphans because the former slaves owner did not want the child and they would not allow for the victim to have the baby. This injustice became widespread.

    Everyone talks about the destruction of Black Wall Street in Tulsa, OK but that, of course, was not the only time that happened. Time Magazine, in 2021, published an article on the subject and listed other “Black Wall Street” scenarios that many were unaware of because there was never any accountability.

    The article states: “Now, 100 years after the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, awareness of this American tragedy has grown thanks to the work of activists and descendants of victims, local political support, and depictions in the HBO series Watchman and Lovecraft Country. But Tulsa’s was not the only Black Wall Street. The history of other such districts nationwide is still not widely known beyond their home cities, though they were many: Bronzeville in Chicago; Hayti in Durham, N.C.; Sweet Auburn in Atlanta; West Ninth Street in Little Rock, Ark.; and Farish Street in Jackson, Miss.”

    Police brutality toward minorities has been around as long as policing has existed. There are too many cases to name of unarmed Black people being murdered by police because they claimed they feared for their lives.

    The bottom line is that because we violate the famous MLK Jr. quote, we are paying for the widespread lack of accountability because if the injustice didn’t happen to me, why do I care.

    I believe that this lack of accountability negatively affects the reparations’ conversation because many black and whites are ignorant of history. People treat many of the injustices like isolated incidents. Then, the fact that it is widespread means that if we award damages form one incident, we are libel for all the others. This means that justice can never truly be served because America’s history is full of injustices, and to reward them all would be an end to America as we know it.

    Happy Black history month!

  • Knowledge really is power

    The older I get, the more I learn what I didn’t know. So much information that was originally given to me is turning out to be false.

    The level of trust we give our original source is huge when they have not been vetted. Why would we trust like that? We trust as if no one has a reason to lead us astray.

    It seems that in America, our original history is so bad that we would be appalled if we knew the truth. That beautiful story about how the early settlers came over here seeking a better way of life, wrote the constitution, and started America didn’t quite happen like that. In fact, it was nothing like that. I won’t spoil the research for you, but you need to challenge everything.

    The most interesting part of all of this is that the truth is out there. It’s contained in resource books and professional journals. I read a professional journal that had an interview with Fredrick Douglas, and he was discussing the character of the man we know as Abe Lincoln. The title of the article says of Lincoln that he is a man, but not a brother.

    We were told he was this great emancipator who freed the slaves and strived to create an America where everyone was free. False! Not even close!

    Lincoln freed the slaves to win the Civil War and wanted to deport the slaves back to their homeland, knowing that they would never truly be free. He was always for the advancement of his race. He believed in reparations, and he made sure that every slave owner received $300 per slave for their troubles. That $300 in 1865 is the equivalent of $5626.21 today. Image how much that is if you had 50 slaves. Then, instead of taking your reparations and purchasing more land, these slaveowners kept the money and took the land the slaves had, and of course, the slaves couldn’t report this to authorities.

    Surely you have heard about the 40 acres and a mule phrase? Well, that was a reality for a few slaves until the white man showed up, seized the land and shot the mule, and burned your house down. No government intervention at all – thanks, Abe!

    So if knowledge is power, it is up to us to pick up a book, learn the truth, and act accordingly.

  • We need another labor movement

    So Labor Day is coming and many will be off work, probably barbecuing and just simply relax. We deserve a day. We work hard. There was a time in our history where people worked 12-hour days for very low wages and even kids were working dangerous jobs for even lower wages. They worked on farms, mines and in factories.

    Labor day began as a huge protest for better wages and an 8-hour work day. They wanted restrictions on child labor and wanted to be able we to work hard and take part in the American dream.

    During an election year in the 1800s, then President Grover Cleveland made Labor Day a national holiday for fear of losing the election due to alienating the working class. More regulations followed and conditions got better over time.

    Remember this was the reason slavery was ended. Not so much because it was inhumane but because that free labor kept many without work because if you can get free labor, why would you want to pay a fair wage if you didn’t have to.

    Fast forward to the 21st century and we are still fighting for fair wages. There is still a huge gap in wealth and one percent still has waaaaaay more money and assests than the 99 percent. As a result, American went from being the No. 1 country to live in (1950s) to No. 17 today. Can you believe that there are 16 countries that live better than we do in America? We are delusional.

    The countries that are in front of us are all in the top 5 in multiple categories like wages, science, math, lifestyle, better climate, technology and mortality. We lead the world in 3 categories: Prison population, weapons of war and belief in Angels.

    Our problem is that we are not trying to be the best. We are not even trying to be fair. We are trying to maintain our current status where the rich get richer and the poor, stay poor.

    We are no where near the top 10 in wages, working conditions, lifestyle or income equality. We don’t even have the best social programs to help change generational curses and poverty among the poor. Sweden holds that title. Australia and Canada seem to alternate from No. 1 or No. 2 in many categories with Switzerland, Germany and New Zealand rounding out the top 5.

    We can do much better than we are doing. If you googled the best places to live you would shocked at what other places offer that we don’t. And it’s not that we can’t. We have a government that is self serving and won’t.

    This is why we need a new Labor Day protest to finish the job where the first left off. Labor Day started as a massive protest where everyone stopped working for a day. What if we stopped working a pay period? It would shutdown the country and Congress would respond immediately. Definitely something to think about while your working the grill this holiday.

  • Let’s make freedom for all … for once

    This Independence Day I thought we could quickly discuss one of the longest living forms of abuse — corporal punishment! Whenever this subject comes up some one quickly says, “Well, I was spanked when I was growing up and I turned out fine.” So the premise is that spankings did no damage to the receiver back in the day so it’s fine for today. Or it means that because of spankings we now have many fine citizens who had loving parents that carried out their Christian duty of “not sparing the rod as to not spoil the child.”

    Many believe that the bible teaches the benefits of spanking kids. Does it? More on that in a moment. The earliest I could research the use of corporal punishment came around 1800 B.C. during Babylonian captivity. The Babylons utilized the death penalty for violation of 25 particular laws.

    Of course we know that this was a learned behavior from England that followed immigrants here during revolutionary times. Slaves were beaten for violating the slave code. This became the dominant understanding and use of corporal punishment. It was used in schools and homes throughout America.

    According to a study conducted by the Harvard School of Education, spanking is not an effective way to discipline a child whether be it at home or at school. The worse part of spankings physically and mentally was when it was done to embarrass, out of anger, out of frustration or to intimate a child. Were you spanked for any of these reasons?

    Further, the bible does not teach us to abuse our children by spanking them. Proverbs 13:24 has been taken completely out of context and interpreted by western standards. The rod in the text is equal to the rod of a shepherd who would use it to teach and guide the sheep with it, not ever to be used as a weapon. This is why Psalms 23 says, “thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”

    In addition, for me knowing that spankings were associated with slavery was enough for me not to introduce it to my children. Moreover, I was definitely more important for my kids to love me than fear me. I could come up with far more practical means of consistently convening my point to me children without subjecting them to a violent attack from the one who is responsible for protecting the home.

    So, it’s Independence Day and we are celebrating freedom. Let’s give our kids the freedom to be loved, guided and encouraged instead of adding violence to our dysfunction and giving them a license to carry this barbaric behavior to our future generations.

  • My hope is built on nothing less . . .

     

    You ever wonder how a person can respect someone when they constantly treat people bad or hurt people’s feelings? How is it that people who run around with a sense of entitlement get placed in these positions of power only to be self serving and not look out for the best interest of the people that serve them?

    Romans 13:1-2 says, “1 Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God:  the powers that be are ordained of God.  2 Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation (KJV).”

    There is a valuable lesson in authority. Whether the person with the authority acknowledges God or not, the source of his power is God. The person who is in authority has a responsibility to God in using their power, whether they want to acknowledge God or not.p_a-2

    We, the subjects of these authoritarians, have a responsibility to power and authority. I can disagree with a higher power, but I still have the responsibility to respect that power because it is God given.

    Respect and obedience are two different things even though the outcomes may look the same. I can have a boss who perceives me as a threat and mistreats me because of his feelings. Someone looking from the outside might see my submission to my boss despite the way he treats me and ask, “why are you so obedient to him?”

    Obedience is a reaction. Respect is an action. A person can choose respect, but obedience is a reaction — normally to fear. Nowhere in Romans 13:1-2 does it use the word fear. It gives a statement of fact and then behavior that should follow. I want to honor God in everything that I do and I have learned that God places me in positions where I get the honor of showing him how much I want to honor him. That may come in the form of a challenging boss, estranged relationship, dealing with a stranger or challenges within myself. In all cases God has placed me in a situation that I can demonstrate who I belong to and more importantly who I serve.

    As a result, I am not a slave to circumstances because I know he is in control of them. I am not oppressed by authority as someone who has no hope and I bow down to no man.

    God is supreme and still in control. I am now to live free because I believe this to be true. And how about you dear reader? Are you living this truth or are you a enslaved. Is your hope built on the power of the creator of the universe or are you still trying to sit in that seat yourself? Choose this day who you will serve!