Why do those who initiated the conversation on race get to be the ones to end it, here in America? In fact, what they were engaged in was no dialogue at all but, instead, a propagandistic monologue which suited their desires.
It was they who never allowed the subjects of that “conversation” to be participants in it. After all was said and done, after the identities of those who were the subjects of their obsession were redesigned by them around the indelible markings of skin pigmentation, hair texture, and bone structure; and after destinies were rudely, selfishly and calculatedly altered by them, the Black man is now being ordered by them to be silent on the matter of race.
Now that time and opportunity have given the Black man a voice after centuries with his freedom and dignity being held in relative obscurity and in complete abeyance, in Europe and in America, why should he comply? Why should he not be allowed to question all that has been asserted about him? Why should he not be given the chance to review the various hypothesis formulated around him? Even defendants are allowed access to the information upon which the charges brought against them are based. Why then should not Afro-Americans be afforded the same right in a matter so critical to their own well-being?
The arrogance of brutish chattel slavery is, by no means, dead nor is it dormant, but it has been transmuted or translated into a form of white paternalism dressed in trappings of false refinement and safeguarded by the ill-gotten legacies of wealth and power. And so, whither freedom of speech? Whither the Westminster rules on debate? Whither the disciplines of the natural and the social sciences? Whither the sublime lessons of history? Whither the courage to grapple with the exigencies of logic and morality? Much has been written about the origin, the evolution, the nature, and the tragic outcomes of the social construct of “race”. Let us review and talk about them.
And so, these will not be rehashed here, nor will there be any attempt to “re-invent the wheel” as they say. There are libraries and bookstores full of material on the subject which beckon both to the curious and to the open minded. But, one thing is certain, Europeans led the way in this so-called “dialogue”, for centuries, with the Black man and other “races” gagged and bound and placed under a microscope like objects and treated like lab rats. They fired the first shot! What this oped asks, against the backdrop of all that, is why white America — especially through the conduit of one of its major political parties — doing all that it can to prevent “discussion” based upon all that they have contended for so long to be factual?
From the inception of chattel slavery in the 1600s when the “conversation” continued here in America from its roots in Europe — before the 1500s — white people seemed undisturbed by it for hundreds of years. But within the sliver of time out of a large pie chart of time — that is, a few short decades carved out of and juxtaposed against a swath of centuries — why should the Black man, aided by “Critical Race Theory”, which operates on the true principles of conversation or dialogue, not now be allowed to enter the discourse? What is the beef, white America? What are you afraid of? And how do your concerns compare to the outcomes that the Black man was forced to endure because of all of the thoughts that fuelled and guided your monologue?
Was Dr. David R. Roediger, a professor of American history, wrong when he wrote in an article that “The world got along without race for the overwhelming majority of its history. The U.S. has never been without it.”? Would that not serve as a starting point for “conversations” in order to defend yourself? And long before this article was written by that academic Dr. Ashley Montagu, a British-American anthropologist, wrote a book based on solid research back in 1942 titled Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race. Is this too not worth reading and discussing, again, for your own defence of your actions in regard to Afro-Americans and other “races” for centuries with the subjects of such talk finally in the room and at the table? Regardless of one’s views on the subject, and people are entitled to their opinions, “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”.
