JUNETEENTH

“A riot is the language of the unheard.” Martin Luther King, Jr.

“I am where I am because of the bridges that I crossed. Sojourner Truth was a bridge. Harriet Tubman was a bridge. Ida B. Wells was a bridge. Madame C.J. Walker was a bridge. Fannie Lou Hamer was a bridge.” Oprah Winfrey 

“I am not a racist. I am against every form of racism and segregation, every form of discrimination. I believe in human beings, and that all human beings should be respected as such, regardless of their color.”
— Malcolm X

“I hate racial discrimination most intensely and all its manifestations. I have fought all my life; I fight now and will do so until the end of my days. Even although I now happen to be tried by one, whose opinion I hold in high esteem, I detest most.” Nelson Mandela  

June 19th, 1865.

 On this day the last enslaved African-Americans in the confederacy were emancipated. They received physical freedom but mental freedom is still not a guarantee.

Juneteenth should be a national holiday in the United States as the country was built on the backs of these enslaved African Americans. And today and every other anniversary of this emancipation proclamation.

As an African, I had to learn the history of enslaved Africans in the so-called new world-The Americas

It was not part of my education in Nigeria. Yes, I knew there were Africans who were captured, traded like cartels,s and taken across the Atlantic to work in plantations in the New world but was unaware of the details. Reading books like Roots by Alex Haley, The William Lynch speech and several movies gave detailed accounts of how many slave owners treated enslaved Africans in the United States.

My journey to this part of the world twenty years ago opened my eyes to a part of African history that is not taught on the continent. When Africans for whatever reason find themselves living, working or visiting these parts, we are often confused not only by the reception we get from Caucasians and others but we do not understand a population of people who literally look like us but have had a different experience. The Black Caribbean and Americans.

It is a shock to us, it is like having a family on the other side of the ocean and not knowing why they are the way they are. I remember when I arrived in Trinidad in 2001 with my seven-year-old and on a trip to the capital city in Port of Spain, he exclaimed "Mom, there are Nigerians everywhere!

What his young mind meant was that there were Black people like us on this faraway Island and because we were Nigerians, surely they had to be Nigerians.

Before then the only black people he had physically seen were Nigerians. So we had a "family" across the ocean that we knew nothing about and they knew nothing about us but distorted views of the Western media.

I soon found out that their experiences turned them away from Africa and everything African. So although we looked alike, they were not allies. Thankfully that narrative is fast changing. The belief was that Africans were part of the transatlantic slave trade, they sold their own brothers. There is no question that, there had to have been an implicit exchange in whatever manner by some Africans for the Trans Atlantic slave trade to have gone on for so long. And some African business persons benefited from it.

In African history, as everywhere around the world at the time; there were wars, and conquered people were often taken into slavery to work for the victor. But the slavery that happened in parts of Africa is nothing like what happened in the Americas where an ethnicity of men would declare that because their skin was darker than theirs they were a superior species. Stripped you of your names, beliefs, culture, and everything that made you human.

A belief bolstered by the three-fifth clause before Juneteenth.

The three-fifths compromise is found in article 1, Section 2, Clause 3, of the United States Constitution, which reads: Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several states which may be included within the union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other persons.

 

So, a black person was not counted as one full human but three of every five were counted as one human. And so we're treated as less than human. Treated more like the farm animals.

Unfortunately part of this belief exists today among some Caucasians and others. Every BLACK person whether you are African-American, African, Caribbean, or British. We all share a common DNA. Institutionalized racism still burns in the heart of the United States, Europe, and Asia. and many other places who look up to the United States.

Black people are still seen as less than despite some progress made in the civil rights movement in the United States over fifty years ago to change the mindset. 

There are people who believe just because their skin color is lighter, they are better than you in every way and we encounter them every day. Ignorance is pervasive and alive. It may take perhaps another four hundred years to be dismantled in all corners of the world.

Let me just say this, BLACK people are great HUMANS and should be treated as such and are perhaps the most forgiving people on the planet. We deserve better