BLACK LIVES MATTER: HOW WE GOT HERE IS WHY WE ARE HERE

'If you do not know where you come from, then you don't know where you are, and if you don't know where you are, then you don't know where you're going. And if you don't know where you're going, you're probably going wrong.' Terry Pratchett

As a matter of concurrence, in his 1978 song; 'Buffalo soldier,' Bob Marley simplified the quote. 'If you know your history, then you would know where you coming from.'

Noting that it has been four decades plus since Bob Marley's simplicition of the quote, in my own words i will say, "History is the story upon which our glory will be glorified."

The knowledge and understanding of black history is the only way through which we can know and understand how we have continued to suffer under the centuries old immorality of racism. It's only by having a crystal-clear knowledge and understanding of how we got here that we will know, why we are here, demonstrating. 

I am a stout believer of the phrase; 'if you don't have anything to say, don't say it here.' This simply means, if your speech is a rhetoric talk, kindly stay quiet. Although little knowledge is dangerous, it's far much better than ignorance.

To help you understand my school of thought, amidst the millions of people who are participating in the global call to end racism in the United states, a young lady of an African descent who happens to be an American by naturalization, which might be the reason to why she don't have a smidgen historical knowledge of the 401 years of African Americans  recurring systemic and systematic oppression had the audacity to belittle the black lives matter movement by saying, " black lives matter is a joke." She went ahead to call the demonstrators hypocrites and attention seekers. 

As fate would have it, I was left wondering why her acknowledgment that there are no schools in Chicago and other black cities didn't bring back her senses if any to just reason why black cities and communities don't have good schools. Her great worry that 'her country' will be portrayed as a violent nation was biased and nonsensical. All she could see were the consequences but not the cause of the centuries old racial problem. It's only out of total ignorance that anyone can possess a mindset of a peaceful United States with the present day unrest that's rampant around the nation. 

To rebut her myopic thought of a free United States, let me point out just but a few systematic policies that have continued to oppress African Americans since the dark days of slavery. 

UNDER FUNDED BLACK SCHOOLS: This problem has been recurring since 1951 when a 16 years old African American girl by the name Barbara Johns led a demonstration because of the vast inequality in her school system in Prince Edward county Virginia. To my bewilderment, what followed was totally reprehensible. Instead of solving the problem, all the public schools were shut down for five years in the entire county. While African American kids stayed home, white kids continued to attend all white academies through a tax payers funded vouchers, meaning; part of the African American taxes were used to educate white kids while their children stayed home.

Hitherto, under funded black schools have continued to produce poor quality education which marks the beginning of unending African American societal problems. 

WAR ON DRUGS: A good reference is Tulia-46. This example goes beyond cops planting drugs in the pockets of African American men or inside their vehicles during a routine traffic stop. Tulia-46 is the most evil act of racism and injustice in the history of war on drugs. It's an occurrence where 46 African Americans were arrested in Tulia Texas on 23rd July 1999 on false allegations that they were drug dealers. Out of the 46 who were arrested, 36 were convicted and incarcerated. Although they were later pardoned by the Texas governor in 2003 citing racial profiling and judicial misconduct, their jail term range was between 20 years and 341 years.

It's worthy nothing that; the mass incarceration of African Americans men (much of it is as a result of judicial bias) has a massive detriment not only to these men psychological wellbeing but also to their productivity in their families and the community at large. The fact that finding a job with a felony record is like winning a rotary is an aspect that robs a man his God given preserve as a provider and renders him to a life of hopelessness which is the worst case scenario. To add salt in the injury, a felony proceeds to rob the man his voting right. In some states like Florida where permanent felony defranchisement is observed, your voting right can be suppressed for a period of 14 good years and can only reinstated through a governor's petition. 

Even though mass incarceration of African American men is an example of racism by its own, it's the highly preferred way of voter suppression because it guarantees a long period of ensuring that African American men are refrained  from the voting booth for the longest. 

VOTER SUPPRESSION: It's easy to say, "my vote my voice." Nonetheless, what happens when your 1965 voting rights are suppressed? Voter  suppression is the latest formula of kicking African Americans out of the voting booth. This heinous activity is articulated through mandatory requirement of a government issued photo ID while registering to vote not withstanding that a public housing ID (which is a government issued photo ID ) isn't legitimate for this cause. Voter suppression is the reason why the then governor of Alabama shut down 67 DMV offices in 2015 most of them in African American communities in order to restrain them from applying for government issued IDs. Voter suppression was responsible for the poor turnout of African Americans during the 2016 general elections where 8% reduction of African Americans votes was recorded. Voter suppression is also done through the introduction of poll taxes where you are required to pay a smidgen fee to become a registered voter despite the claims that the 24th amendment of 1964 abolished poll taxes. 

Those were just but a few systematic policies that have continued to undermine the rights of African Americans for centuries. It's worthy noting that; if you rob a man his hope, you give him a right to become hostile because he has nothing else to lose. The reason to why we are waking up to massive black lives matter demonstratorations and unrest on a daily basis is because of a biased system of governance that have deliberately failed to listen to the centuries old plead of African Americans, 'I CAN'T BREATHE.' A centuries old cry to mitigate the pain of African Americans plight has resulted to violence in a dire need to be heard. In the words of Martin Luther king jr, 'Riot is the language of the unheard.'

Although the present day agony of demonstrators is deeper than the pain of 8 minutes and 46 seconds that the police knee was on the neck of George Floyd, the objective of the worldwide black lives matter demonstratorations goes beyond the murder of George Floyd. It's the lamentation and bitterness of four centuries of broken and biased system of governance that fosters racial profiling, racial injustice, bigotry, racial inequality and the like in the United States. A system that has never ever recognized African Americans as equal human beings. This is a perfect example of the animal farm where it was believed that all animals were equal but some were more equal than others.

I am not lost of the truth that a dreadful experience of 401 years cannot be addressed overnight. Nonetheless, this begs the question; how long will African Americans continue living like fugitives in their own country? 

To anyone who wishes to challenge the cry of African Americans due to denial of their long overdue justice on equality, first finish your homework on African American studies and put your facts in the right order because black lives matter is a factual issue not a fiction.