The Gantt Report
By Lucius Gantt
The Bible says we should love God and love our neighbors. The good book also says a good man is never honored in his own country.
So, I wonder why people of African descent dislike each other.
Perhaps, our lack of love for each other is a lingering result of how we were treated and trained way back in slavery days.
Willie Lynch reportedly was a slave master from Virginia who delivered a speech on the James River about the secret to controlling Black slaves.
The “secret” was that slaves could be controlled by setting them against one another.
Reports, many of which were discounted, discredited and widely exposed by so-called historians as hoaxes, suggested that differences in slaves such as age, color, homelands, plantation jobs, etc., could be exploited and the exploitation would continue for hundreds of years.
Today, so-called Black leaders continue to call for unity in Black communities but our unity is compromised by our suspicions of people with African blood who may, or may not, have white attitudes, minds, morals and values.
I believe we are all in the same boat. Regardless of our skin color, eye color, hair texture, amount of education or how much money we have. To some world residents, all of us are nothing more to nationalists and supremacists than “niggers”.
If you go to a rundown trailer park and ask the poorest people in the park if they would like to be Oprah Winfrey or Byron Allen, they would say, “Hell, no!”
They might say I’d like to have Oprah’s or Byron’s money, but they definitely don’t want to be like you.
During slavery days, the house negroes didn’t want to be like the field negroes, the light- complexioned Blacks, didn’t want to be like the darker Blacks, the Blacks that were educated, or knew how to read and write, didn’t want to be like their less educated brothers and sisters.
In 2022, the most disliked Blacks by Black people are the radicals, revolutionaries and the community activists.
Too many of us hate the Blacks that the non-Blacks hate.
Everyday, all of us see white employers, agency heads, supervisors and others happily hiring workers that look and act like they do. When Jews hire Jews, Cubans hire Cubans and so forth, Black people don’t say a mumbling word. But we don’t hire our kind because we don’t want our offices, businesses or schools to have “too many” Black workers.
As a child running around Atlanta’s housing projects and ghettos, I witnessed mama and daddy buying everything our family needed from Black owned and operated businesses.
Now, to find stores we own, we need to Google “Black businesses near me”!
Integration was the original “replacement theory”. Once we could sit down at the white lunch counters, we stopped patronizing the Black restaurants and eateries. After reading this column you can go into a Black neighborhood and buy Chinese food, or you can rent a Pakistani hotel room or get a Vietnamese manicure.
We are not living in Nazareth or Galilee; most of us are being gentrified and taxed out of our homes that our parents and ancestors worked so hard for. We live where we are told we can live, outside of the big bank’s “redlines”.
The hated activists have it right. The modern-day Mandingos know Black people need land more than they need 10 carat gold chains, or leased mansions and cars.
They know Africans around the world need to work together, trade with each other, buy from each other and to help each other!
Loving so-called Black leaders that are paid to quiet us, disparage us and block us has lessened our economic and political progress.
Stop being afraid of the brothers and sisters that are not afraid of our enemies.
The community activists, in some cases, are smarter than you think. Listen to them and read their words. They may have an answer regarding our lack of money, lack of land, lack of unity and disharmony.
Love your brothers and sisters that love you! Try to work with each other and support each other.
Black on Black hate must be discredited and abandoned!
