By Dr. John Johnson II
America throughout its history has embraced a sanctimonious white supremacists’ ideology. Religious tenets as well as laws codified function to empower them. Colonialism also became a means to control and dominate others deemed less human. The new white settlers who arrived on the shores of America in 1600, from England, brought with them their beliefs in slavery and ethnocentrism. In other words, the indigenous Natives already living on their land were called savages and Black people deemed subhuman.
White supremacist settlers owed their survival to help, and knowledge shared with them by Indigenous people. The generosity of these same Indigenous people is the reason we celebrate Thanksgiving. Yet, thankless settlers drove them from their own land, slaughtered them, and relegated survivors to live on reservations.
Former president George Washington, credited with writing the Declaration of Independence codified within this less than sacred document that, “the Indigenous people of Turtle Island are “merciless Indian Savages.” To this very day, Indigenous people have not received their full measure of devotion nor fully their inalienable rights.
When Washington was born in 1732, slavery had already been in existence for 113 years. As an adult, in 1775, Washington, at the age of forty-three, rose to become Commander in Chief of the Continental Army. This marked the beginning of the American Revolution against England. This war was so brutal that Washington reluctantly relented to use slaves to help defeat the British Army.
One Black regiment fought so bravely that they endeared Washington’s highest commendation. Nevertheless, after defeating the British and America gained its independence, slavery remained an issue. History revealed that when Washington had to respond to the question, “what’s to be done about slavery?” His reply was that “it’s a necessary evil.”
Subsequently, Congress codified slavery within the U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 9. It remained the law of the land for 246 years. It took the Civil War and the Constitution’s Thirteen Amendment to bring an end to slavery. Regrettably, Southern pro slavery legislators, enacted“ Jim Crow Laws’ to continue oppressing and denying Black people equal opportunities and resources.
We must be candid about sanctimonious white supremacists’ not only mercilessly targeting Indigenous and Black people. White women, once considered property, too received treatment as that of chattel. White men, labeled “anti-suffragists, denied women the right to vote for frivolous reasons, such as; they didn’t want to vote, were home/children care takers, and lacked expertise or mental capacity to offer useful opinions about
political issues. Don’t these callous remarks sound familiar?
Well, they should sound familiar! Prolife activists are more concerned about fertilized eggs, embryos, or fetuses. The life of the woman is of little concern. It’s as if no matter how a woman pregnancy occurs, she’s the one to suffer. The pregnancy could result from a romantic sexual encounter, marital relation, rape, or incest. After fifteen weeks of pregnancy, a woman’s inalienable as well as reproductive rights become obliterated.
Unimaginably, all a woman’s rights become the rights of the fetus and state after fifteen weeks. In pro-life states, this may occur at conception.
As inhumane as it sounds, if a woman or child pregnancy occurs as a results of rape by their father, they faced giving birth to a child whose father would also be its grandfather, and the siblings would also be the aunts and uncles. Once shedding their interest after the newborn’s birth, sanctimonious Pro-lifers’ white supremacists don’t’ give a ”rabbit’s paw” about neither the mother nor her infant.
As of 2022, America has over 407,00 children and youth in foster care and over 2.5 million are homeless. Less than 40 percent of these children receive care in the homes of loving care givers.
America remains a pro-incarceration industry for Black males. The incarceration rate for Black males, once babies, is five time the rate of white Americans. This suggest that the “Criminal Justice System” in America is a criminal enterprise that deliberately disproportionally target Black males. Black people make-up only 13.6 percent of America’s population but comprises 47 percent of the prison population.
America having not honored the Declaration of Independence lofty yet hollow orations, “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal …….” now must suffer from its past and ongoing transgressions.
This usually evokes the old saying, “chickens have come home to roost.” Their first roosting branch may just be the Supreme Court!
YOU BE THE JUDGE!