As a white person I come from a long line of oppressed white people that has generationally sealed our fate to bear that full brunt of history that includes living in a suburb with other oppressed people whose history is similar to my own family tree revealing long suffering. No one appreciates my white history of forefathers being forced in bondage to watch over the black people who owned them. No one wants to talk about how black people arranged for white people to control America with a firm hand. No, they just see my suffering white existence as a benefit but in truth it is a burden. It was never easy to be white and own everything. It was never easy to be white and pretend my plantation owner relatives could ever come back from that burden of catering to plantation people of color by feeding them, housing them and giving them a life one can only dream about.
It has been tough. As I see it black people always got the good seats in the back of the bus but my people were forced to sit in the leftover seats away from the elite. Even in the 1960's when signs on cafes used the "N" word to describe the lucky ones "N's Go To Back Door", we could not eat at the back door. It was only to direct them to the exclusive area in the cafe that was away from us. Think about that. It was just recent history when we could not eat with them or sit in the prime back seats. That is how isolated we whites were. Because black people kept that control over us they controlled the marketplace and the purse for centuries. The proof of that is they filled every job with white people and arranged it so we all had to work, and yet, we allowed it. We would not hire them because they were too good to work with us. They made white people run every bank, political position, business, and then they insured that we all flock together in the suburbs to get away from their oppression of us. How did they do that you may ask. The answer is easy, they would move into our neighborhoods before going back to their own kind. Once there, they would lower the home values. And here is where it gets very complex - we would all move out because we knew the lucky race was likely spying on us or planning their next move. Some burned crosses on their lawns to make sure we all knew an elite had moved in. They capped all of this off by saying "You people are free, move on...suck it up!" It took years of ruling the country and dropping this control will not happen over night. They don't care. They just see us as crybabies who always had the best of everything in our path, they don't see the results of their oppression. They don't care that being wealthy or comfortable comes with a burden. They could not know that in this economy, in my suburb, all my white neighbors have had to buy products without name brand. Every time you see a black man or a brown man who gets a job think of me, the oppressed white one. Every time you see a black President think of the oppressed white one that isn't the President.
I have learned that you can only overcome this kind of historic oppression by confronting it so I have learned to cope and vowed to try and move away from my historic poverty of the mind, no less important than an empty wallet. When I lose a job, when I fall ill, when I look in the mirror and see a flaw I find some small comfort by remembering how difficult my lot in life started off. I ponder how my generations of family suffered to get me here and how I have overcome the curse of hardship in controlling everything I was forced to possess.
I have vowed to confront my lot in life. The black man will no longer toss my peeps in jail in numbers that are too high. They will no longer force me to cater to slaves to make their life luxurious and easy, abandon me to the suburbs and say buck up, no longer make me control the marketplace, and they will no longer be able to pretend that the ravages of elitist poverty that created entire blocks and miles of ghetto-chic are history's legacy and not to be shared with my own people. In fact these inner cities are the sites we white people would all love to possess but we are excluded because we were always forced to withhold and control the monetary flow. We will never own a piece of any black ghetto pie. Why? Simply because we are white. They gave us too much money over the years. We are just going to have to let go of the government teet we thought we owned, let go of suburbs, and put on our big girl pants and demand equality. And what better way is there to heal our white wounds then to confront poverty we were forced to create, confront the residue of our oppression, and confront a wrong that removes us from a painful status quo. Because this kind of history past and present has never been truly addressed we suddenly see ourselves summed up with two little words of power that define our lot in life:
Reverse Racism
(the lifeline for an oppressed people)
It is time to heal. Don't hate the black people for oppressing us, instead lets get out of our BMW's, alternative vehicles, baby haulers, stand up tall, hold hands and sing it like we mean it: We shall overcome. Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck have finally opened our white eyes and black and brown people can no longer control us. They must include us in their control, apologise for forcing us to have too much money and power, and they must clean up the ravages of the suburbs they forced us to live in. They can't expect us to crawl out of our history overnight. They say there is no such thing as racism because they think what they took centuries to create can be undone as soon as the word free is inserted. It is shameful. We will no longer suffer from the man.
burp ;-)
