Black vs. White

Black vs. White

And now comes the election and America is facing suck it up time. Let us review in June Hillary Clinton dropped out of the race and was nominated for Vice President on the 5th vote. Mc Cain picked Romney several weeks later. This after introducing senate Bill 408 putting an amnesty in effect for illegal aliens already living with in the nation’s borders.

Could such a scenario happen? I seriously wonder. Many have asked about slavery in America and the black man’s role in governance. To understand this a bit better you need to examine American history closely. Black slaves were important into the south because no white immigrants were available to work the vast southern plantation system that began to develop. The law is shaky at best and really has no basis in what we call common law.

In fact England outlawed the importation of slaves in 1807. This event marks the beginning of the horrors of what came to be called the middle passage. In 1808 as a concession to England and in the hope of stopping the impressments of American sailors and stopping capture of their ships Congress forbids importation of slaves. England was having none of it however and American slave ships with a living cargo of slaves in transit to the sugar islands of the Caribbean continued.

An interesting ploy was developed by ship’s captains when pursued by ships of the British navy. Without the evidence of the slaves on board the captain could argue that his ship was not carrying on business in the slave trade.

So the chained slaves simply had several cannon balls attached to the first member of the upwards of 100 slaves chained together. This man was tossed over board and the rest of the helplessly bound slaves followed into the depths of the ocean. Their cries muffled by a blanket of sea water. The cries were however not muffled in the minds of the New England crew and explain the high incidence of insanity amongst those who returned to New England. The entire time-line of these events and the events that lead up to slavery can be found at:

http://www.yale.edu/glc/curriculum/amistad/abolitionism.html

As you can clearly see there is no single defining event that can be pointed to as seminal to the establishment of slavery. No America more or lest drifted into becoming a slave nation. It remained for a terrible amount of loss of life by both the north and the south before this practice was stopped. In fact the practice of share cropping continued until well into the 20th century. Poll taxes were used to deny the Black citizen the fundamental right of every citizen to vote. Black protest was as surly stifled as the cries of the hapless slaves in mid ocean were stifled in earlier years.

Now let us fast forward to the election of 2008. Can America accept an elected black man as president of the United States of America? Remember this is the same America where female tennis players’ from one of the most prestigious Eastern universities were referred to as “nappy headed little hos” considering this can you understand my doubts? I do not support such rhetoric by Don Imus or anyone else. But to ignore the fact that it happened is to over look an important clue.

I personally feel mister Obama has his work cut out for him. I hope that I am wrong but I fear that I am not.