(ThyBlackMan.com) Hitler had it all planned out. The Games of the XI Olympiad (the 1936 Summer Olympics) to be held in Berlin would showcase his theory of Aryan superiority. A new 100,000 seat stadium was built to house the track and field events. These would be the first Olympic Games to be televised and Leni Riefenstahl, the famed cinematographer and Nazi propagandist, would be filming the action.
The official Nazi Party newspaper, Volkischer Beobachter, had been railing against the participation of “Jews and Negros” in the games and only the threat of an international boycott by other nations had led to their inclusion, if on a limited basis. This was to be the crowning achievement of the Nazi propaganda machine that had been spouting its racist and xenophobic rhetoric as the party was coming to power in Germany. Except it wasn’t. Hitler’s master plan succumbed to the Master’s Plan.
Twenty-three year old African American James Cleveland Owens (called Jesse because his elementary school teacher mistook J.C. for Jesse owing to his southern drawl) would become the most decorated athlete of the Games winning four Gold Medals – a feat that would not be repeated until Carl Lewis did it decades later. Hitler was “annoyed” that his Aryan athletes did not triumph and many claim would leave the Games early so as not to congratulate the American Gold Medal winner. It should be noted that Owens would later say he never received congratulations from President Franklin Roosevelt either.
Fast forward 82 years to Russia for the 2018 FIFA World Cup. Vladimir Putin, the Russian President and darling of right-wing authoritarian governments and movements everywhere, planned to showcase both his country and his soccer team. When the Russians failed to make the finals, it fell to the all-white Croatian team to face the multi-ethnic French team for the championship. A few days before that match, the American President, an admirer of Putin’s, stood alongside the British Prime Minister while on a trip to the United Kingdom and talked about how immigration had “ruined the culture” of Europe.” In an earlier statement at home he said that the United States needed more immigrants from “countries like Norway”, not some “shithole countries” like those in Africa or the Caribbean.
The white Croatian team would lose to the French whose young star player was the son of African immigrants. Although Kylian Mbappe was born in France, his father was an immigrant from Cameroon and his mother from Algeria and after the victory he became the toast of all France. So the ignorant, xenophobic American President and his Russian counterpart would see their dreams of a display of pure European (white) supremacy dashed in Moscow just as they had been previously in Berlin.
I don’t know how many times it will take before our melanin deficient friends realize that their delusions of their own inherent greatness are just that: delusions. That’s not to say that Europe has not made contributions to world culture, but they are one of many contributors. Whether its sports, the arts, business, science or religion, people of color have played important roles in what has come to be called Western Civilization. In fact, most of what is credited to the beginnings of Western Civilization in ancient Greece was actually derived from even earlier cultures; notably Kemit or Egypt. Think of it, if Socrates was teaching “Greek” philosophy to Greeks, why was he accused of “corrupting the youth” of Athens with foreign ideas, found guilty and sentenced to death by drinking poisonous hemlock?
Dr. King famously said “the moral arc of the universe is long but it bends towards justice.” Therefore, the master plans of men will always give way to the Master’s Plan for the human race. And I believe that plan is simply for us to live in peace and harmony with our neighbors and with nature. This is the central teaching of all of the world’s major religions and philosophies.
If we remain true to this course, we cannot but prevail because it is not our will, but That within us who wills, taking precedence above all else.
Staff Writer; Harry Sewell