Being African-American in America boggles the mind. Endless contradictions, myths, and lies fracture the African-American spirit. We peer through a dense fog of misinformation and indoctrination. The biases, injected into our minds, cause lowered expectations. We feel inferior. We are told how the crumbs handed to us are enough. We should be grateful.

If we dare to imagine more for ourselves, the mention of slavery and racism triggers our emotions and drops us to our knees. We are distracted, then, with our heads bowed down. Anger clouds our vision. We are snatched back to a place in time when many of us, as a people, were on our knees, fearing retribution, afraid to stand up, told we were inferior.

Slavery was horrible, indeed. Yet, if the mention of slavery and racism today angers and distracts us so much that we cannot think for ourselves. we are not free. If the mention of slavery cycles us through despair and prevents us from examining the toxic narratives pushed at us, we are still slaves.

We are intentionally yanked about, manipulated, and enslaved by our own emotions. Sadly, we do not discern when the rhetoric hurled at us is insulting, racist and disrespectful.

If we believe in less, we achieve less, expect less, and want less. We are dumbed down, trained to believe there is nothing more. We begin drowning in our own hopelessness.

The part regarding the terms, African American and black. For me, as a black American, I can trace my family ancestry in America back to the early 1800s. I don’t think if a person identifies as black should automatically defaults them into the same category as the oppressor and slavery.

The bottomline is that white supremacy views us all as one giant ni$$er. No matter if your family been in America for hundreds of years or just a few weeks.
But among black Americans in general, I can see differences if and when they apply for immigrants from Africa or the Caribbean.

Vader007 great observations and comments. We will not always agree 100%, and that’s OK because it causes the sharing of varied viewpoints. I am, however, curious what parts of the article you disagree with. Your comments are appreciated because you find points of agreement instead of points of contention like far too many “black” people have been programmed to do.