(ThyBlackMan.com) “Must Jesus bear the cross alone and all the world goes free? No, there’s a cross for everyone and there’s a cross for me.”
For many Blacks in America at one time or another they were compelled to wonder in addition to all the other crosses a person in their lifetime would be forced to bear if their skin color was a cross. A very heavy cross to bear.
A cross of ubiquitous harassment, discrimination, abuse, mistreatment, pain, torture, brutality and of course injustice. A cross engineered by hate, un-American, un-Christian, inhumane and just plain evil actions by people who had the audacity to call themselves American patriots and upstanding Christians.
For some Blacks in America, it was indeed a very heavy cross to bear. Yet for many others the cross was not a burden too heavy to bear but a badge of honor. A badge of honor that they proudly wore and continue to wear.
Some Blacks were compelled and understandably so to raise their arms to the heavens and ask, “Why Lord?” Many others raised their arms in the air and thanked the Lord for making them Black.
“Thank you, Jesus, for giving me Black skin.” It would be extremely troubling, an embarrassment, a feel of great shame to have the skin color of a people that have caused so much ungodly pain, suffering, destruction, inhumanity, brutality, savagery and genocide.
This latter group of Blacks in America, the overwhelming majority of Blacks in America, from America’s earliest days accepted their Black skin not as a curse but a blessing. That God so loved his special people that he gave them a cross that he knew only they would be able to bear.
It would be a heavy cross but because they were special, they would succeed in bearing it. That they would show the world that despite whatever injustice, harm, hate, ignorance, discrimination and pure evil directed at them and to them, they would continue to rise above the hate, injustice and pure evil to higher heights.
Rocks and stones would be hurled at them, but they would use them as stepping stones to continue to move forward and upward. That all types of un-American and un-Christian actions could be hurled at them. But they would continue while praising their Lord and Savior to champion the betterment of mankind.
“Yes,we can be better. Yes, America can and must live up to its stated principles and creeds.”
At the same time, they hoped and prayed that those whose entire existence was an unrelenting preoccupation to hurt, harm, maim, kill and do all manners of savagery would one day grow tired and sin no more. That they would no longer mistreat Blacks but show Christian love to their brothers and sisters and finally make America a place where each man and woman could sit under their own fig tree and none feel afraid.
They know it would be a huge stretch for that to happen. Yes, but didn’t Jesus turn water into wine? Did He not walk on water? Did He not raise Lazarus from the dead? Was it too much to believe that even the bigots could change? “Well Lord, if they cannot change, could they at least leave us the hell alone?”
It would be a truly great America. An America in which the teachings of Christ would be not just presented but lived.
From the earliest days of America, Blacks in America while living through one of the darkest chapters in the history of mankind hoped and prayed for a better America. Despite their enslavement, despite the Jim Crow laws, lynching, massacres, and just pure evil directed nonstop at them they held out hope and truly believed that one day things would be better. That those who did the evil if not themselves their children or their children’s children would be better.
Such a belief was especially widespread during the Civil Rights era. Central to that belief was that in time the avowed bigots along with the many that watched in silence, and those who refused to see injustice, who refused to see evil would one day all pass away. If not their children, perhaps their grandchildren and their great grandchildren would have a far different outlook, a more progressive, more Christian, more American outlook than their parents, grandparents, great grandparents.
It was a wonderful belief. But unfortunately, it was a mistaken belief. Prejudice and hate are at an all-time high. Sunday mornings in America remain the most segregated time of the week.
While the hatred, ignorance and vileness of the Klan was basically limited to their clown shows, cross burnings and rallies, racial hatred is currently spewed 24 hours, seven days a week throughout social media and other public settings. It is spewed openly, boldly and all-pervasively. The clown show robes have been replaced by expensive designer suits.
The bigots of yesteryear proudly and publicly proclaimed their hate and contempt for Blacks and other people of color. Today’s bigots hide cowardly behind computer, laptop and cellphone screens to spread their filth.
At the same time, the current bigots furiously deny that racism exists now or ever. They stop at no length to whitewash, revise, alter, eliminate and ban mention of the sins of their fathers and their mothers as well as their own.
Their poison, bigotry and hate is found in coded words and phrases. “Make America Great Again” is nothing more than code for make America white again.
It is currently being supported by policies out of Washington DC and in various state capitals throughout the US seeking to return America back to the period after Reconstruction. Through actions to purge the federal workforce back to the era of Woodrow Wilson. Diversity is now an outlawed and forbidden word.
The goal to remove millions of immigrants as well as US citizens to South America and Africa nations cannot be confused as anything but ethnic and racial cleansing to make the US a white un-Christian nation.
Adolf Hitler had Alfred Rosenberg as one of his chief policy architects. The Commander and Con, Cheat and Corruption has Stephan Miller. Small men with little to no pipe but with huge delusions and paranoia can cause much destruction, suffering and pain.
Despite the un-American and un-Christian behavior and actions still directed at Blacks in America, just as they have worn their cross with dignity, honor, and unbelievable humanity, they will continue to succeed. They will not just overcome, they will continue to move onward and upward.
They can’t help it. They are a special people. A God loving, caring and courageous people. Theirs is not a cross that they bear in sorrow but a standard that they carry courageously and reverently proclaiming humanity on their shoulders for the world to see.
May God continue to bless all the people of the world.
Staff Writer; Al Alatunji
