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Chapter 29
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Historical photo |
Historical photo |
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Historical background information to this chapter for the
heavy readers:
Even under the most hopeless oppression people have an unconquerable ability
to survive and so the concept of the extended family as a survival unit has
often become the black family's means of overcoming the impact of an oppressive
society. But where the concept in Africa meant a closely connected family
living together in the same compound, it has in America meant the brutal
uprooting and forcible separation of family members over great physical
distances.
When we whites excuse the destruction of the black family by sympathetically
talking about its "inheritance from slavery"- as if the family alone, and for
no reason, should have carried this inheritance on from generation to
generation - it is in order to blame an evil system which existed 100 years ago
so that we can feel themselves free of responsibility today. What I see again
and again is not a black inheritance from slavery, but society's inheritance
from slavery. When the whole system they live in today is hardly
distinguishable from (and even perceived as) slavery, it is
hardly surprising that the inheritance from slavery is also
in fact being forced upon the black family.
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Many of these children's missing fathers have over the years built the
southern highways in chain gangs. Today there are no chains, as bloodhounds and
sub-machineguns are far more effective.
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By following one of the prison trucks I
discovered that among other things the prison workers clean up around the
mansions and on the private beaches of the richest people in the world in Palm
Beach.
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The work here under the guns of white overseers can hardly be perceived
by the black consciousness as anything but a direct continuation of the slave
work formerly carried out around the large white plantation homes. Back in
those days the
slaves found it justifiable to steal to survive the
hardships that had been forced upon them.
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Today I find them more likely to steal as a result of
self-destructive anger caused by their growing sense of the poverty and
marginalization which these white
millionaires directly are guilty of e.g. through large scale stealing from
society in tax breaks for themselves - a privilege Republicans desperately try
to hold on to by also stealing the right to vote from black ex-offenders.....
in the same way as they did before blacks won the right to vote in the Civil
Rights Struggle.
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When in addition blacks everywhere in America get much harder
and longer sentences than whites for similar offenses, the perception of
slavery becomes a concrete reality. Many blacks have received a life sentence
for criminal charges of which whites would have been acquitted.
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Almost all of my friends in this presentation I find worse off today
than when I first met them. But here on Palm Beach and Miami Beach are some of the
wealthiest families in America whom the voters in the 80's, 90's and not least
with the re-election of Bush in 2004 decided to
make even richer.
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Here the
wealthiest families in America have their vacation homes - the Rockefellers, Duponts, Kennedys, and Fords.
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It is also here that until a few years ago blacks
apart from servants were not allowed to set foot - although in practice they
are often still arrested, if they do.
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Well, sometimes a beggar does get in to beg from the
multi-millionaires.
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It is also here some can afford to play on the finest golf
courses in the world with black caddies paid just a few dollars an hour.
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And it is here
that these black slave workers can see white millionaires getting out of their
Rolls Royces to read the latest quotations from Wall Street.
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I even found a democratic millionaire (on the right) who let me borrow his
Mercedes to follow the prison slaves in.
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After all the hog maw, chitterlings, turnip greens,
pigs' ears,
feet, and tails I had eaten for months in black homes it
was nice here to get lobster for a few days.
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But if prisoners work for you, you naturally also must have the police
at your side. When you have killed love and trust in society, all the TV
cameras and electronic surveillance equipment in the world are not
enough.
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It would be very unfortunate to have your little children kidnapped! |
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