Black History Month Post. (I’m that man).
I’ve been brushing up on my Black History and rereading some of the books that use to incite me to want to riot back in the day. Carter G. Woodson’s “The Mis-Education of the Negro”. Chancellor Williams, “The Destruction of Black Civilization” and W. E. B. Du Bose, “The Souls of Black Folk.” to name a few. These books along with many other’s speak to the striving of black folk in a whitewashed, blacked-out world. They rehearse the pains that imperial and colonial oppression inflicts upon people of color and show how through “white” domination that the black man has little to no esteem left and in the words of Carter G. Woodson, “The negro is forced to become radical.” “He can’t blame everybody else for their present condition and they can’t change the past, so we have to get up and do something for ourselves.”
When you study conditions of blacks in Africa and divisiveness of the mother land by reason of white invaders from the North you discover that 1619 is not the slavery that the bible speaks of in Deuteronomy 28. We can’t allow some of the prejudiced and vengeful rhetoric of well meaning black scholars who can’t separate their emotions from the facts provoke you to wrath and divide our world even farther because of melanin and cruelties of the past.
America has whitewashed the contributions of Africans and their impact on this nation. America perpetrated one of the greatest atrocities known to man. The legalization of slavery and the bigoted and racist attitudes of white legislators in this land, (in the South and the North as well). This country has the blood of our black ancestors crying out from the ground from which they lay for justice and some type of reparation. Yet, in light of the proven and well documented injustices of the past (as well as the present), no amends are scheduled any time soon.
This nations immigration issues are nothing compared to the attitudes of the founding fathers and early fathers of this land. Listen to the the Naturalization Act or Law of 1790. This was the year that America in essence declared itself “White America”.
It would be impossible for some of today’s immigrants to ever become U.S. Citizens. Simply because they weren’t white.
Under the Naturalization Act of 1790, people needed to have lived in the country for at least two years. But check this out, they also had to be “a free white person,” and prove they had “behaved as a man of good moral character”.
Keep in mind that the Declaration of Independence declared that “all men are created equal.” Native Americans, free African Americans, slaves, indentured servants, and Asians, and women weren’t “equal” enough to become American citizens under the Naturalization Act of 1790.
Whether this is the result of a Superiority complex, bigotry, racism or just plain ignorance, in 1790 America declared itself to be a nation of Free White Persons Only.
Now Carter G. Woodson and other great black activists and authors take the approach that I’d like to take here. Instead of getting mad and let our zeal pervert our theology, we need to approach this haunting shadow of reality with a Joseph kind of vengeance. We don’t have to cry over the past, which we had not control over. We don’t have to accept the picture that other people have painted of us. We don’t have to stay subject and only reminiscence about the glory of past generations and want to go back to our roots which is actually the root of all mankind. We’ve got to take what we have, pull on the genius and potential in us. We have to pool our own resources. We have to stop looking for help from that hand that hung. Get a vision, get your soul right with the God of creation and God and Father Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God and Father of Yeshua Hamashiach. Jesus the Messiah. We need an attitude like Joseph. “What the enemy meant for evil, God meant it for good.”
We can’t forget our past, we are better when we know history accurately and fairly presented. It’s hard to find a healthy balance where we can discover the truth without taking revenge into our own hands. So, I’m glad that what use to make me want to riot back in the day, now makes me want to work harder to show a messed up world that there is no apartheid, racism, bigotry or systemic destruction and dismantling of my culture by the powers that be that can keep me from fulfilling my destiny in life. I’ve been empowered by the God of the bible, His Son Jesus and God the Holy Spirit to fulfill the origin mandate of man regardless of race, creed or color.
Gen 1:27-28
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.
I’m that man. Genesis man. I’m here to not just get by. I’m here to take over. So I’ll keep economically empowering black people by employing them by means of all of our black owned and operated businesses that produce 10’s of millions of dollars of revenue without any government or philanthropic assistance. So I’ll keep educationally empowering black people with our own educational system through our black owned and operated Christian Academy. Thousands of black kids get to sit in our classrooms with black administrators and teachers who care about them and go on after graduation to higher education in every level of higher learning worldwide. I’ll keep socially empowering our black people to become more and more altruistic in the care for the poor and the needy. Teaching them that as God and others have helped them, they have got to reach out and help others, indiscriminately.
Lastly, I’m going to keep on spiritually empowering people to think more like Jesus than Ghandi, more like Jesus than Mohammed, to think like Jesus more than Garvey, to think like Jesus more than Malcolm, to think like Jesus more than Martin.
“Let this mind that was in Christ Jesus, be also in you…” Phil 2:5
The world’s systemic whitewashing of black history doesn’t change the gospel that saved my life and changed my life. I didn’t lose my mind, my culture or my desire for truth. I will always be in pursuit of all three. But, I must say that I did find his mind and found his kingdom culture and discovered that truth is not facts, truth is a person.
“Jesus said, I am the way, the truth and the life…”
Thanks for listening on this black history month Saturday, my mother’s birthday. She raised me right. When you see a brother walking with his head high, shoulders back and lifting everything and everybody around him the best that he can regardless of any oppressor. Look again, I’m that man!!!
—Vaughn McLaughlin