The True Evils of Slavery

Slavery!

The very word conjures up images of horror and revulsion for millions of Americans. Images of whips and chains and oppressed, ragged paupers on their knees, pleading for their lives or those of their loved ones, abound. There are those who claim that they are filled with loathing by certain words or the very sight of symbols they associate with slavery, such as the Mississippi or Georgia state flags, or monuments to Confederate heroes.

Why?

Why does slavery invoke such powerful emotions? The slaves and their children are all gone. No living person actually remembers being an American slave. Yet there is a whole subculture of people who consider themselves tainted, their very lives cursed by the memory of slavery and the evil intentions of the descendants of slave owners who continue to persecute them. They claim vehemently that their lives matter, but they don't act as if that's true. What could keep such an evil and obsolete institution so alive for 15 decades after it became illegal?

The answer is complex. First of all, many Americans are taught to believe and incorporate into their world view certain images of slavery that are magnified by elaboration and retelling. These ideas are subsequently renewed and reinforced so that they take on the clarity of actual memories. The psychological term is "confabulation." A special ceremony during the Feast of Passover instills such memories in Jewish children. These memories then become motivators of attitude and behavior. In the case of the Jews, they become a celebration of freedom and a fierce determination never again to become a slave to anyone or anything.

In the case of African-Americans, the wounds of slavery are largely self-inflicted. Few black children would even know what they think they do about slavery in America if they hadn't been brainwashed about it by black adults determined to make slaves of children who are born free. Having been freed of the evils of systemic segregation by the hard-won Civil Rights Act of 1968, black so-called "leaders" have reinstituted it voluntarily! Many black parents continue to enslave their children to poverty, ignorance and hopelessness by conceiving them in already broken homes, saddling them with odd and unusual names, ridiculing education, encouraging "black" fashions and cultural idiosyncrasies, condoning disrespect, vulgarity, lawlessness and abuse, and teaching them that they have no control over their own destiny and that they can survive as who and what they are only if other people take care of them.

One currently popular self-destructive behavior involves fascination with the long-abandoned practice of Negro lynchings. One grammar school reportedly actually had a demonstration, in which innocent black students were festooned with swing set chains and had ropes wrapped around their necks. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), the lynching memorial promoters don't know the difference between a bight, which has nothing to do with lynching or hanging, and a noose, which does. Their ignorance has resulted in fertile opportunities for local racists to harass and annoy them, without doing anything the least bit illegal, by leaving bight-ended ropes where they are likely to be seen by the offendees. The supposed "victims" are therefore conned into wasting their money, attention and time demonstrating about otherwise innocuous loops of rope in all sorts of unlikely places, and scaring the bejesus out of their kids, who may well suspect they're about to be lynched. Guess who's laughing at them!

Certainly, ethnic prejudice still exists in the United States, but most of it comes from its victims, who seem to do absolutely everything they can to foster and nurture it. Without the excuse of white prejudice, so-called "minorities" would have only their own cultures to blame for being poor, addicted, ignorant or illegitimate. There is a place called "Africa," and there is a place called "America." People who live in Africa are called "Africans." People who live in America are called "Americans." But there is no place called "African America;" anyone who thinks of himself as an "African American" is already a segregated displaced person and a nationless refugee.

Every once in a while one hears a news item about students who are having a hard time succeeding because their so-called peers accuse them of "trying to be white." It's as if everybody has already agreed that to be black means to be an uneducated, sociopathic, underachieving, ignorant failure. Shoot, I know white people like that. I sure don't want to be one of them. If people have a choice between being socially respected, professionally successful and financially secure, or of being accepted as an equal by a bunch of illegitimate drug-abusing morons, why would anyone choose the latter? There's a word for making choices based on the color of someone's skin. It's called "racism."

One example was the Presidential campaign of President Barack Obama. Mr. Obama is one of the few real African Americans, born of an African father and an American mother. One would expect that he would have appealed overwhelmingly to black voters, but he would be wrong. He was criticized for "not being black enough," as if "being black" means to be a poor, uneducated, ghetto blasting, illegitimate, tap-dancing, watermelon-eating convicted felon. His book, "Memories of My Father" was cleverly written to portray him as a fatherless orphan with whom many of his constituents could relate. For the first time in history, black people had one of their own in the highest office in the land, unlike the incompetents who purported to represent them in the past. Unfortunately, his party built the gallows, wove the rope, tied the knot, and slipped it around their collective necks by pushing a socialist agenda that would make everyone in America slaves of one sort or another. Mr. Obama even dedicated a National Museum of African American History and Culture that purposely segregates their history from that represented by the National Museum of American History, which, until September 24, 2016, represented all non-native Americans.

So the sad fact is that slavery is not dead; it is alive and well even in the United States of America. Cruise slowly along any downtown big city street early in the morning, preferably in an expensive car. You will be approached by people, mostly women, who are slaves in everything but name, whose favorite personal decorations consist of shiny, conspicuous shackles and chains. These people are forced by many factors into a situation from which they feel there is no escape. They seem to believe they are totally dependent on those who own them, have no choice in their life style or activities, and are bought and sold like cattle. It's called prostitution, but it's really slavery. And what color are the slave owners?

The popular image of black American slaves in chains, yearning to be free, is largely the result of the graphic portrayal of slavery by a gifted white woman, Harriet Beecher Stowe, in her book, "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Her poignant scenes of heroic Liza crossing the ice to save her child or the death of faithful old Uncle Tom at the hands of the wicked Simon Legree, although based on fact, are themselves fiction, written to expose the evils of slavery in much the same way that Mary Shelly's "Frankenstein" attempted to expose the evils of undisciplined science. Mrs. Stowe was the educated daughter and wife of Protestant ministers and was brought up to hate and despise slavery as a violation of Christian principles. She wrote her book specifically to illustrate the intrinsic evil of slavery, and never intended it to be a fair and balanced treatment of an admittedly complex subject.

A more accurate portrayal of slavery in America can be found in Alex Haley's "Roots." Notwithstanding the sometimes valid criticisms of his work, Haley was a careful researcher and conscientious historian, and tried diligently to learn the facts of his personal heritage. The story is not fiction, as "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is, but history mixed with reasonable conjecture. "Roots" takes care not to stereotype slavery simply as evil whites oppressing heroic blacks. He shows slavery as a British institution to which the United States was a reluctant heir, of which the entire population was a victim, and that was overcome many years ago by the cooperation of both white and black people, working together.

Those people who consider the evils of slavery to consist in chains and violence vastly understate its real horror. The main evil of slavery was and is its denial of the slave's intrinsic humanity and the limitation of his God-given right to choose his own destiny. A slave has to be under control of someone or something. The Catholic Church has always taught that slavery consists in the limitation of the exercise of individual choice, a God-given human faculty the frustration of which is always contrary to the dignity of man, whatever his color. Where this limitation is imposed by another, by law, violence or economic deprivation, it is morally wrong. It is equally wrong to impose it on oneself. Thus the Church speaks of the "slavery to sin" as being the voluntary surrender of one's choice to do good to the inherent tendency to do evil.

"The more one does what is good, the freer one becomes. There is no true freedom except in the service of what is good and just. The choice to disobey and do evil is an abuse of freedom and leads to 'the slavery of sin'." - The Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1733. See also Romans 6:17

This idea comes straight from Jesus:

Amen, amen, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin. (John 8:34)

Kevin Bales is professor of sociology and a consultant on slavery to the United Nations and several countries, including the United States. He discussed it in "The Social Psychology of Modern Slavery" in the April, 2002 edition of Scientific American magazine. According to his report, for roughly every free black person in the United States, somebody, somewhere is, in actual fact, a slave. Their numbers are increasing. He estimated that the purchase price of a slave in 1850 was equivalent to $30,000 today, This cost represented an entire generation of toil. Although there were cruel and sadistic slave owners, just like present-day bullies, child abusers and wife beaters, the successful and prosperous slave owner realized that a happy slave did the most work, an angry, sick or injured one did less, and a dead one did none at all.

Dr. Bales reported that many contemporary slave owners consider slavery to be simply business. They consider their slaves valuable "human resources" and work hard to keep them content with their lot while they are being exploited. Like the streetwalker, the average slave sees his or her situation as the natural, if regrettable, order of things, which he or she would prefer not to see disrupted. If they are allowed to leave, they usually come back. Emancipated slaves have committed suicide, or sold themselves and their families back into bondage. Tragically, they have come to disbelieve in their own humanity and have lost the intrinsically human desire to control their own destiny - just like poor Lola.

These aspects of slavery can be reversed. The history of the Jewish people is a good example. In Moses' time they were an undisciplined and unsophisticated rabble of ex-slaves. They became disciplined by, among other laws, the Ten Commandments, which are simple rules for imposition of social and religious order on uneducated people used to absolute obedience to an uncompromising master. They are fundamentally different from civil laws, which are enacted by governments empowered, to a greater or lesser extent, by the people subject to them. Educated Jews embrace an ethic against slavery to ignorance, poverty, addiction, lawlessness, immorality, political oppression and discrimination by others. European Jews' success throughout the world less than 60 years after near extinction is due, in large measure, to their understanding and rejection of the true nature of slavery.

Most Jewish immigrants came to this country as a poor and despised minority. They were immediately identifiable by their religious practices, manner of dress, unusual names, and Hebrew, Yiddish or other accents. Modern American Jews, while still faced with discrimination, have learned freely to associate with gentiles, dress the way most of the population does, give their children innocuous names, and to speak English like other Americans. They value hard work, education, self control, self respect and personal dignity. They vigorously oppose Jewish quotas or any government identity document that would identify them as a Jew or "Jewish type." Those who are not comfortable in a non-Jewish environment freely choose to preserve their alternate culture and live in Jewish ghettos, accepting the consequences, both good and bad, as the price of their freedom. But few of even these conservative Jews criticizes or condemns his fellows for success in a gentile world.

In a word, they have chosen to compete on an equal basis with other Americans, and they have been the better for it. It is a fact of nature that competition makes things better. When educational institutions make their entrance and graduation requirements tougher, even the dropouts are better educated and more successful. When people have to work or go hungry, most of them get jobs and many get better ones.

Slavery eliminates competition. When schools have to admit and try to educate everyone, some graduates not only can't read, they can't even learn how. When everyone is guaranteed a minimum income, even if he doesn't work, many choose the minimum as a viable alternative to doing what might truly make their lives matter. They remain eternally poor and essentially worthless to themselves or anyone else. Assigning racial quotas for school admission or employment or government benefits makes it that much harder to rise from mediocrity to greatness. What athlete would play on a team that the government guaranteed to win half the time?

Black people compete with others very successfully when they choose to do so. Dr. Condolezza Rice, former US Secretary of State, may well be among the most intelligent persons ever to walk the face of this planet. One of the most respected statesmen of recent memory, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, is the first black (and youngest) chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In sports, entertainment, education and countless other fields, black people have demonstrated time and again that white oppression is largely irrelevant. White people decide what happens to black people only if those black people give them the power to make that decision. Anyone who believes that black people need the cooperation of white people to overcome poverty, ignorance or any other adversity is a liar and a dealer in slaves.

Unfortunately, the value of white prejudice as an excuse for black misery is so great that some black people will sacrifice anything whatever to create, nurture and maintain it. As a group, these people overwhelmingly support government programs to "keep them in their place," often proposed by the party that so vehemently opposed abolition of slavery that it precipitated a disastrous civil war! Whenever there is a danger of civil rights actually working or a real improvement in race relations, the black subculture finds some new way to annoy and antagonize white bigots and encourage segregation. At the moment, they are making themselves obnoxious by disrupting shopping and getting rid of historical monuments to regional heroes. Thus, the cycle of racial persecution begins anew with blacks once more on the losing end. Why else is black society in the condition it's in?

A popular example of this practice is the "boom box." Although personal stereo systems are popular with virtually everybody nowadays, considerate people, blacks and whites alike, buy iPods with earbuds and listen to what they want in private. Black culture, on the other hand, seems addicted to broadcasting a preference for strong beat and filthy language all over the neighborhood. Of course, annoying black neighbors fails to achieve the desired effect, so the antagonizers have turned to technology in recent years with the superpower automobile audio system. There seems to be some prestige attached to driving through white neighborhoods in a noisy, smoky hundred dollar car with a thousand dollar stereo system with the windows open, broadcasting atonal percussion of such intensity that it makes unwilling victims nauseous. The awesome power densities involved could be achieved within the vehicles at much less cost by simply rolling up the windows, but that wouldn't achieve the desired effect of annoying the crackers.

What the perpetrators don't seem to understand, or choose to ignore, is that this practice benefits whites much more than it does blacks. Few black people receive the financial benefits of the design, development, manufacture, distribution, retailing or installation of these systems, or the gasoline required to power them. On the other hand, all of them contribute to them. In addition, the constant exposure to sound levels so loud that they violate OSHA exposure restrictions results in permanent hearing loss that is exacerbated by the natural loss of sensitivity to high frequencies with age. Young blacks are almost three times as likely to have noise-induced hearing loss as other people. Maybe whitey can't legally get rid of the boom boxers, but he can take their cash and make them deaf as posts, and guess who prescribes and sells hearing aids. Turn it down or pay up, bro'! We white folks enjoy taking your money as much as anyone else's! Get some more, and we'll take that, too!

Black power is even used to create white prejudice where none existed before. Black "demonstrations" are often the media of this change. Instead of spending their efforts to educate and persuade others regarding the legitimacy and worthiness of their causes, black activists frequently publish their agendas by harassment and intimidation of white voters. They are loud and rude and disrespectful. They block traffic, disrupt business and create civil unrest. Often they get together in groups to riot, rape, loot, pillage and murder. Their targets, many of whom wouldn't ordinarily care less about black concerns, can retaliate by using their secret ballots to vote for whatever the activists are against, or vice versa. They can leave the polling places secure in the feeling of frustrating the aims of the demonstrators and having paid them back for being obnoxious and annoying. It's called "keeping them in their place." It's been working great during my entire adult lifetime, and black people keep voting for more and more of it - when they bother to vote at all.

An example of blacks empowering whites was demonstrated some time ago in south Mississippi. During segregation days, black patrons were barred from eating in certain "white" restaurants. Even after this practice was declared illegal, these restaurants still served only white patrons and often intimidated black people who tried to change the policy. Race relations in Mississippi have improved considerably since those days, as evidenced by the fact that the white population of Jackson doesn't riot any more when a black student enrolls in the University of Mississippi. Shoot, we even ratified the 13th Amendment not too long ago. Today black people as well as white people can dine where they please...

Some black people see this situation as dangerously utopian!

Back in 2001, a black south Mississippi radio commentator began complaining about the design of the Mississippi state flag, which contains an inset of the Confederate battle flag. Thousands of black people rallied to her cause and began demonstrating against the Mississippi, Georgia, Confederate, and any other flag that has a similar design. They claimed that this was a "symbol of slavery" that filled black people, none of whom had ever been slaves or lived in the Confederacy, with fear and loathing. They threatened an economic boycott of any business that displayed anything resembling the Rebel flag.

Virtually overnight, Rebel flags sprang up in restaurants all across south Mississippi. One garrison-sized Rebel flag could be seen over 5 miles away along US Highway 49. Black customers stayed away in droves and the "Rebel" restaurants went back to serving only white patrons and keeping the blacks out.

The flag haters have given the rednecks power over them that the rednecks are not likely to give back. Giving up power once acquired is against human nature. They can take it back by ending the "boycott" and learning to live with the history, good and bad, of their state. Alternately, they can move somewhere else. Can't we all just get along?

Perhaps the most pernicious recent demonstration of the existence of slavery in the United States was the reaction of some of the citizens of New Orleans to the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. These unhappy people are slaves of the worst sort, incapable of managing their own destiny, with no marketable skills, very little education, and not even a basic understanding of the concept of social responsibility. When New Orleans flooded and the restrictions of law enforcement were temporarily oversaturated, they reverted to typical slave behavior: looting, stealing, shooting at people who were trying to help them, and whining, complaining and demonstrating against the overwhelmed establishment instead of cooperating to make things better for themselves and their neighbors. One is reminded of a similar situation in "Gone With The Wind" when one of the starving slaves asks, "Who'se gwine milk dat cow, Miz Scarlett? We'se house workers."

The reason for running amok is not hard to understand. Without a sense of personal responsibility for their own welfare, these unhappy people found themselves with no behavioral guidelines when faced with a situation for which "massah," in this case the system of public largess on which they depended, had not prepared them. So they reverted to the law of the jungle and started behaving like wild animals, just like the Jews in Moses' time. The proof of their belief that they somehow "deserve" to be taken care of by others, even in the face of the worst natural disaster in US history, is their lawsuits against the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers ($3,014,170,389,176,410 at last count!) and their demonstration for even more benefits than the law allows. Because of its degrading effect on the human spirit, slavery is incompatible with virtue, including that of gratitude.

The real tragedy of this situation is that these people liked being slaves! Whenever they are presented with a choice between the freedom to choose or government management of their lives, they choose to surrender of their freedom every time! Their lives at the mercy of the benevolent federal and state governments are at least tolerable to people with little self-respect. True freedom, taking responsibility for one's own situation, and working to acquire the skills and means to discharge that responsibility, are frightening and intimidating to people whose lives have been managed by "massah" for generations.

Hurricane Katrina, for all its destruction, will be an overall blessing if it does nothing more than flush these people out of their cesspool of human misery into a society that forces them to live up to their responsibility as human beings. Faced with the option of working or going to jail, record numbers of them are choosing jail. Too few of them are deciding to get an education, make a living, and raise their children to take advantage of the overwhelming opportunities that are their legacy as American citizens and children of a loving God.

There are dark powers at work. On cannot legally own slaves in the United States, yet there are political demagogues, many of whom are former economic slaves themselves, who make a very comfortable living exploiting the gullibility of those who believe that there is benefit to be gained by electing public officials whose sole ability is to promise to give them things they haven't earned. One such oppressor wasted vast sums of scarce taxpayers' money to journey around the country, deflecting blame from his own incompetence and criticizing the honest efforts of those hard-working tax paying citizens who had to take up the slack when he ran out on his constituents. He has already expressed desire for his city to remain "chocolate." His message, however carefully camouflaged, is simple, "You darkies ain't good enough to take care of yo'selves. Come back to your miserable slave quarters; take up the yoke of slavery once again; elect me as your massah, and I will give you the absolute minimum you need to survive." Guess how he fared in the last election, before he went to jail for corruption!

And guess who're demonstrating and keeping the bulldozers from tearing down the flood-ravaged, gutted and condemned slave quarters in New Orleans housing projects instead of going to work or school so they can afford homes of their own. I don't make this stuff up, folks!

Many of his oppressed subjects are listening. Some others, who have been forced by their recent misfortune into the mainstream of American society, like their first taste of freedom, but there are not enough of them. "Massah Ray" won his last election handily. He did that by enlisting the aid of famous black clergymen to help preach his message of oppression before he went to jail for wire fraud, bribery, and money laundering related to bribes from city contractors before and after Hurricane Katrina. These rabble rousers have a vested interest themselves! They'll starve if black people start paying attention to leaders who work instead of just talk!

One of the most ardent opponents of slavery, Malcolm X, found emancipation in the teachings of Islam, which professes much the same philosophy about human responsibility and conduct that Judaism does, and considers freeing a slave as appropriate reparation for grievous sin. He believed that blaming an institution dead five generations or violent demonstrations against injustice not only wasted valuable effort and resources, but also offended the dignity of those who otherwise could be actually doing something about it. He preached that people were poor because they chose to be, by neglecting opportunities to better themselves by education and hard work and self respect. He maintained that putting black destiny in the hands of white people only perpetuated an oppressive culture in which white people made the decisions, good and bad, and black people had to live with them. When asked what white people could do to help black people, he replied simply, "Nothing!"

Since the assassination of this charismatic leader by black extremists, the successes of the civil rights movement have begun to unravel.

A large part of the problem is a criminal lack of proper parenting. Comedian Bill Cosby hit the nail squarely on the head when he talked about the responsibility of black parents during a speech in Chicago before Jesse Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH Coalition. He criticized angry black men for beating their wives because they didn't take advantage of education to get a decent job, parents who use bad grammar and racial epithets in front of their children, teenagers who commit petty crimes and get pregnant before they're ready to raise a family.

"They're standing on the corner and they can't speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk: 'Why you ain't,' 'Where you is,' 'What he drive,' 'Where he stay,' 'Where he work,' 'Who you be...'

I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk, and then I heard the father talk. Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth. In fact you will never get any kind of job making a decent living. People marched and were hit in the face with rocks to get an education, and now we've got these knuckleheads walking around.

The lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal. These people are not parenting; they are buying things for kids: $500 sneakers for what? And they won't spend $200 for "Hooked on Phonics?"

I am talking about these people who cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit. Where were you when he was two? Where were you when he was twelve? Where were you when he was eighteen, and how come you didn't know that he had a pistol? And where is the father; or who is his father?

People putting their clothes on backward; isn't that a sign of something gone wrong? People with their hats on backward, pants down around the crack, isn't that a sign of something, or are you waiting for Jesus to pull his pants up? Isn't it a sign of something when she has her dress all the way up and got all type of needles going through her body?

What part of 'Africa' did this come from? We are not Africans! Those people are not Africans; they don't know a thing about Africa! With names like Shaniqua, Taliqua and Mohammed and all of that crap, and all of them are in jail!

'Brown (or black) versus the Board of Education' is no longer the white person's problem. We have got to take the neighborhood back! People used to be ashamed. Today a woman has eight children with eight different 'husbands' -- or 'men,' or whatever you call them now!

We have millionaire football players who cannot read. We have million-dollar basketball players who can't write two paragraphs. We, as black folks have to do a better job! Someone working at Wal-Mart with seven kids, you are hurting us. We have to start holding each other to a higher standard! We cannot blame the white people any longer!

When you put on a record and that record is yelling 'nigger' this and 'nigger' that and you've got your little six-year-old, seven-year-old sitting in the back seat of the car, those children hear that!" he said.

Predictably, he was widely criticized by several black newspaper columnists for ignoring white prejudice. Among them was Ta-Nehisi Coates of the New York Village Voice, who seems to be angry about just about everything. Anyone can surely sympathize. If my parents had saddled me with a name like "Ta-Nehisi," I'd be angry, too. But Bill Cosby wasn't talking about ignorant white people, or white prejudice, or global warming, or South American deforestation, or the loss of mountain gorilla habitats, or the dwindling supply of fossil fuels, or the possibility of a giant asteroid impacting earth; all problems worthy of consideration. He was talking specifically about black people and the undesirable effects upon them caused by defective parenting. As Malcolm X pointed out, black empowerment doesn't involve white people at all. While there are still a few die-hard white bigots who admittedly hate black people because of the color of their skin, by far the majority of the whites who detest black people do so for reasons that have nothing to do with color, race or heritage. Now "black" people can be identified not only by the color of their skin, but by the way they talk and how they wear their pants and what their names are on job applications and over the phone. They even sound different! It's worse now than when the Supreme Court declared "separate" as being "unequal" in 1954, over seven years before Mr. Obama was even born!

Now people who haven't ever seen them know they're "black!" Blind bigots can hate them, too! A recent study in Seattle and Boston found that Uber and Lyft drivers were more likely to cancel rides for people with "African American" sounding names. Is this discrimination? Sure! Whose fault is it? How did they get those strange names, anyway? Why?

Recently, Doctor Cosby has been vilified in the media by allegations of sexual misconduct. Even if true, the essential worth of his message has nothing whatever to do with the integrity of the person proclaiming it. As Winston Churchill observed, "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."

A large part of the problem is abysmal lack of black leadership. The NAACP has historically been at the forefront of civil rights legislation and social reform. Recently, however, it has become little more than a forum for racist rhetoric and a vehicle for enriching its executives at the expense of those who support it. These executives have become so antagonistic, corrupt and obnoxious that even the President running for reelection refuses to talk to them. And the people who support, agree with and follow them are headed back to the shackles and chains of slaver as surely as the sun rises!

The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. must be rolling in his grave!

The simple truth is that nobody in the United States has to be a slave. Here, at least, the streetwalker can go to the bus or railroad station and simply ride away. Unfortunately, Lola didn't know that, and, in addition, had nowhere to go. Any person in the United States can learn to read if he really wants to (Lola did), and then the public libraries are an unlimited source of education to those who choose to take advantage of it. Generations of African, Chinese, Vietnamese, Hispanic, Indian, Arab, European and other immigrants to this country have overcome the handicaps of prejudice and poverty and have become successful and independent by hard work and a determination to solve their own problems. Black people, in large measure, have not. They've been doing other things, such griping, demonstrating, marching, rioting, looting, shooting each other, and "being different." It's called "black pride."

Unfortunately, there are still people who are willing to allow others to determine their welfare, in direct contrast to the teachings of Malcolm X and Bill Cosby. There are plenty of slave dealers who are eager to accommodate them. These are rich, exploitive con artists who exchange a promise to tell the future or increase their sexual prowess or how to beat the slot machines in exchange for hard-earned cash from people who are already destitute. Millions of poor people are cheated of their vote by politicians who became wealthy by perpetuating the belief that "someone else" is responsible, and that current ills will all be resolved when "they" are made to pay. They talk of "reparation for slavery," as if American taxpayers, most of whose ancestors never owned a slave, somehow owed something to people whose only distinction is that they may possibly be descendants of slaves, or that all black people are descendants of slaves but not of slave owners, or that living people of any color are somehow responsible for the actions or conditions of others long dead...

... or that any amount of money could be sufficient reparation for the degradation of slavery!

The bottom line here is that black people in the United States have inseparably united their identity with slavery, and it is they who are suffering the consequences. Every single public commemoration of anything having to do with black people as a group ends up being a celebration of slavery! When my ancestors came to this country, slavery had been illegal for 25 years. Most black people in the United States probably owned more than my immigrant ancestors did back then, but my ancestors "made it," and the black people didn't. My German and French ancestors were just better at making do with what they had, regardless of the reason. Since then, the United States has seen an influx of Irish, Italian, German, Japanese, Cuban and Vietnamese and Arab immigrants. How, do you suppose, have they fared compared to native born black people? Why?

White people don't have to worry about solving the problems associated with slavery, regardless of how much we are blamed for it. We have already done what we can, and perhaps more than we, who had absolutely nothing to do with slavery, should have. The truth is, those problems will never be solved by white people, because they don't involve white people. They will never be solved at all as long as the black people who are their victims insist on identifying themselves with slavery. For these people there doesn't appear to be any hope at all! Belief in falsehood is a sin against the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, that will never be forgiven!

It doesn't make any difference whom or what one blames; The world is not what it should be, or what we think it is, the world is what it is, period, and what it is is what we all have to live with. The fact is, "Freedom Now" holds no promise for those who are so in love with slavery that they cannot even understand the concept of personal freedom. Too many black lives, unfortunately, do not matter! Their parents work hard to make sure that they are worth more dead than they could ever hope to be alive! They are like the debtor in the story who was willing to tolerate an evil and repressive situation as long as he considered it to his advantage. His torture, like that of people today who choose to be slaves rather than free people, lasted forever.

Lola knew that. Sustained by personal honor, quiet dignity and a sense of duty and responsibility to those around her, she worked hard, and taught herself essential skills, including speaking and reading English. Without complaint, she made the best of the terrible situation which she was forced to endure. She made do with what little she had, and became a true hero, a shining inspiration for disadvantaged people everywhere, what Alex Tizon called "a hallowed figure in my extended family."

There is a word for the condition in which people turn control over what they will learn, or accomplish, or earn, or receive, or become, to an ethnic majority, to the government, to political demagogues, or to anyone or anything else.

It's called slavery!

John Lindorfer

PS: Recently Secretary of the Treasury Jack Lew announced that the US twenty dollar bill would be redesigned and reissued with a picture of a the first woman, and the first black person, Araminta Ross, aka Harriet Tubman, replacing that of Andrew Jackson. Jackson, like every other person portrayed on US paper currency, has a historical connection to the institution of US banking and currency. In his case, dismantling the United States Bank, thus portraying himself as the defender of the common person against wealthy bankers. Guess with what institution Harriet Tubman is associated. Hint: It has nothing to do with banking or currency!

Yeah!

Unlike the Emancipation Proclamation, which legally freed only slaves who had already escaped their masters in the Confederacy, the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, also promulgated by white people, has made slavery illegal in the United States since it was ratified on December 6, 1865. Mississippi was the last state to ratify the Amendment on March 21, 1995, but by then it was already the Law of the Land for over 129 years.

Mississippians haven't always liked the idea. Some believe that slaves should have been educated to achieve freedom. They claim that ex-slaves were thrown into the general population willy-nilly, a traumatic experience from which many of their descendants don't seem to be able to recover. Some of them prefer the security of being ignorant slaves, and some believe we should all go back and do it over again, the right way this time. Although I personally am passionately opposed to slavery in any form, I recognize the right of others to be guided by lights other than mine. The sad fact is that true freedom includes the ability voluntarily to relinquish it and become a slave. To assist those believers in the exercise of their freedom, here (not necessarily in any order) are my suggestions about how to do that.

Of course, if you don't want to be a slave, don't do any of these things!

Think like a slave.

The most important part of being a slave is learning to think like one. Never try to do something for yourself. Always give up. Always assume that whatever you do, it won't make any difference because you're just a slave and you'll never be able to accomplish anything. Make excuses for your behavior. Keep reminding people that your ancestors "wuz slaves!" (Make sure you emphasize the last word.)

Suffer.

An essential element of slavery is suffering. You can't really participate in slavery unless it gives you "the miseries." If you don't have enough miseries already, you can always create some more. Shoot each other over some minor provocation. Kill each other's children. Get thrown in jail for beating up your wife or kid, so they can suffer, too! Paint a racial epithet on your own church and then burn it down. Make a big public spectacle of your grief when your kid gets shot resisting arrest. Turn your neighborhood into a fire-ravaged ghetto. "Burn, baby, burn!"

Find a master.

Because slavery is illegal, it's hard to find someone willing to run the risk of actually owning slaves. They can't buy them, because the bills of sale are no good, and could be evidence against them in a federal trial. Nevertheless, there are slave masters out there. They are called "pimps," or "dealers," or sometimes "loan sharks." Find one and do what it takes to sell yourself to him (or her). Just don't leave a paper trail.

Blame somebody.

An important element of slavery is that the master determines the destiny of the slave. Blaming somebody else for your own worthlessness is a good way to establish yourself in this relationship. It also resolves any guilt you might accidentally otherwise feel for allowing yourself to become a miserable failure. It can also be used as a means of deflecting blame others may tend to place on you for not taking responsibility for your own actions. This works best if the person you blame actually did something positive for you, such as a parent, teacher or political leader. Then you can show that, to the extent that they tried to make your life matter to society, they failed as badly as you did.

Let a thing control you.

If you can't find a person to be your master, maybe you can find an inanimate object or a substance. You might try alcohol or legal drugs or even illegal drugs. Slavery is so much more satisfying if you can eliminate the possibility that your master might do something good for you.

Be poor.

One of the best ways to be a slave in a capitalist economy is to be poor. Poverty takes away your ability to get what you want by paying for it. Poverty makes it easy to suffer, too! If you happen to get some money, immediately spend it for things that do you no good at all: tattoos, gold teeth, ostentatious jewelry, artificial hair, fake fingernails, fast-depreciating cars. Becoming a slave to illegal drugs is a good way to suck up any wealth you might accidentally receive so you can suffer, be a slave to a thing and poor. It's kind of a win/win/win situation.

Be ignorant.

This is a good way to think like a slave and be a slave to poverty. Don't go to school. If somebody makes you go, don't study. Skip class. Sleep. Screw with the teacher. Break the school rules. Get expelled. Public education in the US makes it hard to be completely ignorant, but you can do it if you work at it. Currently, the federal government will help you become a slave by enrolling in a school you can't possibly afford or graduate from by taking out a student loan. Then you can be poor as a slave to debt for the rest of your life trying to pay it back. They'll even take part of your Social Security if you still owe when you're old. Then you can suffer, blame somebody, and be poor as well as ignorant basically forever! Getting yourself expelled early has the added advantage that you can blame it on racism or on your ancestors (or both), and it makes it that much harder to get an education if you decide later that you want one.

Become a criminal.

Although slavery is illegal, involuntary servitude in jail is not, and it's almost as good. Commit stupid crimes, like stealing things that can be easily traced, or threatening to do something illegal before witnesses and then doing it, or messing with the cops. Beat up little old ladies in walkers. Carry a gun and use it at every opportunity. Show it off a lot. (Even a fake gun can get you arrested, or worse!) If you kill or otherwise victimize somebody, take a picture and send it to somebody. Post it on YouTube. Run around in public half naked. Remove your car tag, break your lights and driver side window so the cops will notice you. Never carry any identification! Always carry illegal drugs on your person and a big bag of weed in plain sight in your car. Steal some prescription pills, take them out of their containers and wad them up in plastic wrap. Play your stereo really loud to attract the cops' attention. If you can't think of anything to get them to stop you, watch "Cops" on TV. Those guys always get caught! (Learning to talk like a crook helps the police to recognize you. See below.) If you can manage to get arrested often enough, it will help you think like a slave, suffer, keep you poor, and ruin whatever chance you might otherwise have had to better yourself. Of course, it might make it harder to get illegal drugs, but you've got to order your priorities if you want to succeed in reaching your goals.

Be a coward.

Courage, honor, compassion and integrity are all virtues that help people who are slaves to masters, situations or things become free. If you are already free and want to be a slave, these are virtues you simply cannot afford. Being a coward helps to get rid of them, think like a slave, and become a criminal, all at the same time! If you have a complaint against somebody, ambush him! Call for help and then shoot the responder! Murder a baby or old person! Stab a pregnant mother in the belly! Get together with some friends and beat up an old, crippled or mentally challenged person. Make him drink toilet water and claim to love people who look like you! You are almost certain to get found out, caught, and sent to jail, with all its shackles and chains!

Find a mentor.

As with any other goal in life, becoming a slave is easier if you have a mentor. Find some ignorant, sociopathic, drug-addicted, diseased, racist, habitual criminal and learn to act like him. You can find these people in jail, which is another reason to become a criminal and spend time there.

Join a support group.

See if you can find other people who are working hard at becoming slaves, and hang around with them. Do what they do. They might put in touch with drug dealers or pimps or loan sharks who can help you achieve your goals. They can also help you resist temptation if you happen to get the urge to get a job or go to school.

Resist integration.

If you really want to become a slave, you can't afford to allow free people to think that you're as good as they are. Whatever whitey does, don't do that. Use idiosyncratic gestures, inflection and pronunciation. Show off your butt crack. Be as offensive as you can. (If you're really offensive, you might be breaking a law that you don't even know about, and this is one of the best ways to get reported to the police.) White people call themselves things that mean something nice, and give their kids names of some famous hero. Don't do that! Call yourself by insulting names, like "dog poop" and "pee puddle" and "haffa dollah." Name your kids obviously "black" names like "Nomatter" and "Demonica" that mean something offensive or absolutely nothing and may be hard or impossible for educated people to spell! Find where free people hang out, and then go there and do things to make yourself obnoxious and annoy them.

Torpedo your opportunities.

If you accidentally find something you like doing that people will pay you for, like playing football or baseball, try to limit your opportunities. Break the rules. Cheat. Annoy the other players and coaches. Sit down during the National Anthem. Take drugs and then lie about it. Make obscene gestures to the cameras, especially on national television. Work harder at getting arrested. Buy overpriced things and destroy them. Beat up your spouse. (Better yet, kill him or her. Murder gets you talked about on CNN. You might even get an award-winning TV mini-series made about you!)

Discourage respect.

Thinking like a slave, finding a master, being a poor, ignorant criminal can all be ways to lose any pride or self respect you might otherwise acquire, and helps other people to disrespect you as well. Try to look strange, spaced out or goofy. Dress like a hobo or a circus clown. Act like a wild animal. Practice racist mannerisms and speech. This can assist you in your efforts to find a mentor, join a support group, resist integration and torpedo your opportunities. Besides, if you manage to become really obnoxious, you can always claim, "He (or she) disrespected me!" which is almost as good an excuse as "My ancestors wuz slaves!"

Fail to communicate.

One way keep from becoming educated is to discourage communication. Free speech tends to make one free, and you can't have free speech if you can't speak. Learn to use words and grammatical constructions that only other slaves can understand. Instead of letting people know what you're saying, keep asking them, "you know what I'm sayin'?" Ignore them if they don't say yes. Slur your words. Reduce your vocabulary as much as possible. "Fuck'," can be used instead of many verbs, "ho" and "muthuhfucker" can substitute for most nouns, and "muthuhfuckin'" can be used for a variety of adjectives and adverbs. This makes it easy to achieve your slave status without others even being able to see what you look like! An additional advantage is that talking this way discourages integration and respect, and torpedos your opportunities for advancement. It also helps you think like a slave.

Practice "zero tolerance."

Freedom and slavery cannot coexist. Freedom requires tolerance, so you can defeat the Bill of Rights by refusing to tolerate them. Do you disagree with someone else? Demonstrate! Get some famous celebrity to represent you, especially if he's a slave himself. Try to get anyone who disagrees with you humiliated and fired. Force him to recant, again and again. Make him apologize and kiss your ass. If someone disagrees with you, call him a racist! Deface his car! Burn down his home! Make fun of the military and discourage anyone from joining. After all, they're trying to keep you free. Try to give aid and comfort to the enemy. If you go to church, for God's sake, don't pray! Use the church as a forum for hatred and bigotry and revenge. Make fun of anyone who does not believe and act as you do. Tell everyone he's an "oreo." Beat him up. If you let other people practice their freedom to be something other than an ignorant, obnoxious SOB, they might start expecting you to do that, too, and you surely don't want that!

Demonstrate instead of voting.

Registering to vote and actually doing that gives you power, and you don't want that if you're going to be a successful slave. No matter what the government is doing, it's possible to find something objectionable about it. Demonstrating is a good way to get your point across, reinforce your relationships with your support group, and annoy people who just might otherwise be on your side. The Ku Klux Klan and American Nazi Party have been doing it for generations. Try to be like them. Besides, irritating real voters by demonstrating often influences them to vote the other way, which has the double advantage of perpetuating whatever you're demonstrating against (thus providing an opportunity for future demonstrations) and making them look like racists.

Vote irresponsibly.

If you do vote for somebody, for God's sake don't consider qualification for office! Make your choice based on religion, or color, or gender, or family name or how much money he has or something equally irrelevant. The essence of being a good politician is to make people vote for what the politicians want, just like a slave owner. They promise change, but each "change" has involved a surrender of essential freedoms in favor of government control (as well as higher taxes). Their President just signed a law that lets government decide how citizens' health care will managed. Being ignorant is a good way to make it impossible to recognize when you're being played for a sucker, so if somebody promises that "the government" will do something for you, instead of letting you do it, be sure to vote for him (or her).

Be satisfied with the minimum.

Try to find ways to reduce your goals to fit your opportunities. Live in a housing project, preferably one that's been completely gutted by your fellow slaves or a natural disaster or, hopefully, both. Learn to get by on welfare. Demonstrate to make minimum wage more than whatever you earn. Ruin your health by being grossly obese or by smoking or using drugs. If you have to work, find a minimum wage job, then get fired so you can collect minimum unemployment insurance. If you can dance, do break dancing, not ballet. If you play a musical instrument, do rap or join a hip-hop combo, not a symphony orchestra.

Ignore the prophets.

Every so often, you will hear somebody claim that you don't have to be a slave, that what happened in the nineteenth century doesn't have anything to do with today. They point out that you can become great even if you start from humble beginnings, such as Jesus of Nazareth, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Barack Obama. Don't listen to these people! They're out to make you take responsibility for yourself, and responsibility is a luxury a slave simply can't afford!

Have faith.

You have an absolute right to believe whatever you please, whatever the facts are. If you manage to convince yourself that all the reasons you are poor, powerless, disadvantaged, depressed and despised are because of vast oppressive conspiracies or people or things over which you have no control, you will not only never rise out of slavery, you won't be able to! How could anyone be more of a slave than that?

But if, despite all your best efforts and those of your parents, you happen to rise (or be pulled) out of slavery and become successful, wealthy and powerful, never ever, ever do anything worthwhile to end slavery for your suffering brothers and sisters. After all, why should you interfere in their pursuit of happiness?

Good luck!

John Lindorfer