Generations don’t just come and go, they exist...
They occupy spaces, they traverse landscapes. For those who occupy spaces, traverse landscapes, and exist within the confines of a racist society, that coming and going is a pill that is extremely hard to swallow.
For the generations that have come and gone, the swallowing of that pill has led to a diminished quality of life that affects the collective society. The less we focus on the the conditions of the socio-economonically disadvantaged, the easier it becomes to disregard the accomplishments of those who come from those communities, which is why it is extremely important to re-examine the words of thinkers who traversed those landscapes and occupied those spaces.
It would be nice if Native Black Americans had a country they could escape to that was just as fruitful and prosperous as America. Since that isn’t the case, there is a need to explicate the circumstances of their condition in the country they were brought to by way of American chattel slavery centuries ago. The generations of Native Black Americans that have come and gone still need to examine the words of Black thinkers to understand why they are still a socio-economically disadvantaged class of people.
This does not diminish the lives of those who migrate to America, those who come to land of the free and the home of the brave to be freer and braver than they were able to be in the country they migrated from. Martin Luther King Jr would not have preached hate to those who migrated to America, nor would James Baldwin right think pieces on denying rights to those who came here to attain them.
The Native Black American is not at the bottom of the hegemonic order because they belong there. Their history, American history has placed them there for its own insidious reasons. This is an empirically supported account of the generations of Native Black Americans who began as American chattel slaves. I think that it is extremely important for those who migrate to America to understand that there is a history that they are completely removed from and this history may not be important to them, but it is the reason why Native Black Americans still have to fight for rights that others freely enjoy.
Again, this does not diminish the lives of those who migrate to America. It is just the unvarnished truth of the generations that have come and gone, the generations who have existed, occupied spaces, and traversed the landscape of a racist society. It is a pill that may be extremely hard to swallow, but it will go down easier with love and appreciation for the history we don’t fully understand, appreciate, and love.
-Yogabrofessor
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