Questions

The United States today is facing the worst economic humanitarian crisis since the Great Depression. The crisis in Europe has fueled not only the rising anxiety in America with the inflationary trends but has put the world that much closer to that midnight hour. The plight of millions remains ever increasing. In major cities all across America whole neighborhoods have been decimated by the level of poverty that has persisted for decades. The pictures of so many urban cities are almost duplicates of the war-torn cities of Ukraine,

Questions nobody is asking especially our elected officials in response to what is a monumental plague and travesty of acute poverty that millions of Americans are faced with today have yet to be addressed. We have to ask ourselves how did the US degenerate as a society to where so much inequality, degradation and despair continues to seep into every facet of American life? Why has there been an ongoing rise of extreme racial prejudice that has further divided the nation?

These two very important questions can be answered using history as the source. But unfortunately, the teaching of history has almost never evoked a true rational explanation to what is facing the current crisis in the United States and the world. Today we find ourselves immersed in a spiral of mitigating catastrophes one right after the other. The level of corruption that has been allowed to exasperate those who try to rise above the ineffectiveness of Congress thru the years only continues.

When we take a real close look back in our history, we will find that from the very onset of colonial times gave rise to the prejudices that have been festering our nation ever since. Even back in antiquity slavery was a means to an end. We should remember the time of Moses were Joshua stated, “God made men, men made slaves” In the United States around 1619 when a privateer captured 20 enslaved Africans from a Portuguese slave ship and brought them to Jamestown, Virginia was the beginning of the American slave trade.

Ever since the southern American economy thrived using African slaves. When a society is engaged in slave labor the social implications between whites and Africans only exasperated the realities of social acceptance and cohabitation. And in effect thru the years whites continued to exploit their slave labor force. The prejudices, the bigotry and a general thinking that Africans were inferior to whites prevailed.  But it took President Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation to finally eliminate slavery in America. This proclamation didn’t eliminate the long-standing prejudice and bigotry toward now African Americans.

Since the end of the Civil War what should have occurred to stem the tide of prejudice, and bigotry didn’t happen. One can point out that if President Lincoln lived thru his second term the reconstruction of the South would have proceeded to stem the tide of the rising extremism in racial tensions that prevailed. That phrase “forty acres and a mule” would have made a difference if it was actually caried out. Instead, President Johnson who had ties to Southern landowners only encouraged the prejudice and bigotry toward the newly freed slaves. His actions curtailed the economic and social evolution of African Americans into the dominate white society. White southerners just wouldn’t accept that African American former slaves being on equal footing as white Americans.

Through the years this resentment toward African Americans has been filled with bloody violent atrocities executed by predominantly white Americans. The generational bigotry still is infecting American society. Had Reconstruction been allowed to proceed without the stigma associated with pre–Civil War southern society attitudes much of today’s racial tensions and divides would have already been erased. The economic and financial policy failures by government over the past 150 years has only deepened the racial wounds of our nation. 

Today in every major city and town all across the country the squalor that millions of African Americans, White Americans and other ethnic races face reflects the unbalance of our society and contributes to all the racial tensions we still are facing. There is a way to heal the wounds of our nation and the world, but it takes education and a willingness of millions to participate to make it happen.