The Lies of Heritage
This is quite a story…and it cuts to the truth in two ways:
- Politicians will stoop to any lows to try to win an election…Enough said.
2. The history of “all of us” has slavery intermixed with racism. Every single one of us.
The Americas, not just the thirteen colonies, was ridden with slavery and its consequences. From Argentina to Canada, slavery drove economies and society.
The stories are eerily the same. The lack of basic humanitarianism is striking.
Men could have their way with slave women always…And mulattos were turned out like in an assembly line.
More than one American President had children with slaves and covered it up…Jefferson is only one example.
The brutality of slavery knows no bounds.
And Kamala Harris stands there, her background varied to say the least.
And the worst part is racist politicians use this “rich and varied” genetic background against her. Her opponents have always done this, because to a racist, a “mixed race” person is horrible.
Most of us are from mixed cultures..in fact almost all Americans have rich and varied cultural pasts.
It is the same thing that was used for centuries, demand eugenically to have “pure blood”…to be Aryan, to be well, “superior”.
Meanwhile the “superior race” killed 55 million people in WWII, destroyed Europe, Japan and China. Hitler demanded Aryan backgrounds for Nazi elites (mostly faked), another consistency of fascism..lying about made up family trees,
As if it makes any difference!
And the “superior race” proved once and for all that biology is a lousy method for judging people, especially when genetics were a virgin science until the invention of super computers, that could finally map the human genome…
Eugenics was a real wrong turn, anecdotal analysis of a person’s background based on “race” is the most inaccurate predictor of a person’s success known.
In WWI, I.Q. Tests were invented, that were so culturally biased, the questions today ring hollow with lies.
The SAT test screened out deserving and great potential students for years from prestigious universities. The President probably hired someone to take his SAT for him to gain access to a prestigious college.
My freshmen year at Stanford, the most common “ice breaker” was, “Hello, my name is …., I went to ….Prep School….and what was your SAT score.
Mine was about 1300…and I was called a retard because of my low score?! That is privilege gone horribly wrong.
Football players famously have surrogates go to classes for them…famously USC was punished by the NCAA for setting up a system of Community Colleges to make up credits during the summer; problem was a “student’s” class schedule called for one make up class at Ventura Community College and the next on the next hour at Pasadena College! Many miles transported at light speed, between colleges was seen as doable to get the student athlete eligible…In short USC cheated..and they got caught, having to vacate at least one national championship.
The privileged elite cheats.
As a Stanford grad I took great satisfaction in USC being punished for cheating to win football games, a few of which I played in; then Stanford was caught admitting undergrads who did not qualify but because of white privilege, were allowed admission with made up transcripts and well, cheating…and some of the coaches were in on it!
Everybody cheats…everybody has dark stories in their genealogy…everyone.
And in a world of racism and prejudice, these stores are consistent.
My great great grandfather was executed. He was a Cherokee, who had walked as a young child from Georgia to Oklahoma. He was a rare exception to the death of thousands that characterized the Trail of Tears.
This all happened because American Presidents held to the evil goal of “extermination through elimination. The answer to “savages” was to move them away from the white people. It was copied by Adolph Eichmann in the “transport” of Jews out of Germany to extermination camps..Hitler copied the “Trail of Tears”.
Right now, the state of Oklahoma is reeling from a court decision that says most of the state has to be given back to the five civilized tribes because their land, that the had to survive a forced march. in trade for Georgia, was illegally taken to make up the state of Oklahoma.
The irony of all time was that in the late 1800s, oil was discovered on the Cherokees enforced “trade” for the richest soil on earth in Georgia.
Oil companies paid hired toughs to scare Cherokees off their forcibly adopted land and in some cases killed people to get their adopted oil.
It was so bad that a federal agency was developed to deal with the criminality; the FBI!
Never mind that Cherokee and other tribes in what is now mostly the state of Georgia, had been quickly assimilation into the Western Culture, up to and including owning slaves themselves in a plantation culture in the south.
My great great grandfather was hanged for being a horse thief..most states and territories had laws that called for death if an “Indian” was caught with a shod horse (one with horseshoes).
Michael Pittman was his name…a “Christian name” a Western name. And he was brutally lynched. My family has at least one hanging in its genealogy.
Now by the standards of modern politicians that “criminal” in my background should keep me from winning a political race?
He had the horse legally; he was the village blacksmith.
That is my story.
That is how my “family tree” is effected by racism and prejudice.
And I took my own SATs and I earned my way in college; playing football at a high level that beat my body into pain that I endure every day.
We all have “colorful” pasts, most deeply effected by slavery and hate and prejudice.
That is the human condition.
The problem is rather than learn from our legacies, we hide them behind the fictions and lies of racism.
Kamala Harris has a rich and varied past…and her family past has nothing to do with her character.
The President hired his own SAT surrogate; he did that.
Kamala had nothing to do with her great great grandfather’s rapes.
THERE IS A DIFFERENCE..It is called INTEGRITY!
A person needs to be judged by his or her’s behavior, not their great gread grandfather’s.
There it is again, the lies of a society so imbued with racism that it defies description…And the big lie was that white people were human beings and people of color were not!