The first kidnapped people held as slaves arrived in North America in 1619. Slavery remained legal until 1865.

That’s two hundred forty-six years. We Americans gained our independence from England in 1776, which was two hundred forty-four years ago.

 

Black people were slaves longer than America has existed.

 

During the time black people were held in chains, working for no wage at all, there were many American, that’s white people, families who created wealth for their descendants. Some of those families can trace the wealth they hold today back to the times their ancestors used slaves to gain their riches.

During that 246 years, black people, who were not considered citizens, were not allowed to create great works of arts,  or write epic volumes of literature, they were not allowed works of art, could not invent world changing machines, did not have the ways and means to discover new medicines, and they certainly did not have a voice in their government, as to how they should be treated. They were not allowed to do any of these things. And if they had, their kidnappers would have taken the credit for any and all of it.

 

A vast, terrible, and unfillable void exists in their history, where there is only misery, depravation, and suffering without end.

 

In 1865, slavery was outlawed after a lot of rich white people talked many more poor whites to wage war to keep slaves. Some slave owners were given compensation for losing their property. Slaves were given nothing. Worse, it had been illegal to educate slaves, so any employment they might possibly get, would not pay much more than being a slave.  Even worse, there was a system called “Peonage” where black people in general, and black men in particular, could be arrested for any imagined offense, and made to work for free for anyone who the sheriff allowed. This went on until the second world war, and ended, more or less, about 1940.

 

Along with Jim Crow laws, lynching, and a host of other laws enacted by white led governments, black people spent 75 years not only with nearly no representation in their government, but they also had little or no means to gain enough wealth to leave to their children, who would grow up with the deck stacked against them, and have little to leave to their own children.

 

After World War II, there was still very little access to education, legally enforced segregation, and still nearly no black people as lawmakers, judges, business owners, college students, teachers, and certainly none who had any chance to leave very much at all to the next generation.

 

During the sixties, the Federal government began loaning money to white people so they could buy houses, and these loans were insured, so if the white person who took out the loan fell upon hard times, at worst, they would receive some sort of equity for their investments. This same program did not ensure the loans of black people. This meant if they missed one payment on their home, they would lose everything they had paid into that house.

 

Meanwhile, the number of people, and in this case, people means white people, going to college was rising. White families, who had homes that raised their ability to obtain credit, could afford to send their children to schools, and this increased their ability to make money, which was handed down to the next generation.

 

At no point, from the time the first black person was dragged off a ship and began a lifetime of forced labor, were black people given the same opportunities as white people. At no time were black people free to make their own destinies without interference from the laws white people created to keep black people from being truly free.

 

This has led to black people living in poverty at rates far exceeding those that white people have seen. This has led to rampant drug use among the poor communities, alcoholism, single parent homes, and an incredible about of mental stress suffered by an entire race of people whose only sin was being born black.

 

When Richard Nixon was president, he engineered the “War on Drugs” and the sole purpose of that legislation was to punish black people for being black. This began a system of mass incarceration of black men, which is still an epidemic today. White people who commit the same crimes as black people are jailed at a rate of about ten percent as those black people suffer.

 

Today, a white person posted on Facebook his long and incredibly ignorant opinion on why black communities are poorer, why black students score lower on tests, why so many black people are in jail, and why it seems like black people simply do not live as well as white people do.

What I have written, what you have read, are the facts. This is all readily available for anyone who wants to do the research.

 

If you want to know why black people are not as successful as white people, generally speaking, you have only to go into your bathroom and look in the mirror. Even if you’ve never done one thing in your whole life to hurt anyone, you’ve still supported and lived within a system with mechanisms in place whose sole purpose is to keep black people from owning homes, from living in certain areas, from becoming educated, and to make sure if there is half a chance, to put them in prison.

 

That is the entire problem in America today. If you want to know why all of this is happening, now you do know.

 

Take Care,

Mike