Rants Log-in | Search Rants | Account Info

BROKEN LINK / BROKEN LOCK

The United States of America is just completing a journey that began at the moment President Abraham Lincoln—saddened and frustrated by the gore and futility of the conflict that threatened to snap the young nation in twain--decided to take the radical step of severing the first of the many links to the chain that bound the forced immigrants from the African continent. That historic act led us to this moment, when a major lock has been disabled—a lock that has barred that people’s progeny from full participation in American society.

Of course, their was a life of hell for this wronged people before and after President Lincoln’s bold initiative. It began in the year 1619, when the very first of these stolen immigrants set foot upon territory in the North American continent that was to become the United States. That landing set the tone for the future perception and treatment of people of African heritage.

The Reconstruction period, after Lincoln’s assassination, which allowed for the first, brief, African American public officials, soon descended into a chaos that Lincoln’s successor Andrew Johnson could or would no longer handle. His withdrawal of federal troops from the South set the stage for a period of pernicious racism that rivaled—and in some ways exceeded—that of slavery. Not only did Black public officials become a thing of the past, but the former slaves were relegated to a part of American life so remote that it has taken to this very day to effect a credible emergence. The marginalization to society’s extremes, the brutality, the lynchings and the craven governmental complicity in the treatment of African Americans--in the South and throughout the United States--is legion, and toxic to the American psyche.

Nevertheless, the ugliness of that memory is no excuse for excluding it from the annals of our minds. It must be remembered--precisely because of its ugliness—along with the good memories. It must be remembered in order that its current remnants may continue to be eliminated. It is only the ugliness and unpleasantness of history that are hedges against the possibilities of its repetition. After all the horrors of the Holocaust, the Jewish people say, “Never Again!”—and to stress that dictum of intolerance against intolerance, with the Holocaust Museum and in other ways, they have permanently put under the noses of the world the very ugliness and horror of the Nazi experience.

The sin of slavery and racism do not belong only to the United States. Only a small per cent of the humanity ripped from Africa via the Atlantic Ocean remained on the North American continent. The rest were distributred throughout the Caribbean and Latin America.. Thus, the United States, which has led the world in so much good, can be a beacon to the planet with the message that we—who are among the worst of those world powers that practiced slavery and the perfidy of racial diminution—today emits the message that that past is past.

There comes a moment when time overtakes us before we are aware of it. This is such a moment. Let us all rejoice in the many links that have been shattered in that chain, and—despite that ultimate lock that has just been broken—let us continue to sever the remaining links of that abominable chain—that infernal chain--which once seemed to be without end.