The Real America: A Black Perspective

Hotep (An Ancient Afrikan Word for Peace)!

Take notes!

“And when I speak, I don't speak as a Democrat. Or a Republican. Nor an American. I speak as a victim of America's so-called democracy. You and I have never seen democracy - all we've seen is hypocrisy. When we open our eyes today and look around America, we see America, not through the eyes of someone who has enjoyed the fruits of Americanism. We see America through the eyes of someone who has been the victim of Americanism. We don't see any American dream. We've experienced only the American nightmare.”

-Malcolm X (Omowale El Hajj El Malik El Shabazz)

The January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol by President Donald Trump supporters to stop democracy in the US is a needed teachable moment. Every four years, after the national US Presidential elections are over in November, the US government passes the electoral votes through the Senate in Congress to make the winning presidential candidate the official American President. This is America’s democratic process for the executive branch of the US government. The Trump supporters' failed American coup left many people angry. And should be. Yes, many people in America are outraged by Trump’s antics; but there is a deeper lesson to the events on January 6, 2020. Unfortunately, some people are trying to revise the history and contradictions of America under a safe rug. However, to many Afrikan people, American democracy has been nothing more than disguised hypocrisy. Racism has been at the core of impeding true democracy in America for centuries. As educators, we must teach the unaltered facts of US History to help America liberate itself from the love affair with racism and anti-democracy.

The United States was built upon White supremacy. Race analysts Danyelle Solomon, Connor Maxwell, and Abril Castro published a breakdown of America’s problematic relationship with racism. They wrote an article published on August 7, 2019 in the Center for American progress titled, ‘Systematic Inequality and American Democracy.‘ Solomon, Maxwell, and Castro said, "the United States is a contradiction. Its founding principles embrace the ideals of freedom and equality, but it is a nation built on the systematic exclusion and suppression of communities of color. From the start, so many of the country’s laws and public policies, which should serve as the scaffolding that guides progress, were instead designed explicitly to prevent people of color from fully participating. Moreover, these legal constructs are not some relic of antebellum or Jim Crow past but rather remain part of the fabric of American policymaking. Over the centuries, even as the nation struggled to prohibit the most repugnant forms of exclusion and suppression, it neglected to uproot entrenched structural racism. The inevitable result is an American democracy that is distorted in ways that concentrate power and influence” (https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/reports/2019/08/07/473003/systematic-inequality-american-democracy/?fbclid=IwAR3pCoUARUSZB-typxW9WFebvrwLxWD2kUQx9w_LxpLVfYXag_1HPr0ilKw).

The ideology of white supremacy gave birth to systematic racism. White supremacy forces many people in America to pander to systematic racism. White supremacy justifies fascism. White supremacy has given many White people in America a false identity of superiority. But the fictitious belief in White supremacy by many White people has led to preventing Black people from enjoying American democracy.

For centuries, systematic racism denied democracy to the Afrikan American community, to women, to Indigenous people, and Latinos. America has a long history of hatred and violence, especially towards Black people and people of color!!!!!!!

Throughout US history, systematic racism violently and legally protected whiteness in America.

White supremacy destroys entire Black towns, discredits Afrikan history, consistently denies reparations to Afrikan Americans, kills many Black freedom fighters, justifies police violence in the Black community, neutralizes Black self determination, and annihilates Black liberation organizations.

White supremacy has made Afrikan people hate everything Black, but love everything White.

White supremacy justified the enslavement of Black people in America for 250 years. White supremacy justified making our own continental Afrikan mother tongue illegal in America. White supremacy justified making Afrikan culture subhuman. White supremacy justified the rape of Black women during American slavery and segregation. White supremacy justified the emasculation of Blackmen. White supremacy justified the destruction of the Black family in America. White supremacy justified nearly 100 years of US racial segregation. White supremacy justified biological and chemical warfare towards the Black community in America. White supremacy justified the lynchings of thousands of innocent Black lives. White supremacy justifies the mass incarceration of Black people in America. White supremacy justifies giving White people a false sense of superiority. White supremacy worked to disenfranchise the Black vote in America. White supremacy justifies Black oppression.

Unfortunately, white supremacy is on remote control. White supremacy will produce more Trumps until white supremacy is destroyed in America. But let’s be clear, white supremacy existed before Donald Trump. White supremacy has produced a very long list of racist US Presidents. White superiority has been here since 1607 (the first English colony settled in Jamestown, Virginia), 1620 (English Pilgrims settle Plymouth colony in Massachusetts), 1619 (Black people arrived in chains from Afrika by way of the Dutch in Jamestown, Virginia), July 4, 1776, the birthdate of the United States of America), and 1787 (the founding of the US Constitution) that legalized protecting the American enslavement of Afrikan Americans).

As Afrikan people, many of us understand that American democracy has been nothing but disguised hypocrisy. America has a long history of racism, hatred, violence, and anti-democracy. US democracy has decimated the Afrikan American community.

This is the real America.

But if America truly wants to be the shining example of democracy in the world, she must give up her love affair with white supremacy and systematic racism. Racial politics are crippling America’s march towards real democracy.

Hotep!

-Bashir Muhammad Akinyele is a History and Afrikana Studies teacher at Weequahic High School in Newark, NJ. He is also the co-coordinator for ASCAC's (the Association for Study of Classical African Civilizations) Study Group Chapter in Newark, NJ. (https://ascac.org/)

Note: Spelling Afrika with a k is not a typo. Using the k in Afrika is the Kiswahili way of writing Africa. Kiswahili is a Pan -Afrikan language. It is spoken in many countries in Africa. Kiswahili is the language used in Kwanzaa. The holiday of Kwanzaa is celebrated from December 26 to January 1.