Whether we should champion democratic ideas continues to be subject to debate. Many conservatives are deeply skeptical saying, Islamic and Arabic countries aren’t quite ready for freedom.
However, late former President Ronald Regan wrote, ‘Democracy already flourishes in countries with very different cultures and historical experiences. It would be cultural condescension, or worse, to say that any people prefer dictatorship to democracy. We must be staunch in our convictions that freedom is not the sole prerogative of the lucky few, but the inalienable and universal right of all human beings.”
But Abraham Lincoln warned a century prior, “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we lose our freedoms, it will be because we have destroyed ourselves from within.”
There was this flash across the TV screen with the words, “if re-elected, Trump teases he will pardon the January 6th protestors.”
Marjorie Green Taylor, a racist GOP spokesperson and stanch Trump supporter announced that civil war will be necessary.
OMG, I thought. This is exactly what global scholar, Mahmoud El-Kati just talked about on Friday’s Conversations with Al McFarlane Healing Circle, co-hosted by Dr. Bravada Garrett-Akinsanya, founder and CEO of the African American Child Wellness Institute (AACWI).
“We are the most vulnerable and most targeted population in the world,” Professor El-Kati said. “Our enemy and the enemy of the human fabric is not the modern invention of the myth of race, but is the doctrine of white supremacy created from the rise of capitalism and the Transatlantic slave trade. This false construct contends people are separate and distinct, bringing about the mindset and practices of bigotry, bias, and prejudice. The world sees us through the lens of this doctrine of white supremacy, an assumed power that has raised hell for 400 years throughout the modern world.”
El-Kati said there’re not too many places in the world where there is not a manifestation of this doctrine and system.
“We are a people, a culture, and a product of a unique history which makes us different,” he said. “No ‘Negro’ came out of Africa. Humankind’s identity is defined by geography, language, and customs, not by the way we look. Everyone in this country is adversely affected by this white supremacy doctrine. It is the greatest affliction in America. It is anti-human to believe and say that white folks are the only full-fledged humans. We are a human family which comes in varieties with unique gifts.”
El-Kati describes America as a key country and African Descendants of Slavery (ADOS) as key people. He said we know more about the U.S. than the average white person. “We have to continue to study and articulate that knowledge of who we are as survivors in a historically unique and now more critical time in our country’s current state-of-affairs. The future of this world depends on everyone and that depends upon the extent and the means in which we liberate ourselves from the vocabulary that can no longer bear the weight of reality which the world has produced. We are a loving and forgiving people who grew up in the bosom of slavery,” El-Kati said.
Clinical psychologist Dr. Akinsana said, “There is a wellspring of deep feelings caused by this week’s gun murders of two young men. Our children and community residents are frightened and traumatized. No one should be at risk and live in fear.”
“We were already holding our anger,” she said. “For many, it hasn’t dissipated. We’ve held it since the Derek Chauvin trial and conviction. Now, there is the additional trial of the other three officers involved in the execution of George Floyd. There was the Kim Potter trial and the murder of Dante Wright right in the middle of the Derek Chauvin trial. We’ve never had a chance to rest. Our sufferings are fresh and continuous. It feels like the community is more like a pressure cooker just waiting to blow. We can’t begin to heal if we’re traumatized over and over. Systemic change will not occur until we start getting in people’s faces. But when we act, we need to be able to support ourselves being safe in our own communities. Leaders must demand calm and order in ways that stop the pain and keep it from rising again. We have to start caring and taking responsibility for each other.”
A member of United Community Mediation Team (UCMT), Al Flowers Sr. described the dilemma. “When they talked about ‘dismantling the police,’ we recognized there would be chaos. We need police protection. But we also knew we didn’t have a plan and obviously some officers had not changed their opinions of people of color. Then we had a 15-year-year Black male murdered and two others shot in front of their school. Imagine the fear and the trauma of the students who either heard the gunshots or witnessed the tragedy. The next morning, the police killed another Black male while executing a no-knock property warrant. They entered the downtown apartment with a pass key, kicking the couch where Amir Locke, 22, curled under a blanket, was in deep sleep. He had a legally permitted hand gun which officers saw as Lock stirred from sleep. An officer shot him three times, killing him,” Flowers said. “Locke wasn’t a suspect. His name wasn’t on the search warrant. Still he was killed within 9 seconds after the cops’ initiated entry.”
Recommended Reading: Dr. Ashley Montagu, ‘Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race’, published in 1942.
Smithsonian Institute series on the Smithsonian Channel: ‘One Thousand Years of Slavery Behind Closed Doors’ announced by Lonnie G. Bunche, the 14th Secretary, first educator, historian, and African American to lead the organization.
