THOUGHTS ABOUT BEING AMERICAN

THOUGHTS ABOUT BEING AMERICAN – mythology is becoming reality At least once or twice a week I sit with a group of retired men at a mall coffee shop. It’s a mixed racial group; like other informal groups this one opens conversation to issues in the news, local and national. Quite naturally the so called Browning-of-America and the growing white resistance to it enters the conversation frequently. I make no pretense of speaking for the group or any member; I have shared my view on the subject with the group and now share it with you. The invitation by founders of a budding America inviting the oppressed to see America as a land of opportunity and freedom and to make it their home was specifically an invitation to white Europeans and not people of color. The public face of that invitation made it seem the invitation was to any and every one. Since the European elite had already relegated blacks to a subhuman level and only fit for servitude, it never entered their minds that black people would ever see the invitation to freedom and opportunity as including them. What started as a mythology for white people began to take on a reality of color – white elites and some members of the working class have joined hands to stop and reverse the Browning (blackening)-of America. There’s a bit of irony here in that white Europeans brought blacks here to help build the land of freedom and opportunity yet continue to deny them their share of ownership – white elites added color to a white dream and now want to wake up to a white reality. I conclude that blacks have and continue to contribute to the development of this America and rightly claim an uncontestable ownership. www.adolphusward.net