I may-not be the most “interesting” man in the world, but I do have a vast-array of fascinations; I’m monitoring the search for both the “Yeti” and the Loch Ness Monster, I’d like to find an aviation company willing to recreate a Boeing 314-A (the iconic Flyinging Boats.) I love to travel - use my passport as often as I can afford it. I’m eye-balling the shaky hot pie-crust ground at Yosemite and co-writing a daddy/daughter book about mermaids with my little girl. . . my everyday man thoughts span the  gamut . .  yet I feel obligated to address the flammable issues of racism and classism in America . . . because the entrenched WASP establishment, i.e., the powers-that-be refuse to do so, and this is the country I leave to my children, and their children’s children.

That’s why I write.

And that’s why I can’t ignore nor slight the unending uncivil civil race-war which still rages and manifest itself via the police brutality, economic betrayal, educational sabotage, medical abandonment. . .  and the strategic, deliberate and tactical attack on Black America’s most holy institution, the Black church all across the Land-Of-Cotton . . . Nor can I dismiss the fact this leisure activity is as “All-American,”  as traditional as mom’s apple pie, and yet the powers-that-be (White America) are telling you n’ me the real culprit is . . . Mother Nature.

Ain’t that a mother for you.

If White churches were burning . . .

Hear me now, had a “bad” Black man “executed”  9 “good” blond haired n’ blue eyed folks - one a state senator, during their prayer meeting in a White church . . . not one, not a one Black person in these so-called United States of America could walk the streets and feel safe. History bears-out and high-lights how Black folks have traditionally been the targets of angry White vigilante-minded “real” Americans.

This is nothing new.

Now had that Black man documented his hatred on his social media sites, posted dozens of photos of himself draped in the Black Liberation Flag, the red, black n’ green  . . . do you think that flag could fly over a dog-house or outhouse . . . let-alone a state house without millions of White folks going insane?

And we know White America has proven they can “act-a-fool.”

Here lies the Problem; this country’s population isn’t permitted to have a deep discussion examining the barbaric tale of this empire - it makes White folks “uncomfortable” and they fear a telling-of the facts will cause a Black . . . and brown “backlash.”

Last week reading the LA Times I ran-across a story by John Glionna, in-which he highlighted the efforts of Harvard educated lawyer Byron Stevenson to sway Southern mayors and city council members to shine a light on the history of the barbarity Blacks endured over roughly the last 100 years, in locations where Black men, women and children were murdered at the hands of angry White people . . . just like the ones you now today live next door to . . . “His plan is to place memorial markers at lynching sites where black men, women and children were strung from trees and hanged from telephone poles, sometimes at the rate of one per week, for "offenses" that could be as trivial as playing music too loudly or failing to tip a hat to a white man — or for nothing at all. Stevenson's nonprofit Equal Justice Initiative earlier this year released its own accounting of America's lynching era, documenting 3,959 such incidents of "systematic domestic terrorism" between the end of Reconstruction in 1877 and 1950 — at least 700 more than had been previously reported.”

I wasn’t amazed by the number of incidents per se.  . . but for me it was disturbing to hear the twisted rhyme, reason, rational and excuses employed to kill Black people.

The LA times article says: “Blacks were lynched for knocking on a white woman's door, refusing to remove an Army uniform after World War II and bumping into a white girl while running for a train. Often, Stevenson said, the hangings became public carnivals designed to instill fear."

The spectacles were as vicious as any modern Islamic State video. The report describes one lynching in Dyersburg, Tenn., in which a 24-year-old farmworker accused of raping a white woman had his eyes gouged out and a hot iron poker shoved down his throat before he was castrated and burned alive over a slow fire.

The only thought I have, which I can’t get out of my mind is . .  when was this disgust, anger and hatred removed from White folk’s hearts n’ minds?

"There's still this presumption of guilt assigned to African Americans from people inherently worried about the dangerousness and criminality of black men," Stevenson said. "It's a burden. The police have menaced, threatened and followed us all our lives."

When did America’s WASP culture change, grow and evolve? When did the White man decide all humankind is his kinfolk? When did they come to the realization Blacks were 100% human? When did they discover I too loved my wife, kids, parents?  When did they really accept it was OK to drink behind me at a water-fountain? Sleep in a hotel bed after I’d occupied it?

When did this virtually monolithic racist mindset change? 1969? 1990? Perhaps in 2011?

It sure seems like they don’t want to live next-door to me, nor do they want our kids to go to school together. - so if they still harbor such qualms about “integration” .  . . I ask again - when did they, when did White folks “overcome” their blind-hatred of Blacks .  .?

Wait. . . honestly I’d have to ask, considering the landscape - did they ever really change?

Is the change we see across this land since the 1970’s been “real, deep, profound and widespread,” or has it merely been symbolic window-dressing?

According to multiple polls . . . Donald Trump’s correct about his racist mindset representing a “Silent Majority;” roughly 75% of White Americans do not see the Confederate flag as a reflection of embedded racism, but rather a icon of grits, gravy n’ fried chicken.

Really?

Millions of Black Americans see the Confederate Stars n’ bars as proudly presiding-over the race-based mayhem we’re not allowed to discuss because White America can’t handle the truth!

If Blacks focused on the horrific experiences at the hands of Whites, as Mr. Stevens is attempting to do, in the same spirit as Jewish Americans - who rightfully refuse to let anyone forget what they’ve endured at the hands of angry White folks - that telling of the truth would set both Blacks and White free from our collective ignorance, but that enlightenment just won’t be permitted. White America’s “white-washing their history with big white lies. Their refusal to discuss the facts and details of American Apartheid almost ensures the repeat of those atrocities.

Free your mind and your ass is sure to follow!

I wish Mr. Stevenson all the luck and good-will one can, may the Gods help you on your quest to enlighten many people who’d rather we all remain in the dark as to what happened, apparently on damn-near a daily basis for decades all across the Land Of Dixie.