This common-sense perspective seems like an extremely difficult concept for Trump’s America to grasp, as if it’s prehistoric chinese science equations. Just say Columbus wasn’t a hero in mixed company, (where white folks are present) and you’ll get that dumb-founded reindeer in the headlights gaze when we “Americans of color,” inform these “real” Americans that just because they idolize pirates like Columbus or Indian Killers like General Custer, or they hold the 4th of July in holy patriotic esteem . . . doesn't mean I have to also.

I’ve read enough to know Black soldiers who risk their lives for white folk’s freedom and security . . . nonetheless came “home” from WW I & II , Korea, Vietnam, thr Gulf and Iraq to racism and blatant discrimination. . . ain’t that a bitch?! Only in America.

As an Afro-American man I don’t get red, white n’ blue goose-bumps when I see the stars n’ bars of “ol glory,” no, instead the US flag prompts me to think of the inhuman indignities and slights which were leveled upon my people with this flag flying high and presiding over the indiscretions. From Indian reservations and cotton plantations to Japanese American Internment camps. I think of that flag turning it’s back on Black GI Janes and Joes, the Tuskegee experiments, the abandonment of a chocolate city like New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina and now the turning of a cold shoulder to the Hurricane victims in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.

Different times and places, same racist tendencies and practices..

I deem Frederick Douglass, Che Guevara, Malcolm X, Patrice Lumumba,  Harriet Tubman and Nelson Mandela as heroes, just as I regard Black Panthers Huey P Newton, Bobby Seale and Soledad sister Angela Davis as true, legit, all-American heroes. Individuals who are merely guilty of “fighting the power.”

So we rolled n’ strolled through all that to say . . . my micro-family is about to embark on a spring break road trip, we’re going to South Dakota to see the gigantic Crazy Horse monument . . . and, also Mount Rushmore. Time and price won’t let me go somewhere, anywhere in the Caribbean, so it’s this or the Grand Canyon . . .

That’s how I’ll package and present this to the kids, not that we’re going to see Mount Rushmore, which of course glorifies and immortalizes four Presidents which are considered the cornerstones of this colorblind utopia - the so-called, once-alleged to be “United” States of America. Why you ask do I not highlight and emphasize the European-American colonist, but rather embrace and hold in high esteem the great Sioux War Chief Crazy Horse?

Well. because the Red man got screwed and to his credit he didn’t go down without a fight, you gotta respect that. While still now, in the 21st century, as a black man in a White man’s country, I, everyday ponder “how does my country feel about me . . . and how do I feel about my country?” Because virtually everyday you can feel, see, hear or taste the contempt, the animosity, and the indifference engrained in the hearts, minds and souls of White folks. They just don’t like us, you’d think we enslaved them.

Because everyday I can’t dismiss the obvious historical context in-which I dwell; this land first belonged-to the American Natives, and via an act of continuous, deliberate and strategic genocide being waged, the land and its enormous resources was stolen, “strong-armed” by European invaders. In what other context can any one look at the nightmarish fairytale that is America and not conclude this empire was built with the blood, sweat, tears and land of others? Then, adding insult to injury, it was designed and constructed only and solely for White men . . . and their barefoot n’ pregnant women.

For me to hold the four White men atop Rushmore as heroes would be for me to suspend all reality and ignore, if not deny the obvious history of this blood-soaked empire. Washington and Jefferson, and their lack-of humanity which allowed them to minimize and marginalize slavery, they both could have stood against it in the founding of this empire, but they chose not to. They’re consequences and repercussions for one’s actions and inactions - there’s is this, us - America 2018, standing on the verge of another civil war.

Need I remind you Teddy Roosevelt tried to steal the well-earned recognition, honor and acclaim due Black Buffalo Soldiers who saved Teddy and his allegedly “Rough Riders” asses at San Juan Hill in the midst of the Spanish-American War. And it’s common knowledge that good ol’ Abe Lincoln could, at the end of the day give-a-damn about Black slaves receiving freedom, liberty and justice, no instead he considered them/us inferior, if not quasi-human, so-much-so he advocated sending us back-to-Africa if not to Central America . . . for he harbored no delusional high-minded expectations of us all living here in peace and harmony - he knew white folks weren't willing, wanting nor capable of color-blind brother and sisterhood. Black folks had just got pimped, exploited and payed . . . now we could move along, get out while the gettin’ was good.

Perhaps we’d all be better off had we heeded Lincoln’s words.

I well understand all men and women are “collections of contradictions” - we do good, we do bad, at the end of the day, and one’s life, one has to hope the good far outweighs the bad. Perhaps for these “founding fathers” and their peers of the era will have done so much good that the slavery, genocide, raping, pillaging and overt subjugation of women will pale in comparison to the technology and accumulated financial wealth white men accumulated while excluding and oppressing everyone else.

Might I be so “uppity” as to suggest the polarized racial climate of America isn’t simply the harsh reality white men weld audacious global influence, clout, control . . . alas power - it’s the fact that their power was amassed, and maintained via barbaric and cutthroat methods. Guided by some Tony “scarface” Montana version of Global “Manifest Destiny, ” a theory rooted-in white arrogance and notions of supremacy. Yes, the imperialistic end, the creation of an “white’s only” Utopian country - justifies the neanderthalic means employed to construct it.

Just win baby win.

So I’ll be explaining to my little minds how the “noble” red man was just defending his homeland from men pretending to be explorers when they were really Invaders, colonist . . . maybe even savages who didn’t respect humanity. I’ll explain “one man’s hero . . . is another man’s terrorist.”

It just depends on where you sit, and if you have any morals, values or standards.