All of the Western nations have been caught in a lie,

the lie of pretended humanism;

this means that their history has no moral justification,

and that the West has no moral authority.

James Baldwin, “To Be Baptized,” No Name in the Street

It’s embedded in this Western wealth-centric culture. The whole idea behind competition is to teach the young to want what’s the best. By hook or crook, huh? By whatever means necessary. Even by sanctioning the oppression of other human beings.

Children aren’t encouraged to pursue the interests they love. Instead, children economically disadvantaged and now apparently even children from affluent, very affluent families, are directed to look toward careers in engineering or law or medicine, as if the world could afford to lose the artistic or creative-minded children drawn toward poetry or literature. Humanity, this narrative of wealth seems to suggests, doesn’t need another Jane Goodall or Toni Morrison.

Let’s think on money or not at all. And some wonder why the Opioid addiction ever took hold in America. Why the despair and depression?

How many times has a news anchor or late-night talk show host report on a news item about the “rich and famous” only to quip in the next breath how he or she should be so lucky—that is, to be as wealthy—and own an estate, or a massive yacht or any apparel designed by Yves Saint Laurent or Karl Lagerfield. Owning a private jet like the world’s wealthiest man, Jeff Bezos, would be arriving at the proverbial gates of heaven: you have been granted entrance, you lucky one!

That must be nice!

How then is it possible to empathize with those without homes, or access to transportation, or a decent pair or shoes or dress?

Politicians announce their agenda, “I’m a candidate for the middle class,” and waste their time not with the homeless or the poor working class. It’s out in the open. Right there. Audible as well as visible. I’m for the middle class.

In the meantime, the homeless and poor working class waits, as these classes of people have waited and waited and waited for generations. Waiting for the trickle down. For the return of a great America.

So absurd, if not heartless: to want to continue sustaining the existence of a systemically destructive economic apparatus! To say that the lives of our children, or future generations matter, but institute, with due diligence, a hierarchical structuring of society that eliminates from the start the majority of humanity is to continue a vile and shameful practice that is anything but moral, let alone humane.

Privilege the class best situated to run the best race to the top and the hell with everyone else! That’s capitalism for you! And there nothing humane about promoting an agenda that sustains a privileged few.

This, as Toni Morrison’s Sethe would say, is nothing to pass on! Certainly, nothing for any of us to engage in.

And yet, here we are today in 2019 where we have been since before the colonies became a nation. The white supremacist eye the demographics just as their ancestors did when the Indigenous became too numerous and troublesome to the colonists and when blacks began to talk about freedom. Equality. America is changing. It’s never been the change the wealthy ownership class and white supremacists ever wanted to experience in their America.

Most Americans today would argue that the legacy of a developing wealthy class of owners and white supremacists is NOT their heritage. Most Americans today shy away from organized hate groups. The KKK or the Proud Boys are groups for the “extremists.” Americans on the fringes of society. The wealthy are the few, the top one percent. This top one percent is moving on and up, climbing up ever higher on the proverbial ladder of success. American success!

And these few are not alone: Most Americans, even if at the very bottom of the rung, look up, and dream of one the one day in which, sitting to the left and right of Gates, and even Bezos, they shout down—I’ve made it!

If there’s one thing the US college bribery scandal has taught us, it’s that everyone is climbing, everyone is climbing that ladder to success—by hook or crook—and in America, over the majority of Americans who’s ancestors built this nation. Whether or not individual Americans profess an oath to uphold the principles of the KKK or any other organized white supremacist group, the laws and policies benefit the wealthy ownership class and white Americans.

So “great” America returns again: the 50 Americans charged in the college bribery scandal, ultra rich, the best of the best, parents, academics, and coaches, will be punished for wanting more. But when the cable news cameras turn their attention, say, back to the Mueller investigation, about a select few of the ultra wealthy in the US and Russia wanting more and more and more, all Americans should examine how all-too familiar this story of the wealthy and white, ultra rich, demands fundamental change in the way Americans think about what it means to be an American.

Is being and American all about the amassing of money in order to sit atop the ladder, “excelling” through oppression and annihilation and disregarding the rights of all of humanity to pursue a life not determined by the monetary worth of an individual or population? Is being American about running a race to the top, and nothing else matters?

Perhaps.

We’ve been living a scandal when it comes to access to education any American about America’s true history of one scandal after another. The super-wealthy pledge funds for black, brown, and Indigenous children, too. It’s just that those funds are used to build walls, prison walls, to house this population of children generally for non-violent crimes. How many Americans assume this contribution of the wealthy and white to be American?

In the early 1970s, as a first-in-family to attend college, whites classmates assumed it was “affirmative action” darkening the halls of academia and the dorm rooms. We were “invaders” occupying spaces that would have been for the rightful American. We blacks and people of color were acquiring monetary “entitlements” not meant for the great Americans!

Even today, at age 65, I still encounter Americans who believe I, and many other people of color from the working class in my generation, was handed a “free ride.” From college to the doctorate. Just like Jared Kushner, huh?

But then how do you have a rational conversation with a white American for whom acquiring the “facts,” that is, the historical facts, gets in the way of being an American and climbing the ladder to success?

How ironic, then, this so-call college bribery scandal. White Americans, super-wealthy Americans, with faith in the American Dream, by hook and crook, managing to send their children to the best of colleges—the Ivy League universities…

The opening paragraph of an article in the Guardian in March, 2004, recalls a plaque on the campus of Brown University. It reads: “Erected in 1822 by Nicholas Brown.” As the author of the article states, not surprisingly, there is no mention of Brown’s family’s money acquired from the slave trade.

Brown University isn’t alone. There’s Yale, Harvard, Princeton, William and Mary, Rutgers, Darthmouth, and Columbia. And the generations of white children who pass through these slave-funded halls of academia—do we know if they were grateful to those Americans that made their “success” possible?

Everyone wants a piece of the American pie. Everyone in America. Most in lands afar. Even if poor or poor working class. Even if there’s knowledge that the system is rigged. Even if there’s evidence of any way of being an American. Being human.

Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery,

and the Troubled History of America's Universities

Craig Steven Wilder