Children of a new plantation
It’s an interesting year as the war against reason rages forward, more fierce than the child of Katrina and the Japan Tsunami.Yet again we watch the paternal and maternal Supremes argue left to right about us as if we are not in the room.They assail each other about our needs.The father says we need to hire new help. The current servants are lazy, inefficient, and incapable. It’s a condition that more rules and gold stars and increased allowance will cure.The mother says we need to cure poverty before expecting heathens to learn in the same way that non-heathens learn. It isn’t the fault of the servants that God made some children so deficient. What we need to do is treat the servants better. They are the noble class martyred daily by their devotion to careers based in the failure of deficient children.So, what do we say as the smarmy marchers line up to trade clichés on our behalf? Where do we stand in the self-serving dance of the ill moral postures?Do we believe in worker’s rights and collective bargaining and unionism?Do we believe in the “freedom” of markets and sanctity of capital and the religiosity of all things corporate?No.We believe we are not third party to debates about us. We believe the perception of our deficiency is the sneeze of a long standing cold America has medicated but not cured. This allergy to our efficacy must end or subservience will never cease.As human beings with elastic brains and the certifiably vast potential God imparted on all His descendants we believe that human rights are our rights.Neither the patron fathers nor mothers own our destiny or our salvation. Until our primacy is recognized in discussions about us there is only staging, pomp, and histrionics.March good people. March to the capital with signs and slogans. Go viral. Attack the empire and those that pay you as you demand more. Be self-righteous, indignant, and supercilious in your recriminations.Do it all without us. We are not moved. We are few among you.You are about you and we are about we. The two rarely cross paths. Not even the molasses dipped worldview training has solved the impasse. Willful ignorance and defiance of justice runs quick through the veins of supposed allies as it always has – still.Our true mothers and fathers fought for nothing more than self-determination. It was the critical jewel lost in every war against us. Modern humanity hinges on the right to choose, freely, our institutions, methods, processes, and politics, as if we are free.If not now, when?So, even as you teach social studies during the day and stand illiberally against the modern equivalent of emancipation by night, realize we are not in solidarity with your opaque self-preservation campaign.We are the children of a new plantation. We want new schools, new books, and new opportunities to determine for ourselves what is best for us.Finally, we want allies that fight for our right to be fully human, fully capable, and fully sovereign.