I Give Up on Advocating Pragmatic Solutions. It’s Time to Split the U.S. Apart It may be time to abandon the experiment
This story by Peter Shanosky was posted on Medium.com on June 27, 2022.
Obviously this headline caught my attention, and not because I am an advocate to “split the US apart. But the reasoning for Peter to suggest that America be split apart is consistent with my position that American Africans must exodus America.
A few weeks ago, I threw out the idea of separating the United States into separate countries. It was part of a series of pieces where I semi-seriously suggested some rather extreme solutions to our equally extreme problems.
Of them all, it was the most positively received judging by the notes I received, and the comments that were left. Some even left comments on my other articles saying “this idea isn’t that good, let’s go back to your suggestion to split apart instead.”
In light of recent events, I’d like to double down on this suggestion. There is nothing to indicate that we are getting any closer to something called “unity” and everything indicates irreconcilable differences. If our competing political factions were in a relationship, it’d be unanimously declared toxic. Any therapist worth their salt would recommend parting ways.
The only items we can agree on as a nation are as follows:
- Faith in government is at dangerously low levels
- We disagree vehemently with each other on both day-to-day issues and big-picture items
- Our system [Capitalism and Democracy] is not working for the majority of the country
Every other issue is too divided and done so in too passionate a manner for actual pragmatic solutions to be reached. Given this is the case, a peaceful dissolution and separation could be the best resolution for all involved.
We’re increasingly living in different realities anyway. The information we receive is, depending on the situation, completely separate from our other citizens depending on the media we subscribe to, which in turn is determined by our political views. Our rights vary from state to state, as do our taxes, criminal laws, and other items.
…There’s a level of maturity involved in tacitly and calmly admitting that a once-great relationship has just drifted too far apart and suffered too much damage to continue. Maybe it’s time we muster the last of our maturity and do the same.
I am in complete agreement. Africans of the Diaspora will never find freedom, justice, and equality of opportunity in the Americas. We need a separate territory (Land) of our own in order to Do For Self.
Why do members of our tribe insist on begging Caucasians for reparations, or anything else to sustain our life? The Honorable Elijah Muhammad asked his believers a question. “Why do we love the Devil?” His answer. “Because he gives us nothing.”
Caucasians, please don’t be offended by the truth. The appellation “Devil” is from the French word “d’evil” which means “of evil.” You can’t deny the corrupt, immoral, unrighteous, unjust, and unfair behavior your culture has exhibited for the last 600 years? [Please read the Papal Bulls, which started at the end of the 11th Century.] And please note that the Chinese people were calling Europeans the d’evil 100 years before the Honorable Elijah Muhammad adopted the term.
We certainly don’t love Caucasians because they have shared their stolen wealth with Africans, the very people they stole from.
We certainly don’t love Caucasians for our Holocaust experience aboard slave ships during the 200 year era called the ‘Middle Passage’, when over 10 million Africans died.
We certainly don’t love Caucasians because of the Holocaust of 400 years of Chattel slavery in the Western Hemisphere when we were beaten, tortured, and murdered (over 10 million Africans perished); while our men helplessly watched their wives and daughters being raped by drunken devils.
We certainly don’t love Caucasians because of the pain and misery Africans endured with the exploitation of our natural resources on the Continent of Africa: a continuous process of over 600 years that remains in place today, as I write.
The solution to our problem is extremely simple because the formula for wealth building is simple.
Land + Labor = Wealth
That’s why we are still slaves in America today. We don’t have land. [The Europeans had free land and free labor to build their wealth.]
As Billie Holiday sang,
“Mother may have, and father may have, but god bless the child that has its own.”
We need our own land, not to own, but to use. Please consider this perspective of an astute indigenous ‘Native American’ who the Caucasian called the ‘red’ man. In 1854 Chief Seattle wrote to Franklin Pierce, the President of the United States, in response to the United States request to buy his tribal territory.
“The President in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. But how can you buy or sell the sky? The land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you sell them? Every part of this earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every humming insect. All are holy in the memory and experience of my people.
We know the sap which courses through the trees as we know the blood that courses through our veins. We are part of the earth, and it is a part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters. The bear, the deer, the eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the juices in the meadow, the body heat of the pony, and man, all belong to the same family.
The shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water, but the blood of our ancestors. If we sell you our land, you must remember that it is sacred. Each ghostly reflection in the clear waters of the lakes tells events and memories in the life of my people. The waters murmur in the voice of my father’s father. The rivers are our brothers. They quench our thirst. They carry our canoes and feed our children. So you must give to the river the kindness you would give to another brother.
If we sell our land, remember that the air is precious to us, that the air shares its spirits with all the life it supports. The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also receives his last sigh. The wind also gives our children the spirit of life. So if we sell you our land, you must keep it apart and separate, as a place where man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow Flowers.
Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the earth is our Mother? What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the earth.
This we know: the earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites all of us. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand of it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.
One thing we know: Our God is your God. The earth is precious to him and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its Creator. Your destiny is a mystery to us. What will happen when the buffaloes are all slaughtered? The wild horses tamed? What will happen when the secret corners of the forest are heavy with the scent of many men, and the view of the ripe hills is blotted by talking wires? Where will the thicket be? Gone! Where will the eagle be? Gone! And what is it to say goodbye to the swift pony and the hunt? The end of living and the beginning of survival.
When the last red man has vanished with his wilderness and his memory is only the shadow of a cloud moving across the prairie, will these shores and forests still be here? Will there be any of the spirit of my people left?
We love the earth as a newborn loves his mother’s heartbeat. So if we sell you our land, love it as we have loved it. Care for it as we have cared for it. Hold in your mind the memory of the land as it is when you receive it. Preserve the land for all children and love it, as God loves us all.
As we are a part of the land, you too are part of the land. This earth is precious life to us. It is also precious to you. One thing we know: there is only one God. No man, be the Red Man or White man, can be apart. We are all brothers.
The stark cultural differences are clear. The irony is that Chief Seattle’s concern for the behavior of the Caucasian, “…Your destiny is a mystery to us.” is still the crux of the problem that is the existential threat that people of color face today. Both the virulent, and now violent racism; and the toxic poisoning of our mutual ‘realm of mortal existence’, the planet Earth, continues unabated.
“What will happen when the buffaloes are all slaughtered? The wild horses tamed? What will happen when the secret corners of the forest are heavy with the scent of many men, and the view of the ripe hills is blotted by talking wires? Where will the thicket be? Gone! Where will the eagle be? Gone! And what is it to say goodbye to the swift pony and the hunt? The end of living and the beginning of survival.”
Chief Seattle, 1854
Equism, an African-centered perspective, is the appropriate response.
Please see my book, Capitalism Birthed Racism, When Racism Will End, And What Will Replace Capitalism: Equism is the Harbinger, c. 2022, for further detail. A copy is available on request.
