Now that the election is over ....

In an earlier post, I talked at length about the origins and now dominance of what I call the new majority in the United States. As a member of this group, I am, of course, ecstatic. Yet, I have many concerns.

As I watched the numbers increase during the last two decades, I also began to notice that rather than a bridge being constructed between the brown and black communities, we began to chip away at each other. Rather than recognizing our commonalities (one of my favorite words), it seemed that many of the members of both communities began to exhibit what is called the "crabs in the bucket" mentality. This mentality alludes to a bunch of crabs in a bucket, all attempting to climb to the top of the bucket and freedom, pulling each other down, somehow thinking "if I can't get it [freedom], neither can you. This saddened me tremendously. The black and brown communities share the same issues and problems: crime, drugs, teenage pregnancy, poverty, high drop-out rate and many more. Rather than recognizing our strength collectively, we began to denigrate and chip away at each other, each afraid the other would attain something the other lacked.

With the election of 2012, these two communities, along with the LBGT community, are now the new majority. I'll say that again, they are the new majority. This word brings with it power, both political and economic power. Now what are we going to do with it? We now have the power to exact not revenge, but fruit, fruit of the centuries of labor and enrichment of this country exacted from our ancestors. If, and this is a big IF, we work together collectively, we can move mountains. We can continue to elect politicians who will enact legislation that benefits the majority, not the minority. We can boycott businesses who treat our members unfairly. We can join and support each other in our respective battles. We can educate our young people both about the past battles and the battles to come. We must pass the baton on to these younger people so that they can do the same to their children. We can do a lot, collectively.

Be neither naive nor misled. The former majority is not going away quietly. Already, they are conferring behind closed doors in their country clubs and executive dining rooms. They are angry about the election loss. Their ethnocentrism and arrogance will not let them rest nor be satisfied with the wealth they've obtained through the abuse/misuse of the former minority. They will attempt to categorize the new majority as people with their hands held out for "goodies" or "handouts." They will attempt to create problems within the new majority. They will even find a few members of each respective group in the majority to join their team, promising them a share of their wealth and power. These "tokens" will attempt to convince members of their own group to join them.

Now is the time to continue the momentum. Don't stop with the presidential election. Vote in the off-year elections. We cannot afford to stand still nor to go backward.

Blessings,

Tee

Reaping What Was Sown

I read a blog post earlier today that inspired me to finally write something about the recent re-election of Barack Obama.

The post has, in my view, a general theme of the United States reaping what it has sown. It got me thinking of what I now called the New Majority. Rather than the oxymoronical term minority/majority, the demographics of the majority in the U.S. has changed. The majority is no longer white.

The name of one of my other blogs is America's Birth Defect - Racism. Oddly to some, the name came some Condolezza Rice said in an interview. Racism founded this country, made this country rich and for the most part did it with the free labor of slaves, indigenous peoples and poor whites. The white and wealthy elite have reaped the benefits of this stolen labor for centuries. Indeed, the major reason for the break from England that resulted in the Revolutionary War and the subsequent birth of the new nation was England's burgeoning abolitionist movement. Slavery was profitable and necessary for the new country. The Founding Fathers (most of them slaveholders) were willing to fight rather than give up the free labor necessary to build their new country.

African slaves and their descendants did not take the envisioned eternal stripping of their freedom lying down. From the onset, resistance, uprisings and other challenges were constant. Blood was shed, lives were lost, but the resistance continued. Freedom, and the longing for it, is something innate in a man, regardless his color.

As the centuries passed and the country grew, others of color joined the slaves and indigenous peoples in the building of the country. In later years, immigrants both legal and illegal, came to the U.S. in hopes of a better life for themselves and their families. Most were treated as second-class citizens, but still they came and their numbers grew. Initially, many if not most of these immigrants were so happy to be in the country they psychically shrugged off their second-class status and treatment. But, these people watched, learned and waited - patiently - as did the descendants of the formerly enslaved.


Meanwhile, the majority was busy reaping the earnings of the system they had created. Perhaps the thought, the wish, was that the second-class citizens though finally deemed 100% man rather than three-fifths were too ignorant to watch and learn. Please let me digress here by discussing, briefly, what came to be known as the Three Fifths Compromise.


As the new country grew and developed structures for the distribution of taxes and the apportionment of members of the new House of Representatives, the slave population also grew, especially in the south. This meant the slave population in a state determined not only the wealth of the state, but also its tax obligations. The northern states objected to this because it would mean the southern states were wealthier, while the southern states, of course, objected because of the larger tax burden to be placed on them. Thus, began what was actually a series of compromises, one in 1783 and another in 1787 that determined that slaves were only three-fifths of a white man.


And the disenfranchised, second-class citizens continued to labor, watch and most importantly, learn. Added to this rapidly growing group was the LBGT community, also a rapidly growing and politically significant part of the population. Yet, despite its wealth, education and other legacies, the majority group didn't pay attention, occasionally throwing tidbits of political crumbs at the minority group. Busily counting and continuing to amass their wealth, they failed to notice the growing size of the disenfranchised group and probably didn't even consider that the latter group might be also learning.


However, the minority group never stopped watching and learning, until 2008, when the black face of an African-American man named Barack Obama emerged as a serious threat to their complacency. By then, it was too late, and we all know the result. By 2012, the minority, disenfranchised group was no longer the minority. They asserted their political and re-elected Barack Obama. In their egocentric, arrogant complacency, the former majority group was so confident that their candidate would win they were celebrating before the final returns were counted. In fact, their candidate, Mitt Romney, wrote only an acceptance speech. (A fact that to this day truly stuns me!)


I have no sympathy for the former majority group. They are reaping EXACTLY what they sowed.


Blessings,


Tee