Which do you prefer Generational Change or Feel-Good Change?

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There is an article titled “Everyday words and phrases that have racist connotations” written by Scottie Andrew and Harmeet Kaur, CNN with a contribution from CNN's Anna Bahney. It begins with “Master bedrooms" in our homes. "Blacklists" and "whitelists" in computing. The idiom "sold down the river" in our everyday speech. Many are so entrenched that Americans don't think twice about using them. But some of these terms are directly rooted in the nation's history with chattel slavery. Others now evoke racist notions about Black people. "Words like 'slave' and' master' are so folded into our vocabulary and almost unconsciously speak to the history of racial slavery and racism in the US," says Elizabeth Pryor, an associate professor of history at Smith College. But America's reckoning with systemic racism is now forcing a more critical look at the language we use. And while the offensive nature of many of these words and phrases has long been documented, some institutions are only now beginning to drop them from the lexicon. Pryor suggests people think about the context certain words can carry and how using them could alienate others.”

This, ladies and gentlemen, is why I am screaming from the rooftops for black folks not to waste the capital that the sacrifice of Colin Kaepernick has made and the televised murder of George Floyd has provided for us on these low hanging fruits. There are so many other things that is more intrinsic and deserve our attention more than this. The first I believe and as I previously stated we need a constitutional amendment to erase every mention of the word slavery or any reference to the word from the constitution. There are “11 clauses in the Constitution that deal with or have policy implications for slavery, 10 protect slave property and the powers of masters. Only one, the international slave-trade clause, points to a possible future power by which, after 20 years, slavery might be curtailed—and it didn’t work out that way at all.” As long as anyone can point to the very document that our laws are built upon and honestly use the verbiage of that document to project how “the founding fathers” felt it was okay then we will forever have a society that clearly does not see “all men created equal”.

Step two is to change the very existence of our “American History Books” as distributed all over the United States and into every school, public and private, in the nation. Image being a white child and see people who look like you having played major roles in the construction of this nation, image the pride you must feel, now image the black child not seeing people who look like you having any part in the construction of a nation except for that very large section on slavery where , for the first time, you do find someone who looks like you. Now you may be able to get a glimpse into how it may feel to hear people telling you to go back to where you came from or how this nation belongs to them and only them because they built it. This new construction should be equally the contributions all made in the forming of this nation to include all races and sexes not just those who the former publishers only wished to promote. Now we visit a classroom where this book is viewed by all races of children and they learn together what those who looked like all of them contributed and the pride, from all the kids, glows like a beacon in the night.

These are just two of the major fruits that needs to be removed from that tree because truth be told, we have seen this movie before. Each time, in our history, we have been presented with an opportunity to make great change but instead was pointed in the direction of those low hanging fruits and since they were so shiny and bright, we got blinded and lost that momentum. Let's not make this mistake again, because unless you are truly unaware, the biggest issue for Black America has nothing to do with whether you call a bedroom master or not, it is simply the demand to be treated with the same respect that our white counterparts are and if we continue to focus on those low hanging fruits and allow this capital to be spent, our kids and grand kids will still have to fight for equality and against oppression but I guess they will at least be calling a master bedroom a primary bedroom.