We MUST Do Better

Charleston, South Carolina, deep in the heart of the South, with a history of some of America's first settlers, slavery, Civil War, and civil rights. The city just received a report from their own Equity, Inclusion, and Racial Conciliation Commission, established in June, 2020.

As described by Maurice Johnson, Chairman of the Charleston County Republican Party in his article in the Charleston Mercury website here: https://www.charlestonmercury.com/single-post/we-can-do-better , the Commission left the opportunity to put the significant accomplishments of black Americans in Charleston and surrounding region into their report. Rather, their focus was to insist on implicating previous decades of white dominance and oppression, which they then leverage for justification to rename parks, statues, streets, and buildings; and removal and recontextualization of public art spaces. All of this based on historical grievances that while true in regards to slavery, do not include the successes and triumphs of the very slaves themselves.

Witness William 'April' Ellison, who learned the craft of cotton gin repair as an apprentice, and who went on to buy land, and who went on to become the largest owner of slaves in South Carolina at one point in Sumter County. The success of many blacks in farming led to other blacks owning land and owning slaves as well. The Commission could have sought out these examples of success and agency accomplished by blacks, which would demonstrate the difficult but eventual triumph of both blacks and whites against slavery and racial injustice.

We must raise our successful black citizens in our memories of history, as this will help to decrease the dominant animosity that still persists against whites, as evidenced by this Commission report. For example, the '1619 Project' is put recommended to City leaders as changes to curriculum, as part of 'cultural competency', along with $100 million dollars in City taxpayer money for reparations. These distinctions continue the divide between black and white, and keep the earth scorched with mistrust, bias, and revenge.

We must apply the Golden Rule: we must treat others as we wish to be treated ourselves. We must not lose sight of this wisdom. We must behave better than we have in the past. We must reconcile with the past. Blacks must forgive whites for slavery and racial hate and bigotry and violence. We must remember and never forget horrible lynchings, murders, riots and other violence against our black fellow Americans. But blacks and whites alike must forgive, and let the past lie. We must not rekindle these evils. We must not obsess over their injustice, and hold such relentless vengeance on our hearts. White must forgive blacks for their hate of the past. Whites must never forget the anger and hate directed at blacks, and the deep scars that blacks have lived with. Whites must forgive blacks for their anger.

We must behave as the Golden Rule tells us. We must do this in every act, in every passing day, in every thought and prayer.

Until next time. To Free the Oppressed. De Oppresso Liber