Maddoggbuttkickin’Brown’s guest writer, T.H. Johnson

The problem was that some of us predicted 50 years ago when we told them you may create legislative change but you cannot legislate a change of a racist mind. Back then we had de facto segregation and de jurie segregation, the latter down south was the law the former was basically an unspoken law in the north. It meant that people didn’t want you in their establishments due to race. However, 50 years ago I had no interest about going into their establishments anyway because we had our own and they were the best. Now they may have been in old dilapidated buildings generally owned by Caucasian absentee landlords across the nation but the entertainment, music, comedy and food was the best; par excellence.

In fact, it was so good that white folks were often seen standing in a line outside clubs and restaurants, in the middle of the African American community waiting to be let in to the inside activity. But when the federal Public Accommodations Act was passed in the early 60s we began to abandon our businesses because the proverbial grass looked greener on the other side of the fence. So, with no economic support and abandonment of our economic infrastructure black businesses began to collapse.

Thus, today when you are openly or clandestinely mistreated it’s generally because those who do it have never experienced a sincere change of mind. They often lie to themselves with that “I’m not a racist” b.s. but truthfully, they don’t want to deal with you. The perception planted in the seeds of their mind regarding your decline and or destruction is due to their sense of ambivalence whether you come there to spend your money or not. The model for Starbucks was not created in your image or with you in mind and that’s a sad reality that we must not ignore regarding certain truths in this nation.

There is an inherent subliminal consciousness relative to racial images and for blacks it has rarely been a good one whether it is about beauty or crime because you don’t control your imaging and its reentry into the marketplace. Your image is distorted by others and unfortunately some of it has been done with your own voluntary acquiescence particularly 50 years ago. Don’t bother attempting to deny it because some of us have watched the conduct of our people for a half a century and much of it comes down to the cold ice theory. Where you have a black man and a white man selling ice on opposite sides of the street the white man’s line is often much longer with blacks standing in line. When you are asked “why are so many of you in line on this side of the street?” your answer generally is incoherent, in this case, you believe in this metaphorical case that the white man sells colder ice. Though this may be considered fanciful it is an accurate metaphor for the mental condition that has been subliminally pervasive throughout the black community for a half century.

Those of this generation generally know that you no longer, if ever, controlled anything that belongs to you in order to go back to since like many of you they don’t know your history either. So, like a beggar you have to sit there and accept their racial vitriol and/or beg them fruitlessly not to treat you in a racist manner. As messed up as he is, don’t blame Donald Trump for this sickness, because this apartheid ailment we continue to witness has been here incubating all of the time. That’s why I think the Star Buck’s chairman’s call for reconciliation is simply a facade to regain the moral high ground and not jeopardize his business which was built on a model that did not include you. You generate $2 trillion dollars in GDP capital annually but due to your consciousness and contribution to the destruction of your own African American economic infrastructure due through ambivalence he knows you have nothing to return to and no control over the money you generate.

White racists burned down and destroyed the economic model called the black Wallstreet of Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921. However, that was never as destructive as the complete destruction we have heaped upon the economic infrastructure of the black community through neglect and ambivalence over the last fifty years. Thus, as long as they’ve shackled your mind your $2 trillion dollars is no threat to impacting anything of significance in this nation since he’s got you still attempting to reach first base with simply receiving common, humane, treatment.

Thus, RECONCILIATION, at least in this OG’s mind, is simply meaningless and is not going to impact these repeated acts of insult and humiliation. Only when a nation’s people with $2 trillion dollars demands with their feet to walk in another direction which they own and manage will that respect be gained.