“I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” ~ James Baldwin

I do as well. And I refuse to apologize for it or step back or down when people don’t like it.

At this point in our shared American history, all major criticisms are out there, are generally well-known by a good percentage of the population and for those who don’t know what is going on with global majority populations in this country, it is because they don’t want to know.

Willful ignorance is a sin if anything is, as it creates an “unknowing class” of citizenry proud of their folly, who will believe damn near anything except the truth that sullies their perception of this nation. Even if they know parts of the truth – like, there was a thing called slavery or, black folks still weren’t free after slavery for a hundred years or, desegregation didn’t really work or, housing and job issues are still problematic, putting all of those elements together to understand that there is a system-wide culture of white aggrandizement and black demonization that is a continuation of policies and societal affectations that have been in place for a long, long time – there is still an unwillingness to own up to the need to correct it all now, or, that the generations currently living are the ones who must correct the nation’s course.

We are still connected to the slave patrols and the black codes in the way that our police interact with black and brown folks, with suspicion and repression ever in mind and a part of their tactics to control economic classes, which is also a part of it and cannot be disconnected from race or seen as separate. I still don’t have the freedom to walk or shop in stores without being subjected to suspicion, I do not have the freedom to be me, I am always all of us, black men, black people, mud people, useless eaters, the downtrodden, “meek” and wretched of the earth.

We are still connected to the Red Summer of 1919, lynching still means what it means and we all know it when we see it, the spirit of lynching, whether it be in some electronic fashion or physically. You don’t need a rope to lynch a black person, you can do it with your collective or individuated words. Any propensity to gang up that ends up expressing racial solidarity in a negative manner is an expression of prejudice and racism, depending upon the intent and nature of the engagement.

Is it harmful to others generally or specifically?

Are you using a racialized stereotype or trope?

Are you speaking to denigrate an individual using your words?

Who is the audience? Is it skewed toward one group or another?

So much of this is so close to human nature as it has been collectively imprinted upon us socially and, probably to some greater or lesser degree, epigenetically as well. Transcending our programming has become easier in recent years because so many have been shocked, traumatized out of their programming by sudden economic deprivation, direct experience of the Other or both.

When you become poor and are used to being at a higher socioeconomic level you begin to encounter people who exist – and have intergenerationally – at those lower levels of social aggregation and you discover that, lo and behold, they are people too, after all. When you are white and didn’t grow up around folks of color and you then begin to meet black and brown people and interact with them, you find that human connection is viable and you begin to rise above the limitations your often unwitting segregation, education and acculturation have allowed you to cultivate subconsciously up until that point.

The mental programming is breaking down because the corporations are breaking it down with multicultural media programming: you see so many more black and brown folks alongside, living with, loving, marrying, working and playing with white folks in shows and movies at a so much higher rate than we used to back in the 70s, 80s and even 90s. While there are still many areas in this country where there are very few folks of color and some whites can still say, as adults, they’ve never met a black person directly, those places are growing fewer and further between.

Hatred is a grand organizer of causes, as we have seen in the past five years. With the rise of Drumpf and his people – apparently oppressed and downtrodden by political correctness and communism for half if not all of their lives, to hear them scream it – we saw that the sordid underbelly of hatred, misogyny and xenophobia that has always been a part of this nation – among many others – remains, and that they were eager to finally be represented directly at the highest levels again and to spew that hatred in response to the dismay of those who champion multicultural co-existence, not toleration, which is the bare minimum requirement for human interaction.

The stance taken by allies of multiple ethnic/racial and other kinds of targeted groups gave us the numbers to reject that hate, which is, inexplicably, being called hate by those who would rather not eat in a restaurant owned by LGBTQIA folk or sit next to a Hindu or black Cuban in that place of business. Our rejection of their rejection and call to take a higher position of ethical and moral obligation toward other members of our society has resulted in further jeering and denigration: we are snowflakes and social justice warriors (SJWs), we are woke and communists and hate America because we do not accept their hatred and choose to rise above it while combating it and its systemic expression in our local, state and national governance.

America is finally moving full steam into the reckoning that has been coming for a long time but it’s not what the haters think it is. We don’t want to fight them, nor do we want to take over the nation. We want to live in peace. We want to be able to work and take care of our families. We want to be able to love who we want to love and walk down the street and not worry about being killed. We want to be, we want to be free!

We want the same thing that those on the other side of this false dichotomy profess that they already have. Freedom. This includes freedom from the belief that life, that politics, that economics, are a zero-sum game, where our gain is their loss. It is that way if you perceive it to be, which is not how it has to be! We are free to choose something different! A different way to be! A different way to live and a different way to see! You can be free to be you and I can be free to be me! Together! And to live lives we love as we co-create a new possibility of being human in the world, one that acknowledges that past but that moves beyond it to co-create a future that rises above the cultural and tribal limitations that have held the human race back for far too long.

Choosing to continue our societal support of human slavery is the choice that those who consciously hate are doing. They may not realize it directly, but it is so. Choosing hate is choosing their own continuing enslavement by those who are using them as cannon fodder to fight battles of control and command at the highest levels of human society between those who want Nationalism and those who want Globalism. We can choose a side in either of those dualistic oligarchical systems, or we can choose our own way beyond them both. And we do have the power to do that, right now, together.

Now, on the cusp of inheriting the stars and of manifesting a technological proficiency that promises us a new day and new possibilities of being, we’ve come too far to go back and make America great again in the way that it was perceived to be by those in the middle and at the top of the national pyramid scheme. Now, we must make America great in a way that works for all of us and it can only be done once a significant percentage of all of the ethnic and social groups in this nation commit to it in a meaningful, material way.

Saying no to hate, is a good way to start. That’s it. For those who are tired of being called racist just because you may not have a lot of experience with people of a darker hue, or because you think that the culture you’ve seen on tv is all there is of those cultures, you do have a point and some of y’all have been unjustly lumped in with extremists. There is a need for some social justice warriors to see that some expressions of intolerance are more personal than collective and that some people just hate everybody, no matter what they look like or who they love! Not everyone is racist in a genocidal way and a distinction needs to be made between the incorrigible and the merely ignorant. There are folks out there being called racist now who don’t hate, but who just don’t know! Life is a learning process and we can all stand to learn a little more about each other! There is a way forward beyond the duopoly and those who take advantage of divide-and-conquer modalities to achieve their own economic and political ends.

Friends can exist beyond those limitations, can exist outside of the formal groupings, can exist in a space of soul knowing, where you just can feel the connection with someone no matter what they look like, who they’re being in life or where they come from. Love knows no boundaries, that is something we create.

Even amongst those who know no love, who know no sympathy or compassion, who know no law or morality, the choice can be made to create a life-code of No Harm for the purpose of co-creation in a time when it is necessary for the human race to survive. It’s not about one of our groups or tribes, it is about all of our groups and tribes. It’s not about one type of person or another, it’s about all types. Since the world’s governments have now come as close as they are going to to admitting that there is and has been an alien presence on this planet and beyond, the time for us to come together is now.

The only question that we must ask ourselves is, how far can hate take us? How many are going to have to die for hate before we decide, together, to move beyond it? To move beyond the colonial mentality that created the conditions to bring us all together, here and now? It is possible. Those who say it isn’t don’t want it to be so and are trying to convince you that they’re right. But they are wrong. The past is the past and the Now will soon be also, but the future is whatever we decide it will be, once enough of us mature enough to make the only decision that leads to the fulfillment of a human destiny beyond all of our wildest dreams.