Black women have been saving us for decades, and now the credit is patronizingly skewed.
A fervent 98 percent of Black women in Alabama voted for Doug Jones, the newly elected Alabama senator, and Black America is hearing an awkward applause from comfortable, well-privileged White voters.
Jones is most known perhaps for being a U.S. prosecuting attorney, and for the specific case of prosecuting the two Ku Klux Klan members responsible for the four deaths and 22 injuries during the tragically iconic 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in 1963.
Judge Roy Moore is a reality-professed salad-bar Christian, who parades the Bible around as if it doesn’t say “love thy neighbor as your self” or don’t really agree that all people are “created equal.” While speaking on conservative talk radio, he said that the constitutional amendments after the 10th should be erased simply for the fact that “it would make things a lot easier.”
Some of these apparently difficult or morally inconvenient hiccups for Moore include the 13th (slavery abolishment) 14th (equal right to vote regardless of race, color, previous condition or servitude) and 19th (equal protection under law).
Why are the hypocritical embodiment of these ideologies so prevalent in the Bible Belt?
How is it that basics to support life and each other’s existence gets so confused and misrepresented by bigoted, evil-spirited, self-righteous people who dare to call themselves followers of Christ?
Why is it only once every 25 years that the Bible Belt gets a leader who sees the value in all people? You can believe what you want, pray to or abstain from whatever entity, Lord, Allah, Higher maker, spirit, force or watcher you want or don’t want to. I’m just saying for those that claim to, at least keep consistent with some of the most basic of universal good-isms, as opposed to bad-isms, around.
Just to clarify: White superiority is arbitrary and evil. It’s a Bad-ism. A person who decides to respect the existence of their neighbor (thy Black neighbor, thy refugee neighbor, thy Muslim neighbor, thy woman neighbor, thy queer neighbor, thy believer or non-believer neighbor, thy water protector neighbor, thy Latinx neighbor, thy Atlantic/Pacific-side neighbor), that would be a general Good-ism.
The Black woman, the most vilified person on Earth across history, knows how to recognize a source of justice and fair treatment.
Justice may be in proximity more of a stranger to her, but in its rare orbit, each occasional visit feels like the warm food to the soul of the elusive but ever-invigorating family reunion.
Gui Jean-Paul Chevalier is a Seattle-based recording artist and author from rural Washington, living counter-small-town mind for the cause of humanity. Read previous columns from Gui.
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