By DAVID TAUB
During the recent massive protests rocking many of our cities, it was not unusual to hear someone say “We are all Black.” They usually meant this metaphorically, spiritually or philosophically.
But, in fact, they are actually factually correct.
Some three or so million years ago, humans evolved in sub-Saharan Africa; these Black humans evolved and lived for thousands of years only in the African continent. Over time, human bands of Black folks moved “out of Africa” into the rest of the world.
All humans are thus traceable to these Black “founding fathers and mothers.” Genetic variability is greater within the “Black race” than it is between the Black and White tribes. How do we know this? Our DNA tells the story: Biologically, there are no black or white “races,” or any other kind of human “race.” Different “races” of humans, whether defined by skin color or by any other means, are a socially invented cultural construct, with zero bio-zoological validity.
White supremacists will surely deny that they share the same Black mother as the rest of humankind, including you know who, but it is a scientific reality. Get over it.
Regrettably, racial xenophobia exists in many societies and countries, not just in America, and it has been so for tens of thousands of years of human history. Seems to me this idiocy has existed long enough for us to seriously dedicate ourselves to ending this socially created virus.
During my lifetime, I have witnessed epistemological changes of how we refer to our kinsmen with black skin. There was “Negro” from the Latin word for the color black, nigreos; it didn’t take much to get to “n….r,” – an ugliness that still lives with us. From there we got “colored,” which easily transitioned to “Black.” Of late, we have settled on the convention of “African-American.”
If we truly wish to be “color blind,” we should either refer to everyone as “African,” or, in my view, drop “African” altogether as a moniker and stick to the simpler, but more inclusive, “American.”
It is hard for a native Texan, born, raised and educated (?) in the Lone Star State to feel anything but bigger-than-life pride in all things Texas. Today, I feel only shame.
A dozen county leaders of the Know Nothing Party of Texas, including Texas’s Agriculture Commissioner, recently claimed that George Floyd’s killing was a “staged event;” condemned Jewish billionaire George Soros for paying protesters to “start the race war” (we poor pitiful Jews – still being blamed for all the world’s problems); claimed that Floyd was a ‘brutal criminal’ who faked his asphyxiation; showed a bloody scene from a 1992 riot and announced that “this is why you don’t brake for ‘protesters.’”
And just recently, the Lt. Governor says that Dr. Fauci “doesn’t know what he is talking about.”
Oh, where did he get his medical training? Something very bad and evil has infected the proud State where I grew up.
There is an important linkage between human evolution in Africa, and the major disjunction between Blacks and Whites to COVID-19 infection and death. Ignoring the dramatic effects of COVID-19 on our Black and brown kinsmen is yet another example of similar xenophobic thinking that melds nicely for POTUS in his deliberate pretention that the current “wolf at our door” doesn’t exist.
After so many lies (almost 20,000 and counting), to believe POTUS requires that we believe in a fantasy world of “alternative facts” where POTUS himself resides.
Only his most ardent sycophants and toadies believe his lip-spittle, even the utter nonsense that he has turned the COVID-19 pandemic to “ashes.” Huh? Perhaps he refers to the ashes of more than 130,000 Americans dead from the virus. Nah!
In mid-June, POTUS spoke of COVID-19 with his senior policy advisor, the infamous Sean Hannity, saying that he did not “…even like to talk about that, because it’s fading away. It’s just going to fade away.” Try telling that falsehood to the 130,000 plus who have died from his total mismanagement of COVID-19, the grieving relatives of those individuals, and the tens of thousands more that are likely to die before this year’s end.
The Commander in Chief is AOL in his declared “war” on COVID-19. He has ignominiously abandoned the field of battle in disgrace. The enemy is COVID-19; you can be damned sure of that! It cares not what color your skin is, what your political views are, or what kind of car you drive.
Our country is suffering from a deep sickness of racial animus and intentional divisions, exacerbated by vile propagandistic lies from persons pretending to be leaders.
Today, we are faced with an existential choice of transformative implications. It is time to rededicate ourselves to our true values that made America the envy of all the world.
Silence is NOT golden; silence screams loudly that we are losing our soul to the dark side. We must scream back, loudly and passionately.
But words are not enough, loud or otherwise. Only action has meaning. Do the right thing — VOTE! It is your duty as a citizen and it is the best way to jump-start desperately needed change to save the Republic.
David M. Taub was Mayor of Beaufort from 1990 through 1999 and served as a Beaufort County Magistrate from 2010 to 2015. You can reach him at david.m.taub42@gmail.com.
