QUIT CONSENTING!

Distasteful.  Shameful.  Ignorant.  Those are a few words that come to mind when I hear or read about this kind of CRAP in the media.

MacFarlane joke that didn't land well: "The actor who really got inside Lincoln's head was John Wilkes Booth."

Very funny….MORON!  This just proves the ignorance of Americans, especially when it comes to HISTORY and Hollywood! 

I am SO TIRED of the “racist card” being played!  It is ignorance that is the problem.

Let me tell you a story about a little colony in Africa that is known today as Liberia.  This colony was “land” PURCHASED AND OWNED by our American government.  More specifically, it was a small 36-mile strip of land called Cape Mesurado near current day Monrovia. This land was to be used for the sole purpose of a political project to “colonize” free blacks OUT of the United States, to Africa.  Many white members of American society thought that African Americans could “not succeed” in living in "their" society as free people.  Some considered blacks physically and mentally inferior to whites, while others believed that the racism and societal polarization resulting from slavery were insurmountable obstacles for integration of the races.

Relations between colonists and natives were contentious from the founding of Liberia, and eventually led to the overthrow of the Americo-Liberian regime in 1980.  From the beginning, the colonists were attacked by indigenous peoples, such as the Malinké tribes.  In addition, they suffered from diseases, the harsh climate, lack of food and medicine, and poor housing conditions.  Basically, Liberia has been a country in a state of civil war since about the 1820’s. 

Since the 1840s, Lincoln had been an advocate of the American Colonization Society program of colonizing blacks in Liberia.  In an October 16, 1854, a speech at Peoria, Illinois (transcribed after the fact by Lincoln himself), Lincoln points out the immense difficulties of such a task are an obstacle to finding an easy way to quickly end slavery.

Lincoln wrote:  “My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia,—to their own native land.  But a moment’s reflection would convince me that whatever of high hope (as I think there is) there may be in this, in the long run, its sudden execution is impossible.”

Lincoln mentioned colonization favorably in his first Emancipation Proclamation, and continued to support efforts at colonization throughout his presidency.

The first such colony by Lincoln was attempted in late 1862, and consisted of an attempt to colonize the Chiriquí region of Panama, then a part of Colombia.  Lincoln signed a contract with businessman, Ambrose Thompson, the owner of the land, and appointed Kansas Senator, Samuel Pomeroy to administer the project, with plans to send tens of thousands of African Americans out of the United States to this “colony”.  The plan was suspended in early October 1862 before a single ship sailed though, apparently due to diplomatic protests from neighboring Central American governments and the uncertainty raised by the Colombian Civil War (1860-1862). Lincoln hoped to overcome the latter complication by having Congress make provision for a treaty for African American emigration, much as he outlined in his Second Annual Message of December 1, 1862, but the Chiriquí plan appears to have died over the New Year of 1863 as revelations of the corrupt interest of his acquaintance Richard W. Thompson and Secretary of the Interior John Palmer Usher likely proved too much to bear in political terms.

In December 1862, Lincoln signed a contract with businessman Bernard Kock to establish a colony on the Ile a Vache near Haiti. 500 freed slaves departed for the island from Fort Monroe, Virginia, though the project proved to be a disaster. Poor planning, an outbreak of smallpox, and financial mismanagement by Kock left the colonists under-supplied and starving, requiring the rescue of survivors by the United States Navy after only a year.

Lincoln also created an agency to direct his colonization projects.  In 1862, he appointed the Rev. James Mitchell of Indiana to oversee colonization, and established a Bureau of Emigration under his head at the Department of the Interior.

In addition to Panama and Haiti, Mitchell's office also oversaw attempts at colonization in British Honduras and elsewhere in the British West Indies.  Lincoln believed that by dealing with the comparatively stable British Government, he could avoid some of the problems that plagued his earlier attempts at colonization with private interests.  He signed an agreement on June 13, 1863, with John Hodge of British Honduras that authorized colonial agents to recruit ex-slaves and transport them to Belize from approved ports in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston.  Later that year the Department of the Interior sent John Willis Menard, a free African-American clerk who supported colonization, to investigate the site for the government.  So, in reality, Lincoln was looking at the colonization of freed American slaves in Liberia, Haiti, Panama, Honduras, and other Caribbean Islands.

In his second term as president, on April 11, 1865, Lincoln gave a speech supporting a form of limited suffrage extended to what Lincoln described as the more "intelligent" blacks and those blacks who had rendered special services to the nation.  To his dying day, Lincoln did not believe that harmony between white and black was feasible, and viewed resettlement of the blacks as the preferable alternative to race conflict and continued to hold to that vision.  Lincoln’s assassination ended that vision, thereby ending the colonization project of freed Black American Slaves. 

Translation:  Every single freed Black American slave, man, woman, and child, would have been put on a ship, deported from the United States, and sent to any one of these “colonies” to live out the rest of their natural lives.

Instead, the political body came up with “Negro Suffrage” which progressed over the years into other programs of charity based on “white guilt” for minorities. 

H.H. Chalmers wrote in his 1881 essay “The Effects of Negro Suffrage”:  “The enfranchisement of so large a mass of new electors, and the instant elevation of so much of ignorance and pauperism to complete equality with wealth and intelligence, was never before, in the history of the world, wrought by a single legislative act. In several of the States it put the representatives of that race who alone knew anything of public affairs, or of private virtue, in a hopeless minority as compared with that race who had ever been barbarians save when they were slaves, and who were destitute alike of property, education, or morality. Whatever may have been the motives of those who inaugurated the scheme, -- whether they were prompted by considerations of patriotic devotion to the public good and by a sense of justice to the helpless blacks, or whether they sought the perpetuation of partisan supremacy, -- it must be admitted by their most devoted adherents that they took the risk of a tremendous political experiment. Desperate indeed must have been the ills that afflicted the body politic to justify a treatment so heroic.” 

Ray Stannard Baker wrote in his 1910 Essay “Negro Suffrage In A Democracy”:  “…no one can prophesy how far a democracy will ultimately go in the matter of suffrage. We know only the tendency. Thus the line has been constantly advancing, but with many fluctuations, eddies, and back-currents--like any other stream of progress.  As the weight of responsibility upon the popular vote is increased, it becomes more and more important that the ballot should be jealously guarded and honestly exercised.  It becomes a more and more serious matter every year to be an American citizen, more of an honor, more of a duty.  If he (the Negro) fails voluntarily to take advantage of the rights he already has, how shall he acquire more rights?  Democracy does not consist in mere voting, but in association, the spirit of common effort, of which the ballot is a mere visible expression.  When we come to know one another we soon find that the points of likeness are much more numerous than the points of difference. And this human association for the common good, which is democracy, is difficult to bring about anywhere, whether among different classes of white people, or between white people and Negroes.  With such a division on new issues the Negro will tend to exercise more and more political power, dividing, not on the color line, but on the principles at stake.”

Then you add in all the benefits afforded to “black minorities” over the rest of the American populace, to include Native Americans, and you cannot help but wonder why there is still so much ignorance and pauperism among that specific racial class.  There are educational scholarships and grants specifically for blacks.  There are financial aid programs specifically for blacks.  There are “all black” organizations, which is something that is forbidden and frowned upon greatly for “whites” to have.  There are “all black” TV shows and entertainment channels and magazines; again another thing that is forbidden and frowned upon greatly for “whites” to have.  There are job opportunities afforded to blacks that were not even thought of 30-40 years ago.  There are black politicians.  There are black CEO’s and CFO’s and CIO’s.  There are black officers serving in ALL branches of the military, not just enlisted.  So, why the constant chest-pounding and drum-beating iterations and clamoring that the “white man” is “keeping you down”?

I believe these men, Chalmers and Baker, knew the dangers of giving free hand-outs instead of instilling personal responsibility, education, and good work ethics.

The way I see it, the only thing that “keeps you down”, REGARDLESS of your race, creed, or religion, is your own choice to stay there, “down”.  You choose to do drugs.  You choose to join gangs.  You choose to collect welfare instead of getting a job.  You choose to drop out of school and remain uneducated.  You choose to have unprotected sex and have 15 children by 5 different men and then blame “the system” for not “paying” for you and your children.  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bavou_SEj1E)

I submit to you Chris Gardner!  Now there is a MAN (yes, he is black) of ethics, morals, education, perseverance, drive, and most importantly, INTEGRITY AND DIGNITY!!!  And there are MANY MORE like him, black men and women who MADE THE CHOICE to not let anyone stand in the way of their dreams.

I submit that when society reverts back to self-responsibility and accountability and eschews blame-shifting, there will be a boom in the American economy like no other in our history.  A sense of pride in our Nation like never before will explode.  Self-pride (the good kind) comes with a sense of accomplishment; knowing that you did the task at hand and without hand-outs or free ride and you worked hard for it.  You DID IT!

Some of you are probably quite confused and wondering what the “history lesson” at the beginning has anything to do with the ending.  Let me put it to you this way.  Had Lincoln NOT been assassinated, your ancestors would have been put on a boat and sent to some foreign land and not allowed back in America for a long time.  You wouldn’t be voting.  You wouldn’t be getting benefits and subsidies from the government.  You wouldn’t be able to serve in the U.S. military.   You wouldn’t be as educated as you can be here in America.  You wouldn’t have corporate offices.  Lastly, you sure as hell wouldn’t have achieved the highest political office America has to offer, President of the United States.

So, quit pounding your chest and touting how the “white man is keepin’ me down”!  No matter what your color, creed or religion, YOUR LIFE is about the CHOICES YOU MAKE!  Eleanor Roosevelt said “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”  So, QUIT CONSENTING!!!