100th Anniversary of The Silent Parade: Slavery did not die in 1865, it mutated

On July 28, 1917, ten thousand African Americans marched in silence through the streets of New York City, protesting lynching in America. 100 years later, racial inequality persists. After slavery was formally abolished, lynching emerged as a vicious tool of racial control to reestablish white supremacy and suppress black civil rights. More than 4,000 African Americans were lynched across twenty stated between 1877 and 1950. These lynching were public acts of racial terrorism, intended to instill fear in entire black communities. Government officials frequently turned a blind eye or confined the mob violence. The effect of racial terror lynchings are still felt today [1]
I don’t believe we are free in America, I think we are haunted by our history of racial inequality. We’re burdened by this legacy created by slavery, and lynching and segregation. Bryan Stevenson.
Why so much racism? Why so much hatred? Why so much violence? These are all questions that haunted my mind when I first came to America six years ago. Like the millions before me, I came to America in pursuit of my dreams and ideals. Dreams of a progressive society that thrives on civil liberties and individual freedoms. Dreams of a society whose heart is open to people from all walks of life, regardless of race, gender or religion. However, it did not take me long to realize that the American Dream will be just a dream for the so many unfortunate who happened, by the accident of birth, to be black. While I don’t have a solid knowledge of America’s painful history of racial injustice towards its black citizens, I did find very similar patterns in the history of French occupied Algeria which I’m very familiar with, a master-slave relationship that transcends time and space. The European settlers in Algeria, whoever they were, even those at the bottom of the social ladder, felt superior to the highest educated Algerian Muslims. After independence, European settlers needed a mental reversion, a paradigm shift in their minds to be able, overnight, to share all things with people they used to command or despise [2]. What good is a master if there is no slave? That’s how these once-masters evolved into today’s supremacists, racists and bigots alike.
What is the solution? Truth be told, I don’t know. I have tried to find answers in the struggles of other communities in this country but there is nothing, not even something close enough to fairly understand and model the harms of hundreds of years of slavery and racial terrorism. I have recently watched Stonewall Uprising, an excellent documentary about the struggles of the gay community in the 60’s and the way they changed America. When challenged about the violence that took place at the riots, Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt answered with these shocking statements: “As much as I don’t like to say it, there’s a place for violence. Because if you don’t have extremes, you don’t get any moderation. And as awful as people might think that sounds, it’s the way history has always worked”. I’m personally against violence, however I believe that the only way to defeat racism is to take more aggressive, non-violent directions. I know, “It isn’t nice to block the doorway, it isn’t nice to go to jail, there’re nicer ways to do it but the nice ways always fail.”
What do I mean by being aggressive? I mean many things but I’ll just mention two things. My first is education. Education is the most powerful weapon which we can use to fight racism and change the world. Education is the most powerful weapon against economical and social slavery. My Second is also education. It is about talking about race, with our friends and family, it is about teaching our kids about race. many parents, especially white parents, still avoid the topic of race, and teach children that it’s a rude, taboo topic — believing perhaps that not talking about skin color will make it seem irrelevant. That’s tragically wrongheaded, says Brigitte Vittrup, a psychologist specializing in child development at Texas Woman’s University: “We have to talk to our kids about it, and we shouldn’t be afraid that we’re bringing something up that they haven’t discovered, because they have.” Science has shown that kids recognize skin colors as toddlers, and develop ideas about races as superior or inferior by the time they start primary school. They may also be subjected to ideas about racial stereotypes by their classmates and preschool teachers. [3]
Last, I would like to say a few words about The Equal Justice intiative (EJI) which is leading the Lynching in America project. EJI believes we need to change the narrative about race in America in order to advance our collective goal of equal justice for all. EJI’s work is fundamental for a better understanding of the struggles of our brothers and sisters from the African American community. Below is an excellent short film exploring one family’s painful past and journey south.
In an engaging and personal talk — with cameo appearances from his grandmother and Rosa Parks — human rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson shares some hard truths about America’s justice system, starting with a massive imbalance along racial lines: a third of the country’s black male population has been incarcerated at some point in their lives. These issues, which are wrapped up in America’s unexamined history, are rarely talked about with this level of candor, insight and persuasiveness. [4]
We cannot heal the deep wounds inflicted during the era of racial terrorism until we tell the truth about it
