We’re Free, But We’ve Never Truly Been Free

“Gidi gidi bu ugwu eze”. A Nigerian proverb that originated amongst the Igbo people meaning, “Unity is strength”. 

One concrete principle the harsh world of colonialism and greed has never been able to take from us within our nationalities, tribes, factions, religions, denominations, gangs, and communities is unity. The area where the colonizer has been able to rip us apart across the Diaspora, where every body that is a descendant of our people and their genealogy traces back to the vast scape of the continent of Africa, is a lack of unity that doesn’t transcend any of the familial aspects of our cultures listed above.

I’m going to tell a story, regarding the now commercialized holiday, Juneteenth, that demonstrates the concept of “we’re free, but we’ve never truly been free”. However, there’s going to be a twist on it that resonates with the ills colonial genocide, enslavement, and robbery have imposed onto the people of the Diaspora, but will resonate all the more with our people from within this very entity. There are key issues I’m going to highlight from the cultural context of my family as well as my community’s narrative that I would understand as a biracial-American man, and I’m going to bring in another unique perspective, that I would not be as well-versed in, but yet, am deeply connected to. 

I am going to walk all of you through the narrative of the dichotomy of the modern-day shackles that the Thirteenth Amendment and systemic discriminatory policies from the War on Drugs have placed upon my community. We’ll then move to how we’ve remained stagnant within unjust cycles of marginalization while entering other options to escape, leading us to being a part of institutions that inherently don’t see us as human. Then lastly, how this stagnant mindset transcends physical borders and nations around the world where Black bodies are present, enabling the divide and conquer mindset. 

The wounds that were formulated by others under the guise of morality and faith, and carefully orchestrated by the deceiver, can only be healed by us from within, and ultimately, through the righteousness, power, and authority of our Savior.

The Vietnam War took place during a turbulent time, when political and racial tensions were ever rising on American soil and overseas. In order to escape the abject violence, poverty, and brutality of the Jim Crow South, African Americans  were migrating to the North with hopes of economic opportunities in urban America, and joining the military in record numbers. My grandfather, William Louis Massey, born and raised in Lancaster, South Carolina to parents of whom one was a daughter of freed slaves and the other, a mixed-race Afro-Indigenous Cherokee chief, was among so many in their youth, looking for opportunity, and a better education that could not be found in the segregated South. 

“The education I was interested in, we couldn’t get scholarships for as Black people. The career programs I was interested in weren’t funded in the all-Black schools.”, is what my grandfather said when I asked him what drove him to leave the South. He spoke to me of a compelling program available within certain branches of the American military entitled “Operation Bootstrap”, which was accessible to active service members of all ethnic backgrounds, and allowed people to take college-level courses towards a B/A while taking part in active duty that offered curriculum from high-profile White universities that he, and others, would not have been able to either attend or afford. This route for education seemed the right path for him to take at the time. He had attempted to attend Howard University, but as most HBCUs, (Historically Black Colleges and Universities), it didn’t have the proper funding as of yet to maintain flourishing career path programs as the one my grandpa was interested in, which was tele-communications.

Overseas, it quickly became evident that my grandfather was part of a larger institution where prejudice and hate were ingrained into the inner-workings at every level, and made emphatically clear in the way my grandfather and other Black servicemen were treated. The war they were serving in was, as mentioned above, the infamous Vietnam War. “The Vietnam War was an imperialist endeavor. While many Americans were swindled into fighting through a mixture of a coercive draft and clever propaganda …The Vietnamese side [was] fighting for their independence after centuries of foreign occupation”, writes Sam Carliner for Leftvoice.org in his article, The Vietnam War: Brutal, Criminal, Imperialist. Even more so than the atrocities being committed towards the people of Southeast Asia, my grandfather noticed that, “There were some prejudices, particularly from people from the South, because they carried it there with them.” He recalled stories of fellow soldiers while stationed in Japan telling the locals to “watch us as we went by to see if they could see our [Black servicemen’s] tails.”, which figuratively insinuated racial caricatures of my grandpa and his companions. He also told me of a time where he and many soldiers were at attention on a parade field that was a part of a U.S. military base in Vietnam, and the sun was scorching. “One Black guy fainted, and so did a White guy and an Asian, but they disciplined the Black guy. They made him stand in a garbage bin, in the hot sun, as punishment.” These were all aspects of a larger issue of imperialism and colonialism clearly at play in a war that coerced men to fight who were of African descent, and who were being treated out of the same inherent mindset back home and even within American military ranks. 

Black schools were disproportionatley under-funded, until the integration period that started with The Little Rock Nine in 1957 and Ruby Bridges in 1960, of which opened adverse, yet new doorways for Black children to receive education—while HBCUs around the country, slowly began to receive funding and today are prestigious emblems of Black excellence, perseverance, and intellect. Until these societal victories came to pass though, many people’s hands were forced, as my grandfather’s to attempt to rise above the system of oppression and calamity of an inherently prejudice system that plagued the Jim Crow South. 

Another dear friend and mentor of mine with a prominent role in Washington state Black history, Leathia Stallworth-Krasucki, had to push to break out of the disparaging cycle of racism through higher education. Miss Leathia was a part of the original generation of the Black Panther Party here in Seattle, WA, and as a member of the first authorized chapter of the party outside of California. During her time as an undergrad student at the University of Washington, Leathia was also a key part of the movement that successfully persuaded the university to open the Office of Minority Affairs and Diversity.

I had the pleasure and opportunity to interview Miss Leathia, discussing the vision for this article and searching for the answers to questions that were formulating in my head around the narrative of Juneteenth in America. She walked me through her experience at UW, a PWI, (Predominantly White Institution), and what drove the cause forward, the struggle through revolution for legitimate liberty and justice for all, from the streets to the halls and walkways of a university campus. Her theme of her talk with me was unity. “We had to have unity,” Miss Leathia exclaimed, “Students who were sick and tired of what had been the status quo. White students had their issues, and Black students had theirs, and these issues were taking place around the country and the world. The White supremist wanted to accept being American, but we wasn’t really free, and because of our age and the energy that was there, we were willing to put everything on the line to challenge this.” In those times, there was a lot of political strife which resulted in revolutionary fervor. Throughout this unique societal climate Black people had to navigate Whites that were at their throats with racial violence and marginalization, as well as Whites who were allies, and within their own context, felt the anger, frustration, and burden of the political landscape and wanted to do something and fight alongside their Black brothers and sisters–fellow humans. This era was truly, transitionary. 

Today, a new dynamic has entered the playing field that requires us to learn and grow in unity through Jesus Christ, as a body, not separate limbs under Him.

Division is raging within Black communities around the world at the moment and there are deep, painful historical reasons for this. This division is turbulent especially between the continents, the descendants of the enslaved and the descendants of those whose ancestors remained in Africa. From the African American perspective, Miss Leathia expounded upon this issue, saying to me, “It all goes back to the slave trade and colonialism. I believe that part of the division between African Americans and Africans, is really because part of the de-humanization during the slave trade to de-value Blackness.” 

When African immigrants started coming more frequently to the U.S. a whole new dynamic was added to Black culture here, where African Americans were pitted in a strange and unique spot in the racial hierarchy, looking over their shoulder for Whites and now fellow Blacks, and Africans had to do the same because of animosity built up within the African American community. A perception fed to both cultures and harsh, stark stereotypes were developed.

A term coined from the African American cultural context is Afro-Pessimism. Noemamag.com’s articles on this topic, How Black America Fell Out of Love with Africa, states, “Afro-pessimism is a theory developed by Black American intellectuals…which holds that experience of racism in the Americas makes the Black American experience unique and it cannot be compared to other peoples.” Within this article historical examples not from the colonial side, but the African side, are highlighted such as, “In the West African Kingdom of Dahomey, before the Kingdom’s captives departed for the New World to be enslaved, they were forced ‘to march around ‘The Tree of Forgetfulness’ six times’ so that they would remember neither their home continent nor the people they were leaving behind.” Miss Leathia pulled on how the view of African Americans by Africans has been engrained, not only by historical and tribal factors as every culture has dealt with, but by a deeper racial entity, formed by man and learned by man. For Africans, Miss Leathia told me, “there was not a stripping away of the native culture…[therefore], we had been raised to look down on them…The perception of African Americans to the world after slavery sold an idea that we were less-than.”

Are we not falling perfectly into the trap? Playing into the hands that wanted to tear us down, but not waste any breath doing so, so they wanted us to do their job for them? Through decades, no centuries of manipulative, violent, and brutal mind games, the colonial mindset has perfectly pitted us against one another in an all-out feud based off of learnt stereotypes when we aren’t even each other’s rival in this world that frankly looks down on all of us the exact same way. 

An emblem of hope, a man after God’s will and God’s work within our community and country, that gives off a youthful energy that’s a call to the leaders of old, sat down with me to discuss this issue, that’s only keeping those chains on us, except we’re holding the chains for ourselves now. Twenty-three year-old Lynnwood City Councilman Josh Binda is the youngest Black elected official in Washington State history, and having grown up in the projects of Rhode Island and being raised by Liberian immigrants, he sees both sides of the fence extremely well. Josh is the convergence of the old and the new, all of this history, and the entire narrative coming together on a new and fresh stage. I believe that he is carrying out the solution many of those who came before us wished for, but were not able to achieve. 

Councilman Josh Binda recalled the intersectionality of this issue, and his experiences as he said to me, “refugees, coming from these very terrible places, are in survival mode. So a lot of these people, that’s all they know, is war and survival.” Josh understands the why’s behind both, and as I am writing this article, trying to contemplate a way to verbalize this, I would say that both communities, even with the differing ways time has taken us, both have roots with deeply set mindsets and lifestyles based out of pain. Pain leads to desperation, desperation leads to anger, and with anger, anybody will do anything to climb their way out of it.

Colonialism has affected the African American and African communities, as well as Black communities around the diaspora in very different, but equally painful ways. We have all been destabilized, which is why it’s so easy for us to believe what we’ve been taught about each other. Josh walked me through a very simple response to this doorway that is right before us  to help fix this so that we can fight. He told me, “We have to realize it’s a mindset kind of thing. We have to heal ourselves almost. We have to look back at what makes us traumatized. You have these burdens keeping generation after generation in unhealed trauma…So [it’s about] finding ways where we can heal as a group of people and realizing that we’re more powerful together than we are separate.” 

We have taken our trauma and have named it gangs, dictatorships, religion, denomination, faction, you name it, and if you take a look at the bigger picture of all of this, as long as these institutions that we ourselves have created clearly hold us back, we are forced to enter institutions where we are actually facing the true opposition that does everything in their power to keep us in the cycles of disparagement that we like to call community. The unsaid is the belief that we don’t belong in the circles or seats of these institutions. Observe every person I interviewed, and they all have two things in common no matter where they fall on the timeline of the “we’re free, but we’ve never truly been free”, they’re all Black, and they all have had to create avenues of escape. In their attempt to “get out”, they were beaten down in the process, but our God made our ancestors strong, therefore He can make us strong to make a way where there truly is no way. All Black, different ages, experiencing different things, different shades, and even hailing from different places, but they all have a shared story. 

Colonialism tried to divide us, poison us from the inside out while they kick their feet up and relax, but through the struggle can we not see that we all struggle? That there’s so much more we have in common than we think or perceive?

For every person who “claims” they want to make a way, myself included, to fight for a world of equity for them and their descendants, Matthew 7:3-5 (ESV) in the Holy Bible reads, “Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take that speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.” 

We have all grown more and more dangerously hypocritical. I’m sorry if that offends, but the factors that have torn us apart in a broad sense, but kept us together in a localized sense is hypocritical. Our ancestors actually fought for better days for us. They actually prayed–they truly had faith. We try to survive off of empty words and calls for freedom and that’s why every attempt we make at some sort of movement dissipates as soon as the world starts spinning again after an event as a pandemic. Why are we all becoming the very thing we rail against? What gives any of us the right to cry rallies to freedom and justice when we can’t even love our brother or sister of the same descent, the same blood, overall the same human spirit to the right or left of us? How do any of us expect to be treated with any morsel of human decency when we cannot do the same amongst ourselves? History might’ve taken us on different paths through the course of events but it has wrapped itself around to bring us back together on a new, fresh stage—a stage our ancestors could have only dreamed of. Let’s not wipe away their hopes and desires through petty efforts of separation that we call pride, culture, or religion. From what I can see even from within myself, we don’t even have ten percent of the righteous will to fight that our ancestors did. We can’t fight for true equality within society if we can’t reach unity across the diaspora. 

“We need to unite our networks. [We need] rallies–we have to recruit the dynamic speakers, with strategy and real knowledge. People cannot be passive.”, Miss Leathia said to me as a call to my generation’s leaders. We have to get up and do something, but we need to look to our Father, because the closer we are to God, the closer we will be to freedom. We need compassion, and we need faithful obedience. Matthew 14:14 reads, “When he [Jesus] went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them and their sick.” The Creator of the universe came down and humbled Himself in the form of man, in order to validate every aspect of His ultimate sacrifice to remove the burden of sin, shame, trauma, desperation, and anger through compassion on the meek and on the faithful. If you keep reading in Matthew 14 Jesus feeds the crowd of five-thousand that was with Him that day, out of five loaves of bread and two fish, because He saw the desperate and had compassion. His ministry was one of unity that was outside the box, that upset the status quo and flipped tables, but it brought people together in the most transformative way the world has ever seen. It is there for us to read and model in what we know as the Holy Bible. 

Read Acts 10 later on in the narrative of the Bible, a story of Jesus’ disciple, the Apostle Peter, a Jewish man, of whom was obedient enough to step out of his comfort zone, his culture, and preach to the Gentiles, (those not of Jewish descent). Out of his obedience and desire for unity, the Holy Spirit fell on the Gentiles for the first time and the council of the early church decided it was time to spread this message of salvation, compassion, unity, and hope that was, is, and forever will be Jesus’ Gospel, to every corner of the world. 

We can do that as well! Never be quick to pick up a stone. If anything, pray–prayer comes from a place of obedience, and through obedience God will heal the land. Jesus addressed the state of culture and a person’s heart within culture, not the state of the person. He pointed out that we cannot judge another human without first addressing our own sin, in John 8:7. Psalm 133:1, reads, “Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity!” As we take time, especially on a day like today that is supposed to commemorate freedom for those faithful people in Galveston, Texas in 1865 who toiled until told otherwise–we have to be vulnerable enough to have compassion for one another as an act of faith, allowing through the grace of God, for unity. In this, there is hope for a brighter future where we can cry, let justice rise, and mean it with every fiber of our being.