wow. I tbh, never really considered how much racism affected little children. CHILDREN. TODDLERS. That are entrusted by parents to adults. This is… white supremacy, but also so irresponsible of the adults running the daycares. How could you do this children. Heartbreak all over.
ASSAMAKA, Niger (AP) — From this isolated frontier post deep in the sands of the Sahara, the expelled migrants can be seen coming over the horizon by the hundreds. They look like specks in the distance, trudging miserably across some of the world’s most unforgiving terrain in the blistering sun.
They are the ones who made it out alive.
Here in the desert, Algeria has abandoned more than 13,000 people in the past 14 months, including pregnant women and children, stranding them without food or water and forcing them to walk, sometimes at gunpoint, under temperatures of up to 48 degrees Celsius (118 degrees Fahrenheit).
In Niger, where the majority head, the lucky ones limp across a desolate 15-kilometer (9-mile) no man’s land to Assamaka, less a town than a collection of unsteady buildings sinking into drifts of sand. Others, disoriented and dehydrated, wander for days before a U.N. rescue squad can find them. Untold numbers perish along the way; nearly all the more than two dozen survivors interviewed by The Associated Press told of people in their groups who simply could not go on and vanished into the Sahara.
“Women were lying dead, men….. Other people got missing in the desert because they didn’t know the way,” said Janet Kamara, who was pregnant at the time. “Everybody was just on their own.”
Trigger warnings for: death, murder, child death, violence, antiblack racism, antiblack slurs, homophobic slurs, transphobic slurs, mention of attempted rape, and mention of death threats.
Pay particular attention to how the Democratic politicians mentioned in the piece refuse to allow the DNA testing that could exonerate a most likely innocent man.
I will be very, very honest with you, because I feel that is the best thing for me to do:
The morning of my beit din, one of the Rabbis was a few minutes late. We were concerned he might have ended up even more late than that, but luckily, he wasn’t. The reason for his being a few minutes late was because he worked at the local JCC/Day School and the entire campus had to be evacuated that morning because another wave of bomb threats had been phoned in. I’m not sure if it was the second, or the third.
So imagine, not being me (waiting nervously in the Synagogue library), but instead being that Rabbi. His morning schedule – whatever it was he normally would have done as a Rabbi of the community – was interrupted by a death threat to him, his colleagues, anyone on the campus, and the children under their care. Coffee, Breakfast, Work, Phoned in Bomb Threat, Evacuation, and then waiting for an all clear.
…Then serving a beit din for a conversion candidate.
You may imagine that most Rabbis or even most beit dins will bring up the issue of antisemitism, and that it is a serious part of the process of educating a conversion candidate.
This rabbi was the one to bring it up on my beit din. He had, after all, spent his morning evacuating a Jewish organization’s building and talking with police, and he thought it was important to question if, given the circumstances, I was really going to throw my lot in.
He wasn’t necessarily turning me away, but he was definitely questioning my judgement, if you get what I mean. He wanted to know why, and he more or less asked something similar to what you are asking me.
My answer may not be your answer. My answer may not help you. My answer is a personal one.
I explained who I was already, and I don’t remember everything I said then to the letter, but this is more or less the essence of it: I am mixed race, I look white, but I am Mexican-American, and plenty of my family is visibly brown. If they are in danger for being Mexican, I am in danger. I was taught that the most dangerous gangs were neonazis and the KKK. I’ve worked in a Latino cultural center where we had to make the choice to be non-political in Arizona because if we put up political art, we might have rocks thrown through our windows, or worse.
A white supremacist murdered a friend of mine’s family – the culmination of an evil, slimy scumbag of a human being worming his way into a woman’s life, abusing her, and terrorizing her, her children, and baby grandchild. I went to the candlelight vigil, the triple funeral (a fourth person also died), my friend the only survivor in the house.
I pointed out then that I am not going to ever be out of the line of fire of acceptable targets for white supremacists or neonazis. My existence will never be acceptable to those kinds of people anyways, so letting them dictate my choices through fear doesn’t leave me with very many choices. I didn’t really need to find extra or newfound strength, because I am applying already learned skills to a new scenario. Minorities in America do not have the luxury of going about their existence without any sense of fear for them or their families. We just don’t.
I also don’t believe that I would have stopped interacting with the Jewish community if I hadn’t finished my conversion. It would be foolish to state I have no fear whatsoever, but also at some point, I have recognized my entire life has included navigating fear.
Anyone can be afraid. Anyone can want to hide. Hiding is a strong survival mechanism. So is fleeing. It’s a privilege to recognize you have safety, and few people are eager to forfeit their own safety. I don’t see any point in diminishing that. Your average WASP has led a life which has not prepared you for the idea that people who don’t know you might want you dead on principle of your ethnicity. Even on a smaller scale – there’s probably been almost no vandalism in your daily life that marks a place, location, or world that is not welcoming for you.
I don’t think there’s any particular answer I can give.
Perhaps it is more prudent to answer a question with a question:
Are you underestimating yourself, or are you doing what is best for you?
I just left a plantation tour in Louisiana. I have a lot to say…
SAY IT!
I honestly thought I knew everything about slavery. Not so.
The owner of this particular plantation had it built by slaves for 3 years. Every brick was handmade. Over 120,000 bricks on 2,000+ acres of land (this place was huge.) The clay used for the bricks came from the Mississippi River. The majority of the slaves are buried under the Levees and water. Some are buried with their Masters. Not allowed to live with them but could be dead with them.
Before you enter the house, there’s a list of slaves who lived here including their age and how much they were purchased for. 124 total. Some slaves were worth as little as $25. As young as 5 years old.
On this particular plantation, the owner was big on punishment…he used noise making neck restraints. Imagine three 4lb balls around your neck with bells inside. Children were restrained by ankle locks that connected between their ankles.
This was a sugar cane plantation, one the worst practices to involve slaves because of its danger. A lot of slaves were decapitated, amputees and killed from the fields and machinery. A lot of kids lost their lives creating sugar. Speaking of children, a child stood in the living room and operated the fan with a string while guests ate dinner. As young as 3 years old.
Here’s what shook me even further: Before the Civil War, a lot of slave owners were going in debt and could not afford their properties and were not producing enough cotton and sugar to maintain their lifestyles. Slaves were used as HUMAN CREDIT CARDS. Slaves were a guaranteed line of credit. You could get HALF of your property’s value depending on how many healthy and able slaves you owned.
My people were human credit cards and lines of credit to BANKS. We were property. We were labeled as equipment and nothing more.
There is no such thing as a good slave owner. They owned my PEOPLE and used them as checks and balances. This cycle continues with prison and brutality. I do not want to hear shit about “Why can only Black people say this or that?” I don’t want to hear shit about “we’re all human.”
And by the way, not one of those slaves are at rest. Those spirits were so alive, you could feel their presence, their pain and someday, their revenge.
The front of the house and yard. This plantation was huge. Just thinking about my ancestors tending to all this land…
SOME of the enslaved names, ages, race and purchase price.
The living room.
Interior.
The dining room. That piece hanging above the table is ORIGINAL to the house. That’s the fan that a slave as young as 3 years old had to operate manually with a string.
The view from the balcony in the main hallway. This is how they looked over the slaves while they worked in the yard.
*sigh* Names of the enslaved that occupied the shacks. Children included. Their names are written inside one of the shacks. I’m not sure if there are other names inside other shacks because I could only handle 2. After I saw the punishment equipment, I left.
Slave Shacks. These are NOT the original shacks. These were built to imitate them.
Slaves for Sale Ads.
The landscape of Slavery throughout the United States in 1860. JUST 1860. Let that sink in.
Note: The last time the home was OWNED by a Louisiana citizen was 1972. This is her original bedroom, her lipstick is STILL on the dresser. This is why the house has been updated since slavery times because it was occupied up until 1972. Regardless, this used to be where house slaves slept.
This really fuckin happened, don’t let white people tell you that it’s in the past & to let it go.
Yep
damn man :
White people got me fucked thinking I can “get over it”
There’s so much evil ass energy coming off these pictures especially the ones of the house my heart hurts
They use this as a form of empowerment, as a constant reminder of how things were and how they WISH things are today. I don’t support “plantation” tours.
I’ll never be able to handle doing a plantation tour. Looking at these pictures makes my stomach turn.
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