Ten days after the appointment, the president (Theodore Roosevelt R) was

informed that (Booker T.) Washington was in the capital city. He insisted that the
black educator come to a private dinner at the White House with the Roosevelt family.
It was a dizzying sequence of events for Washington and other African Americans who
shared his belief that accommodating discrimination while incrementally working to
reverse it was the best route to black freedom. Here was proof, it seemed. Regardless
of the struggles still faced by the majority of slave descendants, black men of
accomplishment could rise to unprecedented levels of influence.

Blacks had visited the White House before, and prior presidents had sought the
advice of black men. But never had a black man appeared to be among the very most
influential figures in a presidents execution of so critical a task as selecting federal
officials in an entire region. Yet more astonishing was that the white president who
had taken his advice won accolades for the resulting decision [appointment of Jones
a former confederate soldier and Dixie-crat to a federal judge post]. Black men could
not be the leaders of whites in this regime, but they could quietly wield great influence
as to who the rulers would be. Now, the president wished his African American
counselor to openly sup with himself, his wife, and his children making no effort to
conceal the event or minimize its significance.

Roosevelt had no hint of the reaction that would ensue. Notwithstanding

Washingtons national fame and his widely known view that blacks should in most
regards accept their legally inferior position in the South, word that a Negro had
dined at the same table as the president, his wife, and his children violating one of
the most sacrosanct protocols or southern racial custom provoked a sensational
backlash.

U.S. senator Ben Pitchfork Tillman of South Carolina sputtered: Now that
Roosevelt has eaten with that nigger Washington, we shall have to kill a thousand
niggers to get them back in their places. The Memphis Press Scimitar called the
evening meal the most damnable outrage which has ever been perpetuated by any
citizen of the United States. The Richmond News declared that Roosevelt at one
stroke and by one act has destroyed regard for him. He has put himself further from us
than any man who has ever been in the White House. The governor of Georgia, Allen
Candler, said, No southerner can respect any white man who would eat with a
negro.

Laced throughout the vilifications was the implicit or explicit message that
Roosevelts decision to allow Washington to share his personal dining room amounted
to an endorsement of sexual relations and predations between black men and
white women. It is simply a question of whether those who are invited to dine are fit
to marry the sisters and daughters of their hosts, said Governor Miles Benjamin
McSweeney of South Carolina.

The opprobrium continued for months, growing more virulent with each
announcement of another in the slow trickle of black appointees made by the White
House. After several black officeholders and their wives attended a White House
reception in early 1903, the race-baiting Mississippi politician James K. Vardaman
called Roosevelt a little, mean, coon-flavored miscegenationist. The White House,
Vardaman said was so saturated with the odor of the nigger that the rats have taken
refuge in the stable. Vardaman was elected governor of Mississippi the following
year.

A century later it is difficult to comprehend the degree to which most southern whites
had so thoroughly adopted the rationale embodied by the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling
less than ten years earlier which effectively held that African Americans had no basis
of legitimate complaint regarding the racial climate at the turn of the century,
regardless of how overtly apparent was the disparate treatment of and opportunities
for whites and blacks.

Roosevelts overtures to blacks were not just violations of an accepted social

custom, but galling because they suggested that in fact African Americans did have
reason to object to their current status in the United States.

Slavery by Another Name: the Re-Enslavement of Black Americans From

the Civil War to World War II, Douglas A. Blackmon, Part 2, Chapter VI: Slavery is
not a crime

This was hard to reread and retype as excerpt. My heart raced; I had to take several deep
breaths to continue. This could have been Tweeted or posted to Facebook.

This is about race, the self-identified republican caller on C-Span said. The
Republicans hate that nigger Obama. Sadly, the speaker sounded (to me), African
American, slightly inebriated or both.

The caller was promptly and responsibly, hung up on by the host.

An entire group of humans thats what African Americans ARE: not niggers; mud
people; soulless automatons but flesh, blood, breathing, living in a society suffering
from PTSD posttraumatic slavery disorder [1] and vilified for the American Apartheid
known as ghettos, as if we laid the brick and mortar; penned the deed restrictions and
Jim Crow laws that kept us separate and unequal and after integration, the white flight
and declining property values that further created them.

To be fair, I have friends dear friends from every stripe; every ethnicity; every
nationality: I have friends that dont have my voting patterns AT ALL. Some voted for
this congress; some didnt vote at all. I still count them as friends; I still look upon them
as humans. I try to see things from anothers perspective; I dont stereotype. That of
course, doesnt mean everyone practices that philosophy.

The caller, and America, are sick. This extreme display of racism denied because they
have a few crossovers, and thats supposed to prove something is tearing our
democratic republic apart. United States is purely a literary fiction; an oxymoron.

This excerpt is from a book about sharecropping where nothing was shared with
African American de facto slave laborer. They, like my grandfather, forced labor on
farms, most often in prison camps where men and women were arrested for any minor
thing on trumped up charges in kangaroo courts; many judges had never set foot in a
law school and could barely read themselves! Moses Pickett Goodwin died in his early
fifties according to his death certificate from exhaustion and pneumonia.

Most of Mr. Blackmons prose stems from newspaper articles of the day. This is not
Facebook, Pinterest or Twitter: this is America; this is US!

I fully understand why authoritarians fight accurate history: there has to be a reckoning
and a response to the uglier side of our beginnings. I fully comprehend why they fight
science: it destroys their mythologies, self-delusions and pseudo walls of separation;
their specialness for a lack of Melanin and having the reins of power. History and
science makes them question whether or not they deserve what they have its easier to
say theyve been blessed with no accountability to the Native Americans whose land
they stole; the African Americans who were kidnapped and placed in forced indentured
servitude for centuries built the Executive Mansion, after Booker Ts visit to be then
and evermore referred to as the White House (with emphasis) with no reparations in
sight; the Chinese Americans whose ancestors built the railway system for the robber
barons (not a Chinamans chance); the women that were beaten brutally for the
Suffrage movement; the Civil Rights movement and similar causes it spawned. They
have to fight it because it means they might not deserve what they have, and have to
give an account to their selfishness: greed, racism, sexism, homophobia and cruelty.
Like most authoritarians, they resist new information and change. What they cannot
control as Eric Fromm stated they have to destroy [2]. The elite of the authoritarians
give their lesser something to vilify; some neck to stamp so they cannot and will not ask
more probing questions about their plight and why their pockets are empty. 2042
terrifies them, even though most of them will not live to see this demographic shift. They
are fighting with everything theyve got tooth, nail and open-carry AR-15s to
maintain their comfortable, Ozzie and Harriet Nirvana delusions. Trayvon Martin,
Jordan Davis and Michael Brown: all were the president in effigy. If these young men
were not human to their assailants; the president to the right is clearly not.

The democrats who lost last Tuesday deserved their loss for their utter spinelessness.
The Democratic Leadership Council wanted a Bud-Lite third way to access the same
dark blood money from corporations, Wall Street and billionaire donors. They deluded
themselves thinking that Bill Clinton was proof that their method was working. Truth of
the matter is, Bill Clinton was just a skilled politician timing helped a lot too. We were
in recession 88 - 92, and Pappy Bush had made his read my lips declaration, then he
had to raise taxes. That allowed Clinton to relentlessly repeat: its the economy:
stupid. Apparently, only Reagan can get away with it 11 times and still have a worship
legacy as a fiscal conservative icon.

In doing so, the DLC counted on urban minorities, progressives and the youth to behave
like rural voters for the GOP now: to vote reflexively, whether its in their interest or not.
Meanwhile, the oligarch puppet masters pull the strings behind the curtain in the Land
of Oz, whether the puppet is an R or a D: Pinocchio is Pinocchio.

I disagree with Senator Bernie Sanders: weve not becoming an oligarchy; were
already over that threshold.

I disagree with First Lady Michelle Obama when she was on the campaign trail for 2008
(paraphrased): for the first time, Im really proud of my country.

I cannot be proud of a country that has gone totally and utterly psychopathic; plunging
headlong over a cliff to its destruction to maintain a fantasy of white picket fences and
pure women that dont have control over their own bodies; minorities, LGBT and youth
that stay away from the polls and in their places: silent and politically invisible.

This is an epic unraveling of the republic, and its pretty hard to watch.

1. Derived from Posttraumatic Slave Syndrome, by Dr. Joy DeGruy

2. Escape From Freedom, by Eric Fromm