Yes...I'm in a blogging mood tonight. Just some thoughts I happened to be mulling over throughout the week. I will never give up the struggle to ensure that all people in God's creation have access to the equality that has been so granted to us by God. My people, blacks in our country, the United States of America, despite many advances being made, still have not arrived to the point that all have access. I will never allow the echoes to silence in which the "founding fathers" stated, "We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal that they are endowed with certain unalienable Rights by their Creator, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness...," nor the preamble of our constitution that begins with "WE THE PEOPLE in order to form a more perfect union..." It is still a fact in our society that African Americans and other people of color experience discrimination in every manner conceivable. The realization that has impacted me even greater than the race struggle that has existed for centuries in this country, is the class struggle that was first transported to this hemisphere by Columbus and his crew on the Nina, Pinta and the Santa Maria from King Ferdinand II(Aragon) and Queen Isabella I(Castille) of Spain in 1492 with the exploitation and annihilation of the Arawak Indians(Native American Indigenous People). In North America proper(future home of the U.S and Canada) there was further attempt to transport this concept, first by John Cabot in 1497 aboard the Mathew under the rule of King Henry VII of England, he made it as far as Newfoundland. Further attempts were made unsuccessfully by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1584 aboard the Ark Raleigh and again in 1587 aboard the newly renamed Ark Royal under the rule of Queen Elizabeth I of England, the Roanoke Colony was a dismal failure. The establishment of this concept was accomplished by Capt. Christopher Newport(accompanied by the infamous Capt. John Smith) in 1607 aboard the Godspeed, Discovery and the Susan Constant from King James I also of England. There were gentlemen and farmers aboard these ships, the King had given clear instructions as to who would govern, ranks and stations were clearly established and the class system was firmly implanted into the DNA of what would become the United States of America. The intent of these navigators on behalf of their patrons, was to find new passageways to trading posts in the Far East, and to find the great "Cities of Gold", such as "Eldorado" in the new lands of the Americas. Far short of these goals, the precedent that would prevail and dominate in America and more specifically in the United States of America was caste in the proverbial stone of Plymouth Rock, and it's aforementioned predecessors. The pursuit of great wealth and profit at the expense of "lessors" has remained a driving force in our nation since it's inception. I remember being appalled by the caste systems in certain other nations that I read of as a teenager, never realizing that a strong variation of the same existed right where I resided. The lines have been drawn more descriptively and the chasm is ever widening here in our country as we watch the class of poor increase, the middle class decrease and the wealthy class become an an elite power force globally. The Powhatan Indians, European Indentured Servants, and black Africans formed the lower foundations of a class system that would be efficiently established by the appointed land owners, governors and directors of the British formed Virginia Company. Though the enslavement was race based as in black Africans, it was economically motivated. The slave traders, indigo, sugar, rice, tobacco and ultimately cotton farmers..., main objective was to produce goods to be exported from the New World to the Old World for great gain. Adam Smith later wrote in his "Wealth of Nations," that the wealth of a nations was vested in its labor force, I feel that what actually developed was a perversion of this concept. The white English, Scottish and Irish workforce of the 1600s proved to become fare too expensive and troublesome, and in the 1700s it was realized that a slave could be purchased for a lifetime at the equivalent sum tendered for an indentured servant contracted for a ten year service period. America needed cheap laborers for production, and black Africans became the workable, affordable solution. I calculated what would have been paid by today's minimum wage standards to my great great great grandmother Lucy Sanders Perry, enslaved from 1822-1865, and her son my great great grandfather Joe Perry, enslaved in Texas from 1855 to 1865 her offspring along with his two younger sisters fathered by Arthur Perry, a mysterious Caucasian man, that gave them his DNA, his name and nothing else after he deserted them in 1865 during the occupation of Goliad Texas by black Union soldiers. We know that they were enslaved seven days a week, twenty four hours a day, and their labor was intensive and back breaking, but for the sake of argument let's be ultra conservative and say they worked a forty hour work week(ludicrous), disregard inflation and cost of living allowance, at a minimum wage of $7.50 per hour beginning labor at the age of five. For service of Two thousand eighty(2080) hours per year at seven dollars and fifty cents($7.50) per hour over thirty eight(38) years, Grandmother Lucy would be owed $ 592,800.00 conservatively by today's standards, and Grandfather Joe would be owed $ 78, 000.00 for his five years of slave labor conservatively by today's standards. Multiply that savings minus the purchase price, minimal cost for substandard, housing, feeding and medical care, times millions of enslaved black Africans transported to the country as well as those born here in bondage to their owners and see how awesome a jump start this nation and the wealthy class system received from the 1600's through the 1800's until the Emancipation Proclamation. Further add the fraud of share cropping with blacks, poor whites and other immigrants, substandard pay and work conditions based upon race, age and gender, and you truly get a picture of how entrenched we have been in a class system determined primarily by wealth and/or the accumulation of the same. Race, Gender, Religion, Education, Networking Connections, and Governmental Assistance,(and I'm not talking about aid for dependent children, or S.S.I.), all play a role in further developing and maintaining this class system. Government to the extent that whether the presiding administration is Democrat, Republican, all have to some degree partnered with the wealthy, elite, business giants to promote, propagate and protect this system of "loving money". In the process, the themes promoted by John Locke in his "Second Treatise" of representative government and peoples rights have truly been lost in the "pursuit of happiness via the almighty dollar." I proudly registered as a Democrat at the age of eighteen(18) years of age, and have voted in every primary and election available since, but I serve sincere notice to each political party of interest, do not take my black skin for granted. An informed person is an empowered person, and I will use all information gained to determine how and for whom I vote in the future.
