Day: April 30, 2019

As I read the headline it was not hard to believe that this was a potential hate-crime.  A hate-crime that’s getting very little exposure and connects to a bigger topic that another author brought up in an NBC News article.  Why the Notre Dame Cathedral is an integral cultural structure for the world, yet 3 Black historical churches in Louisiana are deemed as unimportant by the media.  The Notre Dame Cathedral received a tremendous amount of support and donations from nations across the globe, including America.  A structure that could easily be re-built without the need for donations.

Yet here in America, our internal problems are put to the side to focus on a European religious building that has no effect on the American people.  At this time it has been revealed in the article that a White man was to blame for the Black church fires, and he was turned in by his father, who happens to be a police officer.  Whether or not this mans father was involved or supportive we may never know, but the connection continues to prove that individuals in positions of authority harbor racist sentiments.   The connection to Notre Dame is meant to enforce the point that economic institutions of racism help to uphold White empires, empires that have hurt black and Brown ancestors, as France has a long history of colonialism just like America, yet when it comes to Black religious institutions the world, and America stays silent.

Sources:

NBC News

NY Times

For me personally I was too young and uneducated to follow what actions the former president took while in office so I’m not posting to speak about that. I wanted to use this post to explain what I believe Obama did for the black community. He gave us hope, it was the first time in my live that I realized that anything is possible. Up until that point I would’ve never thought that I would be able to look up to a President that has the same skin color as me. He broke the standard of whiteness through a whole lot of adversity and people praying on his downfall. But even hope and breaking the norm has consequences. When President Obama was elected it made everyone believe that racism was over and that the U.S. was in a “post-racial era” as described in class. This belief allowed people to relax even if they didn’t believe that the issue of race was over. This relaxation allowed for the countless acts of discrimination, hatred, harm, and misuse of the law with regard to minorities in this country. Im not saying that these actions wouldn’t have happened otherwise, I’m saying that the slightly period of relaxation allows people to fall to their “roots” and the “roots” of the United States of America is the act of racism and unequal treatment based on systems that were put in place to hinder those who aren’t white.