Emancipation Day Message

August 1, 2001
Posted By: RAS JAHAZIEL

If you wanted to subdue an inhabited continent and make its resources your own, what better way to do it than to capture, tame and domesticate its manhood who are its natural defenders?

If you wanted to keep that same race of people in subjection so that they would not be able to rise again and reclaim their own, would it not be necessary to impose A SYSTEM OF LIMITATION?

Slavery, Colonialism, Segregation, Apartheid and present day Neo-colonialism are all LEGAL SYSTEMS designed specifically to target Black people for victimization. They have always operated for the benefit of one sector of society by imposing LIMITATIONS on another, and it is under such systems that Black life has crawled, moaned, wept and survived for centuries, carrying the burden of LIMITATION, prevented from benefitting fully from the fruit of its own labors.

By a study of Black history one understands that THE LEGAL SYSTEM OF THE WHITE WORLD ORDER has never been your friend as a Black man. It has always been a hostile force in the hands of those who needed to keep you within LIMITS that they prescribed. No matter if one calls the system "slavery" or "modern capitalism" the same exploiter is the one who determines the policy of the Legal System.

From its very outset when it first started to carve up Africa, The White World Order needed to make LAWS OF LIMITATION. It had to pass LAWS that would make the Black man’s way of life ILLEGAL so that THE WHITE VIEW-POINT would become the new rule of the Black man’s life. Through strict enforcement of such laws over the course of five centuries it is now very difficult to find a Black man that is not living with A WHITE VIEW-POINT in the control room of his head. By means of such spiritual surgery Black men have now been created who willingly carry the Slave master’s whip, delighting in enforcing the view-point of The White World Order. Because their minds have been colonized they are determined to perpetuate the colony. They are the generation known as the NEO- COLONIALISTS.

One must know that the cementing of this white view-point took years of cruelty, brutality, intimidation and force. Such force pinned its justification and legitimacy on A WHITE INTERPRETATION OF THE BIBLE AND A LEGAL SYSTEM whose real intent in its crudest form was TO BREAK SLAVES while swearing in the name of "GOD"

BREAKING A SLAVE is not very different to DOMESTICATING an animal. The first thing that is done is to deny him of his freedom and keep him CAGED AND CONFINED until his will breaks and he acknowledges that his master is his god. To understand the present psychology of the Black race today it is vital to understand the experiences of great grandfathers and grandmothers. One must understand that they were systematically worked on with the whip, with the chain, with forced labor, with the CAGE, with terror, with brutality, to the point where they were BROKEN IN to accept the white man’s dominion. Not for just a day, a month, a year or a decade but decades upon decades, hundreds of years. Is such systematic brutality not bound to leave a result?

Hear the words of Frederick Douglas describing his slave experience "If at any one time of my life more than another, I was made to drink the bitterest dregs of slavery, that time was during the first six months of my stay with Mr. Covey. We were worked in all weathers. It was never too hot or too cold; it could never rain, blow, hail, or snow, too hard for us to work in the field. Work, work, work, was scarcely more the order of the day than of the night. The longest days were too short for him, and the shortest nights too long for him. I was somewhat unmanageable when I first went there, but a few months of this discipline tamed me. Mr. Covey succeeded in breaking me. I was broken in body, soul, and spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute!"

RELIGIOUS SLAVE HOLDERS

"I assert most unhesitatingly, that the religion of the south is a mere covering for the most horrid crimes,--a justifier of the most appalling barbarity,--a sanctifier of the most hateful frauds,--and a dark shelter under, which the darkest, foulest, grossest, and most infernal deeds of slave holders find the strongest protection. Were I to be again reduced to the chains of slavery, next to that enslavement, I should regard being the slave of a religious master the greatest calamity that could befall me. For of all slave holders with whom I have ever met, religious slave holders are the worst. I have ever found them the meanest and basest, the most cruel and cowardly, of all others. It was my unhappy lot not only to belong to a religious slaveholder, but to live in a community of such religionists. Very near Mr. Freeland lived the Rev. Daniel Weeden, and in the same neighborhood lived the Rev. Rigby Hopkins. These were members and ministers in the Reformed Methodist Church. Mr. Weeden owned, among others, a woman slave, whose name I have forgotten. This woman's back, for weeks, was kept literally raw, made so by the lash of this merciless, ~religious~ wretch. He used to hire hands. His maxim was, Behave well or behave ill, it is the duty of a master occasionally to whip a slave, to remind him of his master's authority. Such was his theory, and such his practice. Mr. Hopkins was even worse than Mr. Weeden. His chief boast was his ability to manage slaves. The peculiar feature of his government was that of whipping slaves in advance of deserving it. He always managed to have one or more of his slaves to whip every Monday morning. He did this to alarm their fears, and strike terror into those who escaped. His plan was to whip for the smallest offences, to prevent the commission of large ones. Mr. Hopkins could always find some excuse for whipping a slave. It would astonish one, unaccustomed to a slave-holding life, to see with what wonderful ease a slave-holder can find things, of which to make occasion to whip a slave. A mere look, word, or motion,--a mistake, accident, or want of power,--are all matters for which a slave may be whipped at any time. Does a slave look dissatisfied? It is said, he has the devil in him, and it must be whipped out. Does he speak loudly when spoken to by his master? Then he is getting high-minded, and should be taken down a button-hole lower. Does he forget to pull off his hat at the approach of a white person? Then he is wanting in reverence, and should be whipped for it. Does he ever venture to vindicate his conduct, when censured for it? Then he is guilty of impudence,- -one of the greatest crimes of which a slave can be guilty. Does he ever venture to suggest a different mode of doing things from that pointed out by his master? He is indeed presumptuous, and getting above himself; and nothing less than a flogging will do for him. Does he, while ploughing, break a plough,--or, while hoeing, break a hoe? It is owing to his carelessness, and for it a slave must always be whipped. Mr. Hopkins could always find something of this sort to justify the use of the lash, and he seldom failed to embrace such opportunities. There was not a man in the whole county, with whom the slaves would not prefer to live, rather than with this Rev. Mr. Hopkins. And yet there was not a man any where round, who made higher professions of religion, or was more active in revivals,--more attentive to the class, love-feast, prayer and preaching meetings, or more devotional in his family,--that prayed earlier, later, louder, and longer,--than this same reverend slave-driver, Rigby Hopkins." "He was a cruel man, hardened by a long life of slave-holding. He would at times seem to take great pleasure in whipping a slave. I have often been awakened at the dawn of day by the most heart-rending shrieks of an own aunt of mine, whom he used to tie up to a joist, and whip upon her naked back till she was literally covered with blood. No words, no tears, no prayers, from his gory victim, seemed to move his iron heart from its bloody purpose. The louder she screamed, the harder he whipped; and where the blood ran fastest, there he whipped longest. He would whip her to make her scream, and whip her to make her hush; and not until overcome by fatigue, would he cease to swing the blood-clotted cowskin. I remember the first time I ever witnessed this horrible exhibition. I was quite a child, but I well re-member it. I never shall forget it whilst I remember any thing. It was the first of a long series of such out-rages, of which I was doomed to be a witness and a participant. It struck me with awful force. It was the blood-stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery, through which I was about to pass. It was a most terrible spectacle. I wish I could commit to paper the feelings with which I beheld it."

The natural way of LIVING BEINGS is to be FREE FROM CONFINEMENT. The reason why some animals cannot be domesticated is because they will break their hearts and die before their wills can be broken. A normal dog will cry for days and weeks if he is chained. That is why it is said that FREEDOM is man’s natural birth right.

CHAINING AND CONFINING ANIMALS is an evil that has been justified for centuries by man’s religious dogma which says that animals have no soul. Yet ANIMALS CRY AND BREAK THEIR HEARTS while men look on indifferently with hearts hardened by religion.

CHAINING, CAGING AND CONFINING BLACKS UNDER LOCK AND KEY is a long tradition of The White World Order which has always been more cruel to Black humanity than it has been to animals. History records that on some Plantations Blacks were chained in the horse’s harness and made to pull the Master’s carriage to church on sundays because Sunday was the horse’s rest day. Up to this day in "civilized" society, horses and dogs are still fed better and treated better than those blacks who are confined in the ghettoes.

When CHAINING AND CAGING A RACE is accepted as a NORMAL necessity, it is because racism and cruelty towards that race has been practiced for so long that SHACKLES are seen as something they were ordained by "GOD"to wear. It is because that race is still viewed as brutish, sub-human and sub-animal, and it is because the privileged race has rationalized evil for so long that they have come to believe their own lies.

When a people can praise "GOD" with their mouth while holding the keys to the dungeon in their hands it is because that people’s concept of "GOD" has not been nourished by a truly civilized appreciation for humanity. When a people can sing songs of praise to "GOD"while CAGING and enslaving their fellow human beings, it is because that people’s whole idea of "GOD" has been conceptualized in brutishness by the stony heart of a wicked Slave master. How difficult it is for that people to change when their history books and their folk lore glorify murderers and slavers and they make it an annual duty to THANK GOD for all the evil they have done.

A society that casts a blind eye to the chaining and caging of human beings for offences that cannot be categorized as EXTREME EVIL is a society that has itself become EXTREMELY EVIL. It is a society that has enshrined the principles of the Slave master by surgically removing its own conscience with the instruments of religious dogma.

When a Black man studies his history, he MUST come to the conclusion that THE LEGAL SYSTEM with which he has been familiar for so many centuries is truly the legal system of the Satan World Order. It is a system with a long track record of heartless-ness where Black life is concerned, and the Black man’s encounter with it has been one of meeting the Devil at his worse.

There have been extreme cases where such STATE TERRORISM has been most brutal against people of color as in the Belgian Congo of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. "The people of the Congo Free State suffered through what was arguably the most brutal colonial regime in modern history. After gaining international recognition of the Congo Free State in 1885, King Leopold of Belgium created a system of exploitation there that relied upon state terror to increase profits from rubber and ivory collection and other commercial enterprises. Reports of slave labor, summary executions, mutilations, rape, and other forms of torture led to the formation of the Congo Reform Association in 1904. Founded in England with a sister organization in the United States, it used both written testimony and photographic evidence (see below) of atrocities to encourage international intervention in the Congo on humanitarian grounds."

The black man must make it a sacred duty to study his history. That is the only way that he will not be deceived by the icing on the cake which now claims to have progressed to a more modern and ‘civilized" humanity. See this web site which shows photographic evidence of children with their hand chopped off and their parents holding the severed limbs of their children in their hands. http://www.boondocksnet.com/congo/congo_kodak.html

Any study of the annals of Apartheid in South Africa, the annals of the black experience in the USA, on the plantations of the Caribbean, and in all the Colonized territories of Africa, speak of a very brutal, inhuman and diabolic system that has never shown any respect for Black life. STATE TERRORISM has been a pervasive trend throughout this long Black experience and it has been used essentially for one basic purpose, INTIMIDATION, SUBJUGATION AND DOMESTICATION. That is what it has meant for a Black man living under the dominion of The White World Order. CRUCIFIED CHRIST is a real experience in Black life.

Any people who have worn chains and know what it is to be kept in holes and deprived of a glimpse of day should be a people with the keenest dislike for CHAINING AND CAGING FELLOW HUMAN BEINGS.

If one has a human conscience, the caging of fellow human beings might only be excusable if those human beings have proved themselves beastly, and their manifestation of evil has become un-manageable.

When mankind has purged his stony SATANIC nature, his heart will have a greater sensitivity to the cry of the captive. No matter if it be man or animal, the cry of the captive will not fall on deaf ears.

CHAINING OF THE BLACK MAN especially, and keeping him behind iron bars has too great a similarity to chaining him in the holes of slave ships.

When the prison house is bulging at its seams with Black men, one has to look around for THE SLAVE MASTER and know that he has not gone anywhere. Even if he is not there by name, his heartless principles still endure. He is still pursuing his heartless policy of DOMESTICATION, trying to break the will of Black men and turn them into Zombies.

When any particular race disproportionately swells the prison population, there is only one of two conclusions to be reached.

Conclusion (1) MORE THAN ALL OTHER RACES, THE BLACK RACE HAS A CRIMINAL TENDENCY and the safety of society depends on keeping them locked down behind bars.

Conclusion (2) INCARCERATION OF THE BLACK MAN IS PART OF A LONG HISTORY OF POLICIES OF LIMITATION DESIGNED TO SUBDUE THE BLACK RACE.

Conclusion (1) could not be the truth for the simple reason that it is the Black race who has been THE MAIN VICTIM OF CRIMINALITY ever since being robbed of their labor and their birthright. Slavery, Colonialism, Segregation and Apartheid are all systems based on systematic violence against Black people.

Therefore one must reach the conclusion that INCARCERATION OF THE BLACK MAN IS PART OF A LONG HISTORY OF POLICIES OF LIMITATION DESIGNED TO SUBDUE THE BLACK RACE.

Causes must be tied to effects so that one may understand what would be the logical result of centuries of systematic violence against a people. Systematic violence creates a condition of PERMANENT STRESS. Cramped and unnatural living conditions shape a people’s psyche in a way that their behavior will naturally depart from the norm. Ghetto conditions debase a people’s humanity and bring out the worse of human nature so that there will be a tendency to behave in the same way that crabs in a barrel are known to behave. Such conditions create a life and death struggle to get the dollar and easily facilitates the manipulation of a people. Look at recent events in Jamaica and see how persistent poverty and destitution actually contribute to the power of THE MANIPULATORS. Poverty and destitution have always worked to the benefit of Neo-colonialism for the simple reason that such conditions drive a people to sell their soul. They are easily bought and easily sold.

Against this background one must ask DOES THE EXPLOITER RECOGNIZE THE BENEFIT OF KEEPING PEOPLE ON THE EDGE OF SURVIVAL? One can bet that he does. In Africa’s present desperate condition it is quite easy for the forces of Colonization, Slavery and Apartheid to hold on to power long after granting "independence"

Rastafari has long concluded that DEHUMANIZATION IS A NECESSARY PART OF THE PROCESS for maintaining the dominion of The White World Order.

To dehumanize a people and then try to correct the result by BUILDING MORE PRISONS is the way of those who have given up any hope of redeeming their own humanity.

This is the time now to reflect on THE CRIMES that have been committed against Black humanity and ask WHO IS THE REAL CRIMINAL? Look at the crimes of Apartheid, look at the crimes of Colonialism, look at the crimes of slavery, look at the crimes of Segregation, look at the main crime that underlies all these many forms of systematic violence and see there standing stark naked is THE ROBBERY AND DISPOSSESSION OF BLACK HUMANITY.

This in essence is what the present call for REPARATIONS is all about. It is a call for an end to THE HISTORICAL VICTIMIZATION OF A PEOPLE. Past victimization becomes PRESENT VICTIMIZATION when the effects of past wrongs are not corrected. Look at present negative attitudes towards the idea of reparations in the light of history and see how easy it is for long practice of inhumanity to dim one’s awareness of evil.

Frederick Douglas describing the inhumanity of the Slaver:

"If any one thing in my experience, more than another, served to deepen my conviction of the infernal character of slavery, and to fill me with unutterable loathing of slave holders, it was their base ingratitude to my poor old grandmother. She had served my old master faithfully from youth to old age. She had been the source of all his wealth; she had peopled his plantation with slaves; she had become a great grandmother in his service. She had rocked him in infancy, attended him in childhood, served him through life, and at his death wiped from his icy brow the cold death-sweat, and closed his eyes forever. She was nevertheless left a slave--a slave for life a slave in the hands of strangers (when the Plantation was sold); and in their hands she saw her children, her grandchildren, and her great-grandchildren, divided, like so many sheep, without being gratified with the small privilege of a single word, as to their or her own destiny. And, to cap the climax of their base ingratitude and fiendish barbarity, my grandmother, who was now very old, having outlived my old master and all his children, having seen the beginning and end of all of them, and her present owners finding she was of but little value, her frame already racked with the pains of old age, and complete helplessness fast stealing over her once active limbs, they took her to the woods, built her a little hut, put up a little mud-chimney, and then made her welcome to the privilege of supporting herself there in perfect loneliness; thus virtually turning her out to die! If my poor old grandmother now lives, she lives to suffer in utter loneliness; she lives to remember and mourn over the loss of children, the loss of grandchildren, and the loss of great-grandchildren. They are, in the language of the slave's poet, Whittier,--"Gone, gone, sold and gone To the rice swamp dank and lone, Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings, Where the noisome insect stings, Where the fever-demon strews Poison with the falling dews, Where the sickly sunbeams glare Through the hot and misty air:--Gone, gone, sold and gone To the rice swamp dank and lone, From Virginia hills and waters--Woe is me, my stolen daughters!"The hearth is desolate. The children, the unconscious children, who once sang and danced in her presence, are gone. She gropes her way, in the dark-ness of age, for a drink of water. Instead of the voices of her children, she hears by day the moans of the dove, and by night the screams of the hideous owl. All is gloom. The grave is at the door. And now, when weighed down by the pains and aches of old age, when the head inclines to the feet, when the beginning and ending of human existence meet, and helpless infancy and painful old age combine together at this time, this most needful time, the time for the exercise of that tenderness and affection which children only can exercise towards a declining parent my poor old grandmother, the devoted mother of twelve children, is left all alone, in yonder little hut, before a few dim embers. She stands, she sits, she staggers, she falls, she groans, she dies and there are none of her children or grandchildren present, to wipe from her wrinkled brow the cold sweat of death, or to place beneath the sod her fallen remains. Will not a righteous God visit for these things?" (From the auto-biography of Frederick Douglas)

What happened to all the old grandmothers and old grandfathers who had outlived their usefulness on the Plantation? Which of them ever had a pension plan or access to a nursing home for the aged? How many millions of old black folks went through this same tribulation in their old age?

REPARATION is really THE EASY WAY OUT, because as The Dread did say, "SOME ONE WILL HAVE TO PAY, for all the innocent blood that they shed every day, all the prisoners whose hope of life they snuffed out, all the fatherless children they left outside the prison gate in the grips of the economic trap without providers, all the Black women who suffered and cried because their Black men were found guilty by THE REAL CRIMINAL.

SOMEONE WILL HAVE TO PAY.

BETTER WAKE UP.

It has always been in the interest of the Slaver to keep us ignorant and forgetful about the road that we have passed to get to this point in history. You are not supposed to be mindful of the fact that your birthright has been stolen. You are not supposed to realize the severity of the holocaust that you have passed through. You are always supposed to think of the cross as something that a man in the Bible carried for one day and not recognize that you have been carrying it for over five hundred years. You are supposed to count yourself lucky not to have been exposed to Hitler’s brief Nazi regime, and not realize that you have spent hundreds of years in the Death Camps of Hell Plantation being subjected to THE SLOW DEATH EXPERIMENT that kills not only your body but also your mind eventually.

If you knew your history then you would know where you are coming from. As a Black man, as a Black woman, you would know that you do not have to go anywhere to find spirituality, not if you really understood that YOU ARE THE REAL BLACK CHRIST WHO IS YET TO GET DOWN FROM THE CROSS.

When a Black man really KNOWS his history, all the mysticism of the Bible is condensed into blood and flesh. The story of THE CROSS is seen to be merely a symbolic reference to THE BLACK NATION’S OWN TRAVAIL as it has been besieged throughout long centuries by the evil forces of The Anti-Christ. No other nation or people can know the Black Christ as the Black nation does in the sense of "he who feels it, knows it"

When a Black man or Black woman is really seeking "spirituality" they dig into their ancestral memory, they communicate with old grand-mothers and grand-fathers, the ones who have carried the cross on their bare backs all their lives, the ones whose groans carry more than enough weight to judge all nations, the ones whose tears are stored up for the day when they will usher in a drowning tempest, the ones whose prayers alone can offer one any hope of overcoming the Dragon.

THE LIVING BOOK is the one that must be sought after, not second-hand accounts of the ways of the spirit. As the Ancient one would say, "NOT ALL PATHS LEAD TO I" Some lead to spiritual dead-ends.

Only within THE LIVING BOOK is the mystery of "GOD" made plain and one knows that the resurrection of the dead is the day when The Afflicted ones recognize that "the holy one lives amongst his people"............WAITING TO BE INVOKED.

A SLAVE HOLDING PEOPLE love to build more prisons.

A DEMONIC PEOPLE feel safe knowing that Black men are behind bars.

To A PEOPLE STEEPED IN THE WAYS OF EVIL, evil is no longer recognizable.

REPARATIONS IS THE EASY WAY OUT.

http://members.aol.com/jahpaint/index1.html