The Race Card

How many times have we heard that term, as if it is an excuse for mediocrity or failure? Well...let me say that the accusation of “playing the race card” is gaslighting at its best. For those who may not know exactly what gaslighting is, gaslighting is using manipulation to get people to question their own reasoning and sanity. So, when we are accused of “playing the race card”, the accusers are saying that our opinions, feelings and experiences are not only invalid but that we are using the so-called “race card” as an excuse.

Recently, I was giving a lecture about the blackness of ancient Egypt (or Kemet as the citizens called it) to a mixed audience of AUSA (Afrikans from the United States of America), East Indians, and white people. During the question-and-answer period, a white man who was (I assume) well meaning, asked a “loaded” question. He asked that if it was understood by experts that ancient Egypt was in Afrika and was Afrikan, why was it necessary to stress so much that the ancient Egyptians were black. I answered with quotations from racist “experts” over the years that repeatedly said that Blacks were barbarian and that Afrika and Afrikans had contributed nothing to civilization. Some even said that we were subhuman and were fortunate to have been enslaved because our enslavement enabled us to become “civilized”. This is despite the laws that made it illegal for us to learn to read.

Then, I continued with my answer to him by relating that through the 339 years that we had been legally enslaved in the United States (1526-1865) and the 97 years of legal American Apartheid or segregation in the United States (from the Dred Scott Decision in 1857 to the Brown vs. the Board of Education Decision in 1954) as well as the thousands of acts of domestic terrorism against AUSA (hundreds of lynchings, dozens of race massacres like Tulsa, OK, Rosewood, FL, Wilmington, NC and Ellenton, SC, and “redlining”) the “race card” was a trump card (no pun intended) that was emblazoned into our psyches. In fact, it would not be an overstatement to say that not to be aware of the “race card” could be fatal for AUSA.

In my opinion, the history of AUSA in this continent for the past 700-800 years is marked by our ability to understand, recognize and adjust to the “race card”.

After the gentlemen heard my answers, he mentioned that he didn’t think that the consideration of race should be made so important, especially since there was only one race, the human race. My response was that he was fortunate and privileged that he could think that way and could live a normal life without considering race. He then became quiet.

My father, grandfather, great-grandfather, great-great grandfather and my great-great- great grandfather (who was kidnapped from what is now Angola in West Central Afrika in the late 17th or early 18th century) had to walk a thin line that was primarily defined by the “race card”. My great-great grandmothers were raped by white men with no recourse because of the “race card.”

I embrace the “race card” because it has defined the existence of AUSA in this country for almost 800 years. We have been conditioned in fire to see everything through the “race card” for all that time, to live with the ever present reality of race, racial discrimination, racial violence, etc. and now we are expected to say, “Oh, ok. It’s a new day” and forget our history.

Nope!! That ain’t gonna happen.

The race card has been, is currently and will be a reality in the United States.

Food for thought.