The Real America: A Black Perspective

By Bashir Muhammad Akinyele

“And when I speak, I don't speak as a Democrat. Or a Republican. Nor an American. I speak as a victim of America's so-called democracy. You and I have never seen democracy - all we've seen is hypocrisy. When we open our eyes today and look around America, we see America, not through the eyes of someone who has enjoyed the fruits of Americanism. We see America through the eyes of someone who has been the victim of Americanism. We don't see any American dream. We've experienced only the American nightmare.”

-Malcolm X (Omowale El Hajj El Malik El Shabazz)

The January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol by President Donald Trump's supporters to stop democracy in the US was a needed teachable movement.

Every four years, after the national US Presidential elections are over in November, the US government passes the electoral votes through the Senate in Congress to make the winning presidential candidate America's official U.S. President. This is America’s democratic process for electing the executive branch of the US government. The failed American government coup attempt by Trump's supporters left many people angry. And they should be. Yes, many people in America are outraged by Trump’s antics; but there is a deeper lesson to the events of January 6, 2021.

Unfortunately, some people are trying to revise the history and contradictions of America under a safe rug. However, in the eyes of many Afrikan people, American democracy has been nothing more than disguised hypocrisy. Racism has been at the core of imposing true democracy in America for centuries. As educators, we must teach the unaltered facts of US history to help America liberate itself from its love affair with racism and anti-democracy. The United States was built on white supremacy. The ideology of white supremacy gave birth to systemic racism.

White supremacy forces many people in America to pander to racism systematically. White supremacy also justifies fascism. This has caused many White people in America to develop a false identity, which gives them superiority. But the fictitious belief in supremacy held by many White people has led to preventing Black people from enjoying American democracy. For centuries, systematic racism denied democracy to the Afrikan American community, to women, to Indigenous people, and Latinos. America has a long history of wrought with hatred and violence.

This hatred and violence has been especially targeted at Black people and other ethnic groups of color! Throughout US history, systematic acts of racism have violently and legally protected whiteness in America. White supremacy destroys entire Black towns, discredits Afrikan history, consistently denies reparations to Afrikan Americans, kills many Black freedom fighters, justifies police violence in the Black community, neutralizes Black self-determination, and annihilates Black liberation organizations.

White supremacy has made Afrikan people hate everything Black, but love everything White. Strongly-held notions of supremacy justified the enslavement of Black people in America for over 250 years. White supremacy justified culturally crippling us blacks - making our own continental Afrikan mother tongue illegal in America. White supremacy justified making Afrikan culture subhuman. White supremacy justified the rape of Black women during American slavery and segregation. White supremacy justified the emasculation of Black men.

White supremacy justified the destruction of the Black family in America. It was also the conduit for nearly 100 years of inequalities, which came from racial segregation. White supremacy justified biological and chemical warfare towards the Black community in America. It justified lynchings that took thousands of innocent Black lives. An indoctriunation of White supremacy judiciously causes the mass incarceration of Black people in America. White supremacy has systemically worked in politics to disenfranchise the Black vote in America.

The adoption of white supremacy ultimately justifies Black oppression.

Unfortunately, white supremacy is under remote control. White supremacy will produce more Trumps until it is destroyed in America. But let’s be clear; the white adoption of supremacy in the US existed well before Donald Trump. White supremacy in America has produced a very long list of racist US Presidents. White superiority has been here in the US since 1607 (the year when the first English colony settled in Jamestown, Virginia). It was here in 1620 when white English Pilgrims settled on Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts.

It was here in 1619 when Black people arrived in chains from Afrika by way of the Dutch in Jamestown, Virginia. It was here on July 4, 1776, the official birthdate of the United States of America. It was here back in 1787, during the founding of the US Constitution, which legalized protecting the American enslavement of Afrikan Americans. Throughout history, the US edition of democracy has decimated the Afrikan American community. This is the real America.

But if America truly wants to be the shining example of democracy in the world, she must give up her love affair with white supremacy and systematic racism. Racial politics are crippling America’s march toward real democracy

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