Quote:I'm always amazed by these posts. It's always the same story. Black person talks about the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, institutionalized racism, discrimination, and civil rights and there is always some white person that attempts to make it seem like their history of oppression wasn't all that bad. It seems every time a black person tries to communicate these very real, tangible, historical struggles it is met with "But", "But" and accusations of victim mentality. Black people can't even have serious dialogues with some whites (mostly Conservatives), on race because these issues aren't even real to them. Whenever we do bring up race, we are chastised for playing the "race card". I don't know of a time I've ever brought up race and someone said, "Yea I can see that". You simply cannot have this discussion. It's like the wife who is consistently abused emotionally, but has a man that swears he is the nicest husband in the world. No matter how often she tells him, he always finds a way to reverse the blame. He can't even offer an apology because he simply refuses to acknowledge there is a problem.


My three times great grandfather was a slave, working on a farm in the Deep South during the 1840s. He owned nothing, not even his own name. He had a wife and kids but they were slaves too (thank you Ancestry.com). He didn't have an option of leaving, or escaping persecution. His only option was to work and survive. That is it. There was no making it out of the confines of the Georgia farm that he labored on. Where would he go? If he ran a way he was a dead man walking. A black man can hide his thoughts but not his skin. He was what he was. When slavery ended, can you guess what he continued doing? He continued working on the farm because most blacks couldn't find anything other than unskilled work. Eventually, he made his way down to Florida. Hardships followed. He had my two times great grandfather sometime in the late 1890s, and he lived a long life of laboring. But he never owned anything. There are no records of how many times he was chastised, or called the N-Word, or beaten up, or harassed by racists. People in his day, and in his father's day had to be real careful what they uttered. At some point during, the Great Depression he had my Grandfather which was significantly worst for African Americans. Poverty was a way of life. Saving money was out of the question. Survival was all that mattered. My Grandfather eventually served in WW2 and Korea, and was able to make a decent life after. He bought a house in a quiet black neighborhood, but would always tell me about how badly whites treated him. You couldn't go to their pools, watch movies in their theaters, even looking at a white woman could get you in serious trouble. Trying to vote meant taking ridiculous tests. My father born in 1950, a full decade and a half before the Civil Rights era faced much of the same things. He told me many a time as a child how he'd go to public bathrooms and signs would say "Whites"and "Colored". A fountain would be in the middle. One pipe split into either direction. It was segregation at it's finest. My father struggled too. He worked hard, and studied as best as he could. Jacksonville had an extremely racist climate during the 1950 through 1970s but eventually he was able to land a job working with JEA and then Fire and Rescue in the mid 70s. He had a very long and successful career but that opportunity would likely not have been there without Affirmative Action. Whites simply controlled everything. My father didn't go to college. Many black families are just recently having college graduates (I will be the first to receive three degrees in science). Many are still fighting, clawing, and doing the best they can to be good Americans. We simply want to be happy and live in peace like everyone else and although racial tensions have cooled it seems that some of the hostility toward us is returning. Police brutality, multiple shootings, racist rhetoric from certain politicians. It's hard to understand unless you are black.