WHAT TO DO IN CASE OF FIRE?

Breaking the chain of the transatlantic slave trade.

In just about every public building in these United States there is a common protocol for an emergency involving a fire.  When I was a kid in school there was always a notification posted in the hallways, stairways, in places of assembly and just outside of the elevators that read,

“What To Do In Case Of Fire?”

There was a list of instructions following this question all providing guidance for those who might be caught in what could be the most challenging moment of their lives…

Freedman and southerners argue over work contracts and wages during reconstruction.

For as long as I can remember the Black American Community has been in such a predicament! We have been under fire, we have been living in a burning house threatening our very existence but this fire has not been the textbook chemical combustion we studied in high school physics, it has been the continual threat of racism!  Racism is the fire that Black Americans must fight daily, we must wake up to it, we inhale its toxic smoke we feel the singe of its caustic heat, we experience the challenge it poses to our dignity and public image… we are a peoples who are constantly threatened with destruction by fire!  Growing up I remember my father’s famous saying he coined when I was a young boy.  I cannot count the times he has proclaimed this truth such that without any effort I can quote him here:

“WE BASK ON THE SEA OF APATHY AS WE SLOWLY DROWN IN THE FLOOD

OF INSTITUTIONALIZED RACISM!”

As a man of 50 years the prophetic words of my father stand out as undeniable truth!  I am awed by their clarity, their elegance of expression  so real evoking a balance of complexity and simplicity…

I find it most interesting that Black Americans can be so docile and naïve in the face of racism.  They expect it and understand it because they have gotten used to it.  Its effects outwardly appear to have been neutralized because they no longer fear it, they expect it and they know it. Black Americans simply find creative ways to transcend racism and move on. 

Black hotel workers were fired from this late 1880's hotel due to racial pressure.  Their jobs were then given to white workers.

But this is only a façade, it is no real solution at all because of the economic helplessness of the black community it does not matter if racism is feared or not it is a calculated inevitability.  Racism has been refined to a colorless, odorless poison that Black Americans consume at unawares through the consequence of poverty and ignorance and lack of empowerment; they don’t even recognize it when it comes fully robed to their door… 

For others who have had a better chance at beating the odds but find they have fallen victim to their own apathy and vanity blaming their woes on racism is a gross, ungentlemanly and cowardly claim.   For example, the saga encountered by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was a circus insulting to those whose lives were claimed by shameful sport of lynching.  In truth, the Black American community should have forced him to retract his spurious claim likening his media interrogation to a “Modern Day Lynching.”

We do not fear racism any longer the way we do not fear a cold or the loss of a loved one… we have become accustomed to racism… we accept it and accommodate it in our daily lives because we do not expect it to ever go away and because we do not know any other reality…  Because Black men are not stolen away in the night as they were before to be found in a riven, decapitated smoldering mass swinging from a tree in the morning we think that lynching has died.  But every time a black man is incarcerated, stripped of his citizenship, his right to vote and his right to freedom this episode plays itself out again and again and again.  We cannot leave a black man blameless if he falls into the traps of racism!  We must admit that it is a trap he should know well, he can see it and yet he walks directly into its jaws.  We have become blind and careless in the face of racism cursing the white man for setting traps we are foolish enough to walk inside of.  Clearly we have become numbed by racism.  Racism imbibed in gradual doses from adolescence to adulthood has built up our immune system to its threat, not to it its effects.  The result is that we have dropped our defenses, left the battlements unmanned.  In my father’s words again:

“WE BASKED ON THE SEA OF APATHY AS WE SLOWLY DROWNED IN THE FLOOD

OF INSTITUTIONALIZED RACISM!”

Unfortunately the same cannot be said for racists… they are empathically paralyzed against those they perceive as enemies and philosophically motivated to harm them through racism, they are interminably locked in a closed box of anger and hatred from which they will never mature except in the amplification of their hatred for those they deem inferior.   In them racism is creative and tireless… ignoring them is only a sweet invitation for them to impose even greater stresses upon us… They hate everyone who is not them, they do not respect Black Americans or anything that race has achieved!  They delight in the pain and suffering of those who cannot or will not defend themselves against their insane and unwarranted psychosis… they feel entitled to do so by reducing other races to the level of sub-human existence… racism is a sickness similar to that of a rapist, a child molester, a serial killer… The lust and hunger racists have for evil is nearly inexorable.  But because it it ultimately mortal we know it can be assuaged and even cured.

The League Of Revolutionary Black Workers fought for union rights of Black and White employees in  the  Detroit  automobile factories.

The only defense against racism is to be consistently strong and organized. Those who seek to fight racism must meet it peacefully with a clear show of strength at all fronts challenging it in ways that will not allow its cancer to bear fruit!  But to do this takes organization, solidarity, cohesiveness, cooperation, family, brotherhood, charity, sensibility, community, ethics, all of the characteristics that drugs, ignorance, incarceration and other factors have stolen from the black community since the late 1960’s to the present.    Many Black Americans gave up the sanctity of their hard-bought communities to drug dealers, thugs, criminals, prostitutes, hustlers, and murderers who turned them into cesspools of fear and despair.  Lacking any hope or direction of their own they forcefully denied everyone else the right to peaceful self-determination in effect carrying out the primary directive of the very racists who cursed their existence and doubted their ability escape the clutch of the racists noose.

These Black workers in a northern factory at the turn of the century were paid equal wages to the guild workers.

In the end the greatest challenge of the black community at large and Black Americans in specific is not to allow the depravity and hatred so typical of racism to pervert us.  We must not imitate racism by imposing the same bias against other human beings.  We must not begrudge other races from enjoying the fruits of America.  We of all should know better.  The weight falls upon us to set the example for decent folk to follow.  We must be the bigger man!   We must not serve back the same bitterness as we are served by racists.  Our legacy of struggle in America shows that we can achieve success through peaceful and intellectual solidarity.  The time to unite to effect positive change is not when our civil rights are being threatened because the vigil and battle for peace and freedom is a never ending battle.  We must stop blaming our fate on the white man an on racism because we have the power to overcome racism and live in harmony with all races.  All white men are not enemies! Together we both fought and died for racial equality in America.  Now it is time for the Black community to wake up and take full responsibility for itself!  Yes, racism exists but it is powerless in the face of determination and unity.  What the black community must do is to take a good hard honest look at itself and do the hard work of repair and rejuvenation. 

 The first step is taking responsibility for our own deeds!  The second step is identifying the obstacles to our social and economic progress.  The third step is identifying clear goals and objectives toward rebuilding our communities and families, our economic and social networks.  The fourth step is developing a plan to implement these goals and objectives.  The fifth step is galvanizing ourselves to implement the goals and objectives establishing stable and sustainable think-tanks to assist in the universal task of realizing these plans.  The sixth step is to establish a coherent system to monitor the development and growth of community, social and economic programming utilising our think-tanks to develop policy and strategy for the future.  The seventh step is to devise a way to ensure that the established network remains culturally relevant and responsive to social and economic trends and remains sufficiently decentralized that it cannot be overly institutionalized; that it does not become invested in its own preservation at the expense of natural, positive evolution. 

So if anyone ever asks what to do in case of fire you can tell them that the fire has already been burning and is now in danger of totally consuming the house, the yard, the neighborhood and the business district; all that is held dear.  Tell them that this fire is easy to put out, it requires that Black Americans wake up and blame no one but themselves for their current predicament!  Tell them that all we have to do is to stop:

BASKING ON THE SEA OF APATHY AS WE SLOWLY DROWN IN THE FLOOD

OF INSTITUTIONALIZED RACISM!”

FIN

Written by David Vollin (Son) and William Vollin (Father)