Chain Letter to America: The One Thing You Can Do to End Racism

Introduction In the midst of political and racial divisions in America, I heard a republican congressman speaking to the media, he said: “With open eyes, open ears, open mind and you walk away with some understanding…”; which echoes my intent for writing this book: mutual understanding of one another’s sociopolitical history and polygonal personal perspectives and values as Americans; while honoring our first amendment right to freedom of expression and to redress our combined grievances with one another through open minded and open hearted conversations. This notion would optimistically bring about mutual understanding of each other beyond racial and cultural barriers. If you take one thing away from reading this book, I hope it’s that our numerous races, ethnicities, beliefs and values manifested through comparative historical and contextual exploration serve as a miscible advantage or a harmonious mixture when added together; that could conceivably strengthen and not threaten this critical juncture in a country birthed in individual freedom and equality.” In the following pages, you will find a series of essays, fiction and poetry written between the election of Obama and the administration of Trump; offered to you as a panoramic canvas of my experiences as a Haitian-American immigrant and an omaĝe to other immigrants and descendants of immigrants of this country… and their inarguable contributions to the cultural and economic bastion that is United States of America. The Africans’ indispensable contributions of slave labor and later contributions as soldiers, scientists, inventors, and artists; the Haitians’ contributions as the first free black nation that inspired the slave revolution in America and elsewhere when they staged the only successful slave rebellion against the French and winning their independence. They also fought in the American revolutionary war, helping to defeat the British for which they are memorialized in Savanah, Georgia in a colossal monument featuring the then little boy who would be the first emperor of Haiti—Henri Christophe—beating on a drum and marching into battle. Venerated sociologist, civil rights activist and cofounder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909, W.E.B. Dubois, whose father was Haitian, was the first black man to earn a doctorate from Harvard in 1895 and Haitian trader Jean Baptiste Point Du Sable was credited with the founding of the American city of Chicago! The Asians weathered the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882—which was a federal law prohibiting all immigration of Chinese laborers—mostly due to complains from white American laborers scapegoating them for high unemployment rates among “white men”; this after they helped built the transcontinental railroad which would aid American travel and trade economy by way of westward expansion connecting the east to the west. The Irish endured “No Irish Need Apply” indignities to contribute as well to the building of the transcontinental railroad and later joined the Russians in making indelible contributions to literature among other seminal achievements. Since the civil rights movement of the past in the mid-20th century, replicated in the Black Lives Matter movement of the present in early 21st century…in the purported greatest democracy in the world, we have seen violence used as a subsidiary method as a desperate attempt to silence “the other” in America’s racial schism. However, as the fêted revolutionary writer Gorge Luis Borges stated, “Violence is the last refuge of the weak.” The use of political power to intimidate, subjugate and oppress “the other” is and has always been an unequivocal reality in our beloved American country. We have seen it to a great extinct in the form of capricious and racist systemic policies designed to disempower the so called “minorities” (which I believe as a marginalizing misnomer) and empower the “majority.” But what is political power? According to Dr. Gene Sharp, author of The Politics of Nonviolent Action, political power is “…the totality of means, influences and pressures including, authority, rewards, and sanctions available to achieve the objectives of the power holder, especially those of government, the state and those groups in opposition.” A textbook manifestation of this scenario is what we are currently experiencing with President Donald Trump’s administration and the coercive partisan power play between the democrats in the House of Representatives and the republicans in the senate. A situation that can only be remedied if the people refuse to accept and consequently exercise their freedom of speech rights as Americans and demand bipartisan cooperation for the betterment of all Americans, regardless of whether they are aligned with the democrat or republican party; thus affirming the fact that we all live in one united, not divided country. In America’s history, we have witnessed how the power of nonviolent protest of maligned African Americans effected the United States unconstitutional segregationist Jim Crow laws that kept “blacks” and “whites” segregated but allegedly “equal” We have seen the effects of the civil rights movement—led by Martin Luther King Jr. among others—that desegregated the country and re-affirmed African Americans their constitutional right to vote in 1965—minus all the conjured up and mostly southern barriers like literacy tests designed to keep them from the polls—almost a century after the 15th amendment to the constitution was ratified to that end. All together, we have seen nonviolent protest change the narrative in America by way of the abolitionist movement in the 19th century, the civil rights movement in the 20th century and the black lives matter movement in the 21st century; which yielded and are still yielding results and proving that nonviolent protest works (consider Gandhi of India or Mandela of South Africa) despite Trump’s claim that “protesters” are “useless.” Maybe someone should remind him that America was founded on the principals of protest in the form of the Boston Tea Party as the colonies railed against taxation without representation by the British monarchy. Besides being an affirmative missive of our collective humanity… this book is a reconciliatory nod to our past and a meditative extrapolation, interjection and celebration of our present day United States or ‘US’. Enjoy!”