Minister Ari S. Merretazon,
M.S.CED, Board Member
Too many people in high, middle, and low places in America are still in denial about the crimes against humanity represented by the monstrous destruction of human life, culture, and human possibilities called The Holocaust of African Enslavement and Trade.
This human tragedy covers a continuum from 1440 to the present.Often, when justice and repair is sought for such crimes, it is tagged by many “Europeanized” and “Americanized” Africans as “playing the race card” or the
“victim card.” To counter this rebuff, the “context card” must be used. The “context card” is
As an expected outcome of this teaching moment, it is my objective to transfer within this short commentary,
enough defining information wherein we as Americanized Africans will use the context card as the predicate for the re-constructing of our thinking and behavior so that we might continue the struggle for economic justice, repair and sovereignty as all humans do.
The “context card” outlines and describes the defining elements of the economic legacy of Americanized Africans. In essence, my point is public policy and terror in America is still based on race, and, therefore, it must be challenged and re-constructed based on race, in the context of enslavement, and not the condescending notions of an inherent curse of God, and permanent social, economic, political pathologies, or civil rights.
I am simply using the word “context” as defined by Webster’s New World College Dictionary, Fourth Edition meaning., the whole situation, background, or environment relevant to a particular event; circumstances in which an event occurred or occurs; a setting.”
There is no card in the human capital development deck that can beat the context card because it is the core element of our moral universe. Like “deuces are wild” the context card out ranks all cards in the human capital development deck. Also, the context card is a key resource to be used at an opportune time to contend with and beat back assaults on our capacity as a people.
The comparatively small degree of economic development of Americanized Africans is often wrongly and purposefully regarded as high achievement and success. This is a delusion created, controlled, and filtered by the "matrx"
convergence strategies of the descendents of the “founding fathers” and the “power elite” of America, for example, chattel property, integration, Christian religion, civil rights, diversity, wealth-building, and, the first black
person, place or thing, to do this or that.
Please know and understand that, with no disrespect or disregard to origin, African-Americans are not to be compared with the contemporary surge of our African brothers and sisters into
The context card in not an excuse, it is posited as the cause and the reason for our status in
To trump the “ matrix-race card” and the “matrix-victim card,” I will not occupy the reader with the well established supporting economic and historical data, but play the “context card” so we may, as Brother Yumy Odom, Chairman, The Frator Heru Institute, often say, “start a revolution where it truly counts: in the mind!"
The vertical social system of human destruction, enslavement and trade, the beginning of “capitalism,” is the causality of the under-developed Black economy in
