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At the end of May of this 2020, I published a podcast under the title "The Original Sin Of The United States". This second narrative is a continuation of the same theme, offering a much more detailed picture and an overview of the options at hand. The segment was titled "The Original Sin of the United States" to refer to the intrinsic evil that the nation has suffered from before its founding. This irreparable evil that is generated from the dark time of slavery of all those men and women from Africa brought against their will for the purpose of their physical, emotional and spiritual exploitation arriving in Jamestown, the Virginia colony in 1619 . By the early 1500s, colonists from Spain and Portugal brought Africans to the Americas as slaves, and Santo Domingo, the then capital of the Dominican Republic, became the first international port for the traffic of Africans. It is imperative to understand that these two nations, in fact all nations that trafficked humans as slaves, were nations at the time deeply dominated by the Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church. Recalcitrantly religious nations. Even though the basic principles of Christianity establishing and delineating parameters in human relationships, to begin with, relationships person to person and establishing a brotherhood in the image of Jesus, the founder of Christianity, none of the nations directly or indirectly responsible for the illegal capture, rapture, extradition, commercialization and degradation of human beings turning them into almost animals, they bear in mind, nor do they recognized what is sanctioned by the same god that they praise, promote and adore. The Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church is silent, the popes Alexander XVI, Julius II, Leo X, Gregory XIV and their successors, all of them in the middle of the scene, do not utter a word reproving the human catastrophe taking place almost at their doorstep. English corsairs seize a group of 20 to 30 slaves from Ndongo arriving at the Virginia colony in 1619. This group represents the first slaves brought to what will be the United States of America. With them comes the first African woman registered in Virginia. The story deserves a better and detailed narrative of this journey. These early African slaves were part of a much larger group of individuals abducted by the Portuguese colonial forces from the native kingdoms of Kongo and Ndongo. From there and after the captures, they were sent on an unimaginably forced march to the port of Luanda, today the capital of Angola. What follows is incredible, unheard of, and blameworthy. They were ordered to board the ship named San Juan Bautista bound for Veracruz! The Portuguese ship of Christian origin bearing the name of John the Baptist, the one whose figure and service to the person of Jesus of Nazareth is based on complete disagreement with the functions of this ship. Of the 350 or so Africans captured by the Portuguese forces, half of them die on the journey. Of course the papal power is silent and there is not a single word against this violation of basic human rights. Travels of terror, hunger and death even before the encounter with the pirates. As the ship San Juan Bautista approached its destination, the ship was attacked by two privateer ships, the White Lion and the Treasurer. The crews of the two ships stole up to 60 of San Juan Bautista's slaves. It was the White Lion that docked at Virginia Colony's Point Comfort and exchanged some of the prisoners for food on August 20, 1619. By the time these African slaves arrive in the Americas, English colonists see African slaves as beings of lesser human quality, stupid, ignorant, not subject to trust, not worthy of being educated, not valuable enough to be well treated. And it begins one of the darkest stages in the life of the new nation that is born, grows and prospers on the shoulders of African slaves causing unimaginable pain to millions of men, women, children and the elderly both in Africa and in America. From this date, back in 1619 and for a period of more or less 246 years until the start of the civil war, the history of this period reddens the historical foundations of the nation and defines for posterity the social patterns that will determine by the many years to come, what they are, who they are, their national identity, what treatment they are given and what value their descendants have, not only to the first 20 but to the thousands more Africans brought to the Americas as slaves. These social patterns that English settlers established to see in black Africans brought into slavery, bad- hearted beings, criminals, individuals of inferior human quality, endure in countless people who make up the white societies of the day. This violence, this human degradation, this incessant discrimination that some individual, or a group or a family of African American citizens experiences every day somewhere in the country, is just the tip of the iceberg, to use this expression, it is just a small sample of what the entire social, economic, educational, occupational and security system was structured from the nefarious, anti-Christian concepts and far from any semblance of humanitarianism brought by the English colonists, concepts accepted, applied and amassed for hundreds of years after the birth of the new nation. These social patterns that established English colonists of seeing African blacks brought into slavery, evil-hearted beings, criminals, individuals of inferior human quality have been injected over the past 400 years into the general system of the nation in all the facets, in all areas of national life, mainly in education. If you want to keep any group of individuals outcast, what do you do? The best formula is to deny them education. It is mainly what for years and years in the history of the nation has been done. The impact of all this enormous historical precedent is felt every day and at all times. Still, the national identity of African American citizens has been defined by political leaders. The following paragraph is taken from page 83 of the book titled: From Negro to Black to African American: The Power of Names and Naming Author: Mr. Ben L. Martin y publicado por: The Academy of Political Science DOI: 10.2307/2152175 In a December 1988 news conference at Chicago's Hyatt Regency O'Hare Hotel, where leaders of seventy-five black groups met to discuss a new national agenda, Jesse Jackson announce that members of their race preferred to be called "African-American." The campaign he then led to replace the term "black" met immediate success among African American opinion makers and more gradual acceptance in the national press. Jackson's cultural offensive proposed en ethnic reference for a racial one, aiming thereby to help as much as express a sense of ethnic identity among black Americans. It recalled the successful imposition of "black" over "Negro" twenty years earlier and renewed other themes of the Black Power movement in the late 1960s. Even today, we hear various specialists and experts in the field pronounce expressions such as "People of Color", for example. A real aberration, a huge insult, it occurs to me asking the question, what color? Blue, green? The subject is long and complicated, full of sensitivities and potential offense motives. The truth is that the events that we see in the newspapers and in the different national newscasts through television continue to show precisely what I denounce, the country has a social system formed with twisted principles brought by the English colonists from before the formation of the nation. How can we explain that a family of minors, including a six-year-old girl, are lying on the hot pavement and handcuffed in Colorado? The explanation is as simple as it is terrible. We have social patterns that English settlers established to see in the African blacks beings with bad hearts, criminals, individuals of inferior human quality even when they are minors! As I said before, social patterns and concepts accepted, applied and amassed for hundreds of years that endured in countless people who make up the white societies of the day, including the police officers in Aurora, Colorado. And every time the same scene is repeated, we see the exact same thing, over and over again. The case of Amy Cooper drew widespread condemnation and was fired from her job after frantically calling 911 to claim she was being threatened by “an African-American man,” bird watcher Christian Cooper. And in the case of Shaneeka Montgomery-Strickland, she was attempting to exit a Kroger parking lot when a white woman stood behind her vehicle and refused to let her leave. We can necessarily include the names of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Alatiana Jefferson, Aura Rosser, Stephon Clark, Botham Jean, Philando Castille, Alton Sterling, Michelle Cusseaux, Fredy Gray, Janisha Fonville, Eric Garner, Akai Gurley, Gabriella Navarez, Tamir Rice, Michele Brown, Tanisha Anderson... In recent months we have often heard what the authorities and the stars of national politics say after a murder at the hands of the police forces, or protests that in a pacifist format turned violent, as we have seen lately . The promises of reform, the emergence of special programs, initiatives for rapprochement and cooperation between the inhabitants of different cities and the police forces, the redistribution of financing towards local programs for the well-being of so-called minority societies, and much more. Will we actually see any changes? Will there be a real, concrete and palpable initiative in favor of a real social advance? Are police organizations reformed throughout the country? Will police violence and brutality against black citizens stop? Will the system open real paths for the advancement of black citizens? Unfortunately for these and other questions on the same genre, the answer is NO. Everything remains the same. The reason why there cannot be an authentic eradication of all these evils is because the root of the problem is not attacked, the substance that fosters and gives strength to the social patterns accepted, amassed, fostered and practiced for hundreds of years is not under attack. This substance is not easily exchangeable, it is not subject to being easily eradicated. We have taken it since we were little, we received it in elementary school, we received it in middle school, we breath it in stores, we felt it in restaurants, many receive it at home and, if that were not enough, it is still encouraged in many churches. If we want to see true changes, real, positive, lasting, tangible, not promises, not words to the wind, we must personally change, one by one. We have to think, we have to listen, we have to receive new concepts, we have to eradicate the stagnant social patterns in the spirit of the country that for a long time were accepted to see black citizens as bad-hearted beings, criminals, individuals of inferior human quality. This is a massive change, a generational change, a change in the heart of the country. This change generates a resurgence of the country, opens unsuspected paths where naturally there are problems, where naturally we can all have our opinion, where some achieve more than others, where we continue to compete, some win and others lose, but with the new mentality and the new national approach of recognizing that we all are, not equal, but very, very close to being. The road is long and from where I see it, very close to being a true national challenge. This change must take place at all levels, in all the houses where the old concepts still exist, in all the offices of our state and federal representatives, in all the offices of our congressmen, in all the police organizations, in the workshops, hospitals, banks, in all of us, in you and in me.

August 7 2020

F. Chaparro

United States Original Sin Part II The Reasons To Our Racism

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