GONE WITH WIND AND OTHER LIFE LESSONS.

All of that to keep a life of grandeur by keeping others underfoot. The words, “our slaves”, how does or did that ever sound like the right thing? So growing up as a little black girl in these united states, my mom who hailed from the south talked about growing up, it’s what she didn’t say her or grand that stuck with me. They spoke in hushed tones about that “slavery spirit” of the Ole South. She let me read Gone with the Wind and later watch it and discern the things I needed to understand life as a person of color. Gone with the Wind taught me All I needed to know about the civil war, the ole south, and the feelings of whiteness. When the movie first came to t.v. my mommy and I watched it, as a child I noticed a few things, how happy the plantation owners were, how the only thing their sons and daughters had to do was be pretty and handsome. That every need was taken care of by, you guessed it us. I watched as little black girls like me, were fanning the pale skinned ladies with fans as they napped before the next event. As I grew older and watched it I learned of how the South was prepared to leave the union and go their own way, because the time had come for them to no longer have slaves, what not own human beings? Do things for ourselves, ridiculous, just utter nonsense, we will fight. Even though, these were gentile soft handed men who did no labor, they felt that ego and bravado would see them through. By the time I went to college and watched, I understood some additional things. The life of a “belle” was early marriage, children and living a life of rest and relaxation. When their men died off they finally had to get to work to survive. Up until then only us and the share cropper group did labor. That bloody war was a brutal short lived one, I am still confused why they fly the flag of the side that lost. That era was coming to an end and to avoid living in the now, they chose to fight to be lazy pretty much. We believed the lie that we all would get 40 acres and a mule, which could have been wonderful, the pie would have been spread and shared for all to rebuild. But nah, that was rescinded, and to add insult, yes INSULT to it all, white southern folks were given reparations for losing their “free labor” =slaves. But we got nothing. We can’t even get the lynching bill passed, the voting rights bill passed, America? What’s happening? I watched again during the recession and was angered as jobs left, mortgages went insane and I lost my home and I felt just like Miss Scarlet about land, I was tired, I was hungry, I was angry, I had mouths to feed, but I fasted and prayed my way out, she was a shark and gobbled her way out, but as a woman, I never forgot that solo struggle to survive, stuck in the middle, not quite destitute but still no ducets. It just goes from bad to worse, all the thinking of how to keep people working for free so you can have your glam life at the pain of others. So many creations of laws to incarcerate our men and women so they can work off some made up crime or infraction that had no expiration date. I am tired of the school to prison pipeline. Companies creating labor camps inside, but when they get out they can’t work at these places, they can’t truly rehab their lives and begin again. If we as Americans truly want better, we all must act better, stop pretending like Miss Scarlet, that you can’t bear to listen to the horrors of slavery and Jim Crow but pockets of your family are biracial, spare me the It was so long ago, we should get over it, when Jim Crow lasted officially until 1968 hmmm, not that long ago. Deal with your history America, the good the bad and the ugly, only from learning from the past we can move forward as a whole. Take your hands from your ears, open up your eyes, see that some things need fixing. One Nation Under God with Liberty and Justice for ALL, that’s us too, all of us.