The Vultures of a Culture

Uncut stand-up comedy speaks the truth.  We are clearly in a time where mainstream television is no longer the primary medium of the masses.  Likewise, relentless stand-up comedians are the voices of this new era. Comedy is being restricted by censorship, yet humor is the main arena of communication where current events can be discussed without being stifled by  political correctness.  Truthfully speaking, U.S. society is losing, due to the fact that any stand-up comic who speaks with complete honesty is banished from economic opportunities available through mainstream media.

William E. Gienapp  documents the declaration of war that the Union States made to the Confederacy, which was signed and took effect on January 1, 1863.  In his book, Abraham Lincoln and Civil War America: A Biography, Gienapp addressed those facts in great detail. Truthfully speaking, the Civil War was about the South’s attempt at secession, thinking their economic power allowed them to ignore federal authority.  A few years after the Civil War, it was business as usual for the U.S. South. Slavery evolved into “convict leasing,” “Jim Crow,” and  “mass incarceration.”  

The Thirteenth Amendment was ratified on December 6, 1865. In the book, Lincoln and the Thirteenth Amendment, by Christian G. Samito, the events surrounding its passage are explained in full detail.  Garrett Epps’ book, Democracy Reborn: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Fight for Equal Rights in Post-Civil War America, explains that the 14th Amendment was ratified on July 28th, 1868.  The philosophical ramifications of the 13th and 14th Amendments are frequently discussed in government, academia, and in legal forums around the world.  The book, Twice the Work of Free Labor: The Political Economy of Convict Labor in the New South, by Alex Lichtenstein, features a chapter called, Except as a Punishment for  Crime, where it explains how the Institution of (Slavery) is now perpetuated through mass incarceration and institutional White Supremacy.

Something interesting is said in the book, White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide, by Carol Anderson. She writes that, “Millions of enslaved people and their ancestors had built the enormous wealth of the United States; indeed, in 1860, 80 percent of the nation’s gross national product was tied to slavery.” Nothing substantial was received in return, and nothing was ever admittedly owed. Reconstruction made a feeble attempt to address the destruction of Slavery, but nothing was ever done to truthfully rectify  that system of White Supremacy.  The book, Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II, by Douglas A. Blackmon, explained how, “Vagrancy, the offense of a person not being able to prove at a given moment that he or she is employed, was a new and flimsy concoction dredged up from legal obscurity at the end of the nineteenth century by the state legislatures of Alabama and other southern states.” As a side note, great nations are measured in relation to how they convince people that the system works in the best interest of all of its citizens.  The USA is unmatched in simultaneously allowing both economic exploitation and capitalism’s opportunities. 

More than 250 years before the Civil War, Black American intelligence and its mass labor created the financial dynasty that White Supremacy still reaps its wealth from. U.S. prosperity was based on a multitude of agricultural areas, including tobacco, and the juggernaut cash-crop cotton, which supplied North America and much of Europe’s needs. That boom was responsible for the wealth that catapulted the system of U.S. capitalism to the top of the economic world.  Coincidentally, convict labor continued the institution of U.S. Slavery. Douglass A.  Blackmon explains how, “Under a standing arrangement between the county and a vast subsidiary of the industrial titan of the North-U.S. Steel Corporation-the sheriff turned the young man over to the company for the duration of his sentence. In return the subsidiary, Tennessee Coal, Iron & Railroad Company, gave the county $12 a month to pay off Cottenham’s fine and fees.”  Convict labor, brick by brick, rail by rail, perpetually-benefited from American Descendants of Slavery (ADOS) and forced them to perpetually work for low wages, far less than their worth. The U.S. was first financed and built by the physical bodies of bondage, allowing the U.S. to prosper from the strongest, cheapest, and smartest workforce on the planet. The faithful prayed, waited, and worked, hoping their children would have a life better than theirs, like they still hope for today.  Being relegated to a permanent underclass is the repayment.

Here is another question. Who are the originators of United States music? Norman Kelley edited in the groundbreaking book, R & B (Rhythm and Business): the Political Economy of Black Music, where he also wrote an essay talking about how, “No other group in this nation has left a deeper stamp or a greater repertoire of styles and genres in America’s storehouse of cultural heritage than African-Americans. When people worldwide refer to American music, they often mean, by way of shorthand, ‘black’ music, due to the simple but largely unrecognized fact that black music is, essentially, America’s mainstream music.”  When Kelley says, “African-Americans, he is referring to American Descendants of Slavery (ADOS); the people who were the human machines that literally built the United States and made it what it is today, agriculturally and industrially, thus making it a global destination for those seeking the American dream. 

Kelley further explains how, “It is the contention of this essay that black music operates within a “structure of stealing” that dates back to the time when the ancestors of today’s African-Americans began arriving to this country as slaves…Their heritage and transforming culture, however, were either ignored or exploited with impunity-or ridiculed, as in the case of black-faced minstrel music performed by whites in the middle of the nineteenth century.”  Although the terms used have changed, the  institution of Slavery has continued, whether it pertains to entertainment, sports, or  commerce. Something might be missed here. This is not a literary pity-party. This is an example of what the story really is. In order to build, it is important to recognize the foundation that is being built upon.