Reverse Racism

I was talking to the guy in my life on the telephone the other night, while watching a movie on BET that looked pretty good, when he made a comment about not wanting to be in competition with the television.

I honestly try to live life more than I watch it, it’s a conscious thought, so I certainly didn’t hesitate to snuggle into the blankets and umm put the television on mute.

I still watched for a few minutes, but found not being able to hear the words was really just irritating anyway, so the television went off and I enjoyed the company delivered by the voice on the other end of the line instead.

Quite a long time later, after hanging up, I turned the television back on, as I generally do in my half asleep state, and watched the rest of this movie. It was a great movie. However since I missed quite a bit of it, I don’t know the name, and I’m terrible about remembering actors names, but Queen Latifah played a supporting role, as the movies main female character’s best friend.

The movie was about the history of Hip Hop and it’s direct effect on the lives of both the male and female leads in the movie. The feeling you had the first time you ever heard hip hop, the way that you felt just a little bit cheated when it became main stream, when that something personal, that not every one understood or was involved in was suddenly watered down and ‘popular’.

The male and female leads in this move are life long best friends, they’ve traveled life with one another, they love one another, but it’s going to take some time for them to figure that out.

Well tonight on my way home with my sister and best friend, I was telling them about this movie… and one of my favorite parts of the movie, where the female lead says she “Wants to eat Cucumber Sandwiches with the Crust Cut Off” .. of course that’s an odd line, so I gave them some background, she’s kind of a tomboy, at her best friends (they guy she belongs with) fiance’s wedding she avoids the cucumber fare, and jokes about it with him the next day.

Later when she’s engaged, tells him he’s supposed to be happy for her, like she was happy for him, because she wants to have parties and serve cucumber sandwhiches with the crust cut off too! I thought it was sweet.. anyway..

My sister said that she believes cucumber sandwiches with the crust cut off are probably a white people food. I’ve never eaten cucumber sandwiches with or without the crust cut off, and I’m seriously not about to try one anytime soon.

My best friend teased my sister told her if she wasn’t careful she’d end up as a feature story in my blog, and I did admit, that yes, cucumber sandwiches were going to be mentioned tonight ..

The conclusion was that they belived cucumber sandwhiches to be a prissy rich white girl food, but that prissy rich black girls  may eat them too…

There really isn’t a point in this post, aside from the odd things that people say… I know my sister didn’t mean anything by her comment, and I suppose some foods are considered cultural.. I ate some a spongy dish made by my Ethiopian friend Sammy, and I’m pretty sure that noone would consider my calling that an Ethiopian food wrong, sooo, maybe I’m just paying to much attention this week.

Sadly though, I have no experience with cucumber sandwiches, so I have no further comment at this time

More than ten years ago, in 1991 the City of New York needed a new federal building. While conducting a cultural site survey for the federal office building at the corner of Broadway and Duane Street, construction workers came across a very big surprise. Human remains, skeletons primarily buried in plain pine box caskets. It seems the city had found a cemetery a very very ancient cemetery.

After a bit of research it was discovered that these unknowing construction workers had unearthed a very big part of Americas history, more than 400 enslaved Africans were buried under this old parking lot, in the slice of land marked for the new building.

This find possibly brought to light the earliest collection of American colonial remains of any ethnic group. The unearthing gave America a chance to learn, to educate and to discover, which is why I have been quite surprised that I have never heard of any of the events I am about to begin piecing together over the next several weeks.

Think about slavery, where slaves lived, what they did, how they spent their lives. Close your eyes and just imagine the era. When I preform this mental activity I see the South, I see cotton, tobacco, farms, plantations, I see southern living and southern slavery.

I don’t see New York. I’m sure it was there, history says so. But frankly I don’t know much of anything about New York in this area, I certainly don’t know how these slaves lived, what they did. What were their lives like? What things did they accomplish?

This amazing find unearthed centuries of hidden African-American history. “The African Burial Ground proved that Harlem is not the only black New York,” said Eustace Pilgrim, director of graphics at the Department of City Planning and one of the memorial finalists.

That rings very true to me, people lived, they were there. I want to know of them. So now I know of more than 4000 African souls that lived and breathed in New York, the remains currently being studied by scholars at Howard University are every day bringing us closer together, teaching us about their existence their origins.

Archaeologists from Howard University began removing the African remains, one skeleton after another. But while this excavation was going on, and plans for the new Federal Building were put on hold, though not changed. Resentment and anger were brewing among what started out as a very small community group.

These African people still remain nameless to us, but a great fight fought with hearts and souls have brought them to the for-front of my own and many other minds, these people are no longer gone and forgotten, their lives are now properly celebrated.

As I’m only beginning my adventure with this piece of history that merges African History with American History I won’t be providing a lot of dates today, or concrete facts, but I will be looking into what happened, and how it felt, and how they city of New York embarrassed itself and it’s citizens, citizens of all nationalities.

The remains of these African people were removed from their graves one by one, along with bones came ancient artifacts, clues to the who’s and the where’s and along with all of that came resentment, anger and frustration.

When something of this nature occurs, by law the community must be allowed to be involved. By involved I mean there must be a community meeting, and some not very bright guy from the GSA must attend and at the very least pretend to listen to the community.

This man’s job, as far as I can tell it was to submit himself to the words flowing throughout the room during the meetings, repeat some of those words later to those with more power than himself, and then come back and tell the community that the government was pretty much doing what they intended to do all along.

As they realized that the group fighting for the rights of these ancient African remains was growing greatly in size, the GSA began to offer up some trinkets of acknowledgement. Starting with plaque in the original building.

That idea was passed over pretty quickly, the community made one point very clear time and time again. These African people may not have had the easiest of lives, they may not have had the happiest time on this earth, but what they always had, was the promise of a peaceful and permanent final resting place.

The community wanted the graves to be recovered and left in rest, right where they were.

The GSA’s next offer came with $250,000.00 and a new cemetery a few blocks away… and another plaque in the federal building… I guess that’s a bit better, this way if the souls get lost during the move, they can go back and check the plaque for directions…

To Be Continued: