“The judgment was set, and the books were opened.”

Daniel 7:10

Many cross-baring, scripture-quoting, Christ-confessing believers are familiar with this apocalyptic scripture of Judgment Day. Some may think to themselves, where did those books come from? We thought we had eliminated them all. Whether you are a believer such as myself, a nontheist, or an agnostic, be very certain that there is a record testifying against your actions and the misdeeds of others that you were okay with, i.e., complicit. How fascinating it is how people who face imminent doom say they saw their lives pass before them. There is a record.

In twenty-first-century America, an obscure but financially influential group of the powerful is trying to eliminate the historical and anthropological record. It is almost as though “if you can’t see it or read about it, it will become as though it never happened. This sentiment was accompanied by the false security blanket of escape from accountability and culpability on account of ignorance.

Today’s cell phone captures the historical record in nanoseconds. Without it, there would have been no George Floyd Incident or the 2020 racial reckoning that followed. The cellphone cameras of old were volumes of recorded literary, scientific, and historical works.

Quite cunning, graceful, and softspoken to outspoken ladies of eloquence and innovative feminine displays of intelligence were the enduring daughters of postbellum, otherwise known as the United Daughters of the Confederacy. They spread their venomous influence across America with a Joseph Goebbels-like propaganda campaign that was comprehensive, involving perception management spanning from erecting monuments immortalizing Confederate heroes. to changing language in school textbooks. Though they appeared to be harmless social and philanthropic debutante flowers of the South, their efforts and chronology paralleled the rise of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).

“The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery,” 

W. E. B. DuBois

The year was 1915. On Thanksgiving night, A Methodist preacher, William J. Simmons, led a group of 15 men to burn a cross atop Stone Mountain, Georgia. This marked the rededication of the KKK shortly after the release of the blockbuster movie Birth of a Nation, which depicted the time of reconstruction as a painful time of Northern Occupation and unbridled savagery by freed slaves. According to the Atlanta History Center, “The film’s premiere in Atlanta also inspired Helen Plane, president of the Atlanta chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) and founder and first president of the Stone Mountain Confederate Monument Association.” The film elevated the KKK to prominence by showing them as brave Moonlight and Magnolias-style southern white gentlemen who protected white women from the so-called sex-craved male former slaves. Plane led the effort to have Robert E. Lee, among others, prominently displayed on the mountainside. This period exploited the anger and bitterness of the American South to further expand the Lost Cause narrative, a myth full of happy and grateful slaves along with wise, intelligent and nurturing masters.

That narrative, along with the Redemption narrative of needing to resurrect a forever wronged Dixie Land, became the cornerstone for the Original Big Lie, segregation, Jim Crow, and birthing mechanism for all other white supremacy-laden racialized Lies, big and small, that followed. Note, during the January 6th, 2021, insurrection, a confederate flag was carried and waved throughout the capitol for the first time in American history. In the same way, there is a connection between the book banning of today and the postbellum times of old.

Bryan Stevenson said, “The North won the Civil War, but the South won the narrative war. They weren’t required to repudiate and acknowledge the wrongfulness of bigotry and slavery.”

The Shapeshifted Lie has manifested in many different forms. Deceased political strategist Lee Atwater said the quiet part out loud,

 “Y’all don’t quote me on this. You start out in 1954 by saying, “N*@#er, N*@#er, N*@#er”. By 1968, you can’t say “N*@#er”—that hurts you. Backfires. So, you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.”

online source thenation.com

The Lie is not only a black-and-white thing. An obscure August 28th, 1807 quote for most, except among members of the indigenous American community from one of the founding fathers, plants the pan-ethnic seeds/justification for white supremacy and a monochromatic America.

“If ever we are constrained to lift the hatchet against any tribe, we will never lay it down till that tribe is exterminated or driven beyond the Mississippi… in war, they will kill some of us; we shall destroy them all.”

Thomas Jefferson https://nativenewsonline.net/

“Between 1492 and 1600, 90% of the indigenous populations in the Americas had died. That means about 55 million people perished because of violence and never-before-seen pathogens like smallpox, measles, and influenza. According to these new calculations, the death toll represented about 10% of the entire Earth’s population at the time.” Insider.com

The doctrine of Discovery, Manifest destiny, and the Trail of Tears merely scratched the surface of what was done to the Native American victims of genocide and forced assimilation.

All these anti-indigenous ideologies Conflates into the boarding school forced assimilation concept which rest on a quote, “Kill the Indian, Save the Man” General Richard H. Pratt.

Well documented is the plight of the immigrant population of Central America and Mexico, which cast a xenophobic and racist light by some concerning the border crisis rather than a humanitarian one.

“Through fear, some have resurrected an ancient worldview named the replacement theory (The so-called conspiracy promoting minority communities of color, Jewish people, and immigrants to replace/end the white race.) Another even more outlandish part of this fear is that miscegenation (mixing of the races) and their multiethnic offspring will breed out the white people in this country.”  

From the August 8th, 2022, Three-Fifths Magazine article entitled, The Only One In The Room By Kevin Robinson

Plessy v Ferguson

The ruling in this Supreme Court case upheld a Louisiana state law that allowed for “equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races.” The National Archives

The 1896 landmark decision began federalized legal segregation and energized Jim Crow.

“The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery,”  W. E. B. DuBois

Many of the powerful would like to see this current moment, which began in the civil rights days of the 60s, move Black Indigenous and People of Color back to the dark past of oppression, second-class citizenry, divided and uneducated. The first African American Female Supreme Court Justice had something to say about that.

“Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who participated in the UNC case only, filed a dissenting opinion that emphasized that “[o]ur country has never been colorblind.” Given that historical reality, she argued that universities and others ought to be able to use race in ways that acknowledge that historical truth.”

For centuries, the white woman has been lauded as the most beautiful of all creations. Pale skin and pink lips brazened the dreams of a European-dominated society. The promotion of Illusions of fascination and myths of desire for them by men of other ethnicities has been exaggerated through white supremacy. Their tears ended lives, from the Tulsa Massacre to the death of Emmit Till and so many more.

“White women tears are multipurpose: They derail conversation, they emotionally bully others (particularly people of color), and they are almost never questioned—which only adds to the power of a white woman and her tears.”

Black Girl In Main, April 17, 2018 Weapon of lass destruction: The tears of a white woman by Shay

This is not even about the white woman. This comes down to white supremacy presented in a myriad of ways to promote a narrative, lie/grift that yearns to cover up the truth in any way possible.

Now let’s open some books/historical facts.

No, It is and has always been BIPOC women who need protection from white men. [14] Some sources estimate that 58% of all enslaved women aged 15–30 years old were sexually assaulted by their slave owners and other white men.

And it doesn’t stop there. Buck breaking was a form of emasculating the male slave. It involved being flogged, and in some cases, the male slave was raped in front of other slaves as a show of intimidation. Some say that Buck breaking is a myth because of the lack of documentation. However, any documentation on slaves, except for property records and tax purposes, was rare.

[2]Between 86-96 percent of the sexual abuse of Native women is committed by non-Indigenous perpetrators who are rarely brought to justice.

[3]“At least 2 million Africans–10 to 15 percent–died during the infamous “Middle Passage” across the Atlantic. Another 15 to 30 percent died during the march to or confinement along the coast. Altogether, for every 100 slaves who reached the New World, another 40 had died in Africa or during the Middle Passage.” 

This is but a morsel, and there is much more, including how BIPOC populations contributed to the American story. We must recapture the narrative with truth. Without it, our society will simply digress into a great house of mirrors where reality is but one of many options. The distorted imagery is splintered into hostilities promoted by the polychromatic of conspiracies, isms, and chaos. Alternative facts become the currency by which the gears of society rely until they grind to a halt by the unsustainability of an America forever lost in the murkiness of its own lies, and no one can find their way out. It is said that empires last about 250 years.

America is nearing its expiration date. To ensure extension versus extinction. Truth must once again take preeminence.  

You will know the truth, and that truth will give you freedom.

John 8:32

 The Voice (VOICE)

14.-1. Sexual Exploitation Of Black Women From The Years 1619-2020 14 Jeffrey S. Sartin, J. Marion Sims, the father of gynecology: hero or villain? SOUTH MED.J. (May 2004), https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15180027/

2. This violence has its roots in colonial history, starting with Columbus’s 1492 expedition. publichealth.columbia.edu The Colonial Roots of Violence Against Native American Women

March 2, 2023, Robin Whyatt

3. https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu Digital History ID 446