The Curious Case of African-Americans

         I remember when I was a young girl and Alex Haley’s Roots came on television.  I was riveted for several days to the talking box as I watched the horrors of slavery reenacted before my eyes.  The numerous lashes upon the back of Kunta Kinte as the slave master determined to make him forget his name was forever seared in my mind.  Tears at certain dramatic points ran hotly down my cheeks and when the series was over, my view of the world was forever changed.  I realized as a product of those slaves that the world at least the U.S. was hostile to my kind.  I grew up to be further educated on the travails of being Black because we were still Black back then.  My grandfather who fought in World War II, would tell us how Black servicemen were treated disrespectfully by white Germans and did not receive a hero’s welcome when they returned home.  I read Black magazines that always detailed the negative statistics of every facet of life that Blacks faced from education to health problems.  It seemed to me that we had a plethora of issues, but scant solutions and as the years wore on we still always seemed to be a besieged people despite the advances in Civil Rights.

            As I pondered the curious case of African-Americans, I begin to want to know why Black people were brought to this country besides the obvious reason of enslavement.  In other words I wanted to know the “why” behind the “why.”  Time moved on and I never received a satisfactory answer to that question and eventually other things some political, but mostly spiritual captured my attention.  I was gone for a long time from Black issues and when I left we were in a cultural decline.  So what caused the spotlight to be shined upon African-Americans/Blacks again for me?  It is thanks to Shonda Rimes and a show she produces called Scandal.  I had heard about this new show with their first black leading lady in 40years Kerry Washington playing a Washington D.C. crisis manager. 

I missed the first season when it aired so I thought I would catch the second season and see what the noise was about.  Mind you, when I say I was absent from Black life that included television, so for me to watch the show was a deviation from my routine.  As I watched the show, I couldn’t help but notice an obvious anti-Christian bias, the same as is manifested in many shows along with a deliberate dismissal of the main character having a relationship with a good decent Black man in favor of sexual relations with two white men one married and the president of the United States and one single.  But that isn’t what grabbed my attention as much as when the show’s two gay white males were allowed to adopt a Black baby girl.  I could not understand why a Black woman producer and writer would put a Black baby girl to be adopted by two gay males in lieu of a stable mother and father which would have been in her best interest. 

I wondered why she did not use a white baby or an Asian one since they are adopted a lot in real life.  She had an opportunity to showcase a Black baby in a loving Black home as that would have been a positive promotion for the Black community.  To say the least my spiritual senses went off a lot with that show and further interaction with the internet community was the visitation once again to the question of “why” with the Black community as we were now even more so in a cultural decline.  The next series of articles will touch on the “why” behind the “why” and will cover some history in generalities.  I will not be documenting as I normally would as if I were doing a paper or book,  but will make general references to what I read or heard.  Some statements will be common sense, others opinion, and others not revealed by flesh and blood. One day when it is all said and done, Shonda Rimes will get major credit for helping to provide the answer to the culmination of the age.