...comforting, UNLESS you are one who denies the very real evil of slavery and racism in our very real history.
Some "blasphemy" from Frederick Douglass for those who want to hide our real history from our students:
“…I therefore hate the corrupt,
slaveholding,
women-whipping,
cradle-plundering,
partial and hypocritical Christianity of the land…
I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers,
the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels.
Never was there a clearer case of
‘stealing the livery of the court of heaven to serve the devil in.’
I am filled with unutterable loathing
when I contemplate the religious pomp and show,
together with the horrible inconsistencies,
which every where surround me.
We have men-stealers for ministers,
women-whippers for missionaries, and
cradle-plunderers for church members...
The slave prison and the church stand near each other.
The clanking of fetters and the rattling of chains in the prison, and
the pious psalm and solemn prayer in the church, may be heard at the same time.
The dealers in the bodies of men erect their stand in the presence of the pulpit,
and they mutually help each other.
The dealer gives his blood-stained gold to support the pulpit,
and the pulpit, in return,
covers his infernal business with the garb of Christianity.
Here we have religion and robbery the allies of each other—
devils dressed in angels’ robes, and
hell presenting the semblance of paradise...”
The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers.
I could regard them in no other light than a band of successful robbers,
who had left their homes, and gone to Africa, and stolen us from our homes,
and in a strange land reduced us to slavery.
I loathed them as being the meanest as well as the most wicked of men."
https://bookriot.com/frederick-douglass-quotes/
Or, from his speech, "What, to the Slave, is the Fourth of July?"
"This, for the purpose of this celebration, is the 4th of July. It is the birthday of your National Independence, and of your political freedom. This, to you, is what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God...
...Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask,
why am I called upon to speak here to-day?
What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence?
...I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us.
I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary!
Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us.
The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common.
The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence,
bequeathed by your fathers,
is shared by you,
not by me.
The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me.
This Fourth of July is yours, not mine.
You may rejoice, I must mourn.
To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and
call upon him to join you in joyous anthems,
were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony.
Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day?
...Standing, there, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine,
I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation
never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July!
Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present,
the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting.
America is false to the past,
false to the present, and
solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.
Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will,
in the name of humanity which is outraged,
in the name of liberty which is fettered,
in the name of the constitution and the Bible,
which are disregarded and trampled upon,
dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command,
everything that serves to perpetuate slavery—the great sin and shame of America!
...But a religion which favors the rich against the poor;
which exalts the proud above the humble;
which divides mankind into two classes, tyrants and slaves;
which says to the man in chains, stay there; and to the oppressor, oppress on;
it is a religion which may be professed and enjoyed by all the robbers and enslavers of mankind;
it makes God a respecter of persons, denies his fatherhood of the race, and
tramples in the dust the great truth of the brotherhood of man.
All this we affirm to be true of the popular church,
and the popular worship of our land and nation—
a religion, a church, and a worship which, on the authority of inspired wisdom,
we pronounce to be an abomination in the sight of God.
https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/speeches-african-american-history/1852-frederick-douglass-what-slave-fourth-july/
There is so much in this speech that still needs to be heard and understood and heeded. Read the whole thing, again and again.
