The dog whistle language of racism in America can no longer be categorized as a dog whistle. It doesn’t need decoding or interpreting anymore, it’s clear and out in the open.

I used to think that white privilege itself was so toxic that it blinded those who benefited from it. I thought that they just didn’t get it. I thought the racial divide had been so one sided for so long that they were oblivious to America’s racial caste system that slanted favorably toward whites.

I’m now convinced that they’re not blind, the racial disparities are much too glaring for them not to see them. White Privilege is arrogant!

Arrogant White Privilege still refuses to admit that racism has left deep scars in this country and that African-Americans have endured the cruelest form of oppression for generations. 

Some of the assimilationist behaviors that they expect from blacks are egregious and downright ruthless. Here are just a few:

1. Stand, no matter what, during a National Anthem that deifies a country that enslaved our ancestors for over 250 years

2. Ignore the reality that 250 years of free black labor built this country and fortified generational wealth for white people. Yet self-righteous America has still not repented for its barbaric behavior.

3. Ignore the fact that the black race is the only race to ever be enslaved on American soil.

    4.  Ignore how African-American veterans were denied many of the benefits of the GI Bill after World War II. Banks wouldn’t make loans for houses to veterans in black neighborhoods

   5. Ignore the fact that our fore parents fought and died for this country. Nevertheless, because of their military service, black veterans were seen as a particular threat to Jim Crow and racial subordination. Thousands of black veterans were assaulted, threatened, abused or lynched following military service.

   6. The government and the media calls the terrible crime that occurred in Las Vegas the deadliest massacre in modern American history. The truth is the key word is “modern.” America basically expects blacks to have selective amnesia and forget a very horrific and tragic period in our history:

Three-hundred people died in Tulsa, Okla., in 1921 between May 31 and June 1, when whites torched the area’s African-American neighborhoods, driving out victims fleeing showers of bullets from machine guns welded by whites. 

The damage of systemic racism has been diabolical and visible in so many aspects of society, and yet, African-Americans have continued to fight for full citizenship and dignity.

It’s infuriating to me that so many whites still expect African-Americans who have been treated as sub-human and as second class citizens to have a love affair with the American flag. Who do you think you are, to demand that we blindly celebrate the oppression of white supremacists?

It’s completely disingenuous and racist for white America to say that blacks not standing during the anthem are being unpatriotic. African-Americans have been the most patriotic citizens in these “yet to be United States of America.” We fought for and stood up for America, when America has continuously not stood up for us and turned its back on us.

It’s shameful that the abolition of slavery, the right to vote, and the end of legal segregation only came about after blacks rebelled and so many white lives were being jeopardized by the bloodshed of the civil war.

On the day that our government begins working to make the ideals of Americanism honored for all Americans, that’s when those who are courageous enough to call out the hypocrisy of white patriotism will finally be able to believe in the country the way the privileged have always been able to do so.

#TakeAKnee

Rev. Ira Acree, Greater St. John Bible Church