AfroerotiK

Erotic provocateur, racially-influenced humanist, relentless champion for the oppressed, and facilitator for social change, Scottie Lowe is the brain child, creative genius and the blood, sweat, and tears behind AfroerotiK. Intended to be part academic, part educational, and part sensual, she, yes SHE gave birth to the website to provide people of African descent a place to escape the narrow-mined, stereotypical, limiting and oft-times degrading beliefs that abound about our sexuality. No, not all Black men are driven by lust by white flesh or to create babies and walk away. No, not all Black women are promiscuous welfare queens. And as hard as it may be to believe, no, not all gay Black men are feminine, down low, or HIV positive. Scottie is putting everything on the table to discuss, debate, and dismantle stereotypes in a healthy exchange of ideas. She hopes to provide a more holistic, informed, and enlightened discussion of Black sexuality and dreams of helping couples be more open, honest, and adventurous in their relationships.

Sunday, November 25, 2018

#alltragediesmatter

I need to address some incredibly offensive, inaccurate, and racist comments by . . . some dude whose name is not even important to this discussion. His arrogant comments however need to be addressed. In several deluded comments he made in response to a piece I wrote explaining why white people cannot claim to be victims of racism, he made some statements that were patently untrue. He claims that there have been lots of other races of people who have been enslaved and had their histories, identities, religions, and names stolen from them and they aren’t whining and crying about it like us sniveling African Americans. Well, let me set the record straight.

First and foremost, there has never been another group of people kidnapped from their homeland, forced to give up their names, forced to give up their language, forced to give up their families, art, history, culture, and their entire identities to the same extent as Africans who were enslaved in America. Not the Irish, not the Jews, not Cambodians, no one on the planet has endured what the descendants of slaves suffered. Want to know how I know this? Because white people won’t let you forget about Jon Benet Ramsey 30 years later, they won’t let you forget about OJ Simpson, you know they would never let you forget about something as horrific as an event that robbed them of their humanity for generations. The racist troll stated that the Jewish people were enslaved and they pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and it’s only us lowly niggers who keep insisting that we are the victims of racism.

OK, so let me ask a few questions to see if the tragedy of the Jewish Holocaust compares to the tragedy of slavery in a game I like to call Oppression Olympics.

1. How long were the Jewish people enslaved during the Holocaust? Was it for generations? Were Jews taken into concentration camps and made to live there under German rule as inferiors for multiple generations without being able to read, write, or get any education? No, they weren’t. The individuals who entered the concentration camps knew freedom, autonomy, they knew independence before they were imprisoned. They were ripped from a world where they functioned as normal human beings. Those individuals who were fortunate enough to survive that hell, when they were freed, they knew how to live and function as a human being in a world that saw them as human beings.

Africans who were enslaved, those ripped from Africa, transported to the New World, they also knew what it meant to be free. Here’s the kicker, slaves born into the system of slavery, those who never knew freedom a day in their lives, those who never made an adult decision about their destinies, about their lives, never had the same luxury as Jews who were imprisoned in Nazi Germany. Slaves born into they system never learned to read, write, they never learned how to run a household on their own, they never learned how to properly raise their children. Not because they were inherently inferior but because those options were not available to them because of their skin color.

2. Were Jews robbed of their history and identity? Hmmm, excellent question. Jews . . . created history. The entire Old Testament bible is based on their supposed greatness. Jews have the very same religion they had since, as they claim, God created Earth. Do African Americans have the religion our ancestors practiced? Not only do we not know what religion our ancestors practiced, we have been beaten, brainwashed, and convinced that the religion our ancestors practiced was heathen. Jews have a language they can call their own. Jews have songs they can sing that go back millennia. Jews have the same surnames they have had since the beginning of time. Jews have art, food, and books that go back thousands of years. Want to know what African Americans have? We have negro spirituals we learned under the whip of the white slave master because it was illegal for Blacks to practice their own traditions or tell our own stories of greatness. It was illegal for Blacks to even beat a damn drum. What if Jews had bar/bat mitzvahs taken from them? If there were no Jewish holidays on the calendar THEN they might be able to claim equality in the Oppression Olympics.

3. Were Jews dehumanized for their appearance? Well, I’m sure some racist troll who thinks he can put me in my place is going to suggest that Jews’ unique hair texture was different and thus it made them easier to be identified as Jewish, thus, it’s the very same thing as Blacks who were enslaved because of our beautiful dark, smooth skin, our gorgeous thick, wooly, hair texture, our beautiful facial features like our wide noses and our thick lips. We were dehumanized because our women had bigger asses and our men had bigger dicks. It’s pretty easy to take off your yarmulke to hide your Jewish identity. It’s not so easy to take off your skin though. But, I’m sure, racist nudist troll is going to insist that it doesn’t matter, that those things are unimportant. Well, let me take your child, brand them with a burning hot iron, rename them, denigrate them daily for their stringy limp hair, their thin unkissable lips, their flat asses, their inferior genitalia, and their pink, pasty, sickly looking skin. Let me do it to their children for their entire lives. Let me do it to 15 generations of your offspring and then we can see if there is similar damage done to their psyches.

Jews and Germans, for the most part, had the same hair, same skin color, same facial features, same body types. If you put a SS uniform on a Jew, the overwhelming majority of them would be able to pass as their oppressor. Here is a fun fact, slaves didn't have that same luxury. They couldn't pass as their oppressor, pretend to be one of their slave masters simply by putting on a different outfit.
4. Were Jews taken from their homeland? Ahhhh, here is where Jews can claim some competition in the Oppression Olympics. Exodus. Jews were driven from their home at one point in history. Were they kidnapped? Were they transported to another country thousands of miles away living in the piss and shit of strangers chained to them? Were they fed food infested with maggots and rat shit? Hmmmm. Were they chained to the hull of a ship with no water or fresh air? They walked for 40 years in the desert, united, together. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that is not the same thing as being captive on a slave ship.

There is another difference. Jews were given a little plot of land called Israel to do with as they pleased, including the systematic oppression of Palestinians at their discretion and pleasure. I’m going to also note here, and forgive my repetitiveness, but at no point in history were Jews robbed of their God, their names, their culture, their identities. It makes a difference. Want to know how I know? Because if it didn’t matter, Blacks and Jews would be in the same position today. If what happened to Jews was as tragic as what happened to Africans who were enslaved and their descendants then Jews were be in the same predicament as African Americans today. They aren’t. It’s not because they are more resilient, not because they were able to rebound better, not because they aren’t sniveling and whiny and playing the victim card. It’s because what has happened to them doesn’t compare to what happened to slaves. IF it was the same, if the impact of the horrors of American slavery were the exact same as what happened to any other race of people you would find the same outcome. Jews are not better at picking themselves up by their bootstraps. Jews are not better at rebounding from tragedy. Simply stated, what Jews endured in history does not even compare to what slaves endured.

Here’s where I need to empower the Black readers. If you ever find yourself in a situation where you have read and understood the context of what I’m trying to teach you, if you can wrap your head around the fact that no other race of people have endured what we have, if you muster up the courage to confront white people with your understandings, inevitably, you are going to encounter the, “YOU”RE RACIST,” chants from whites who are going to be offended that you would even suggest that what Blacks endured was worse than any other crime against humanity. Here’s what I want you to ask them. First, ask them if every tragedy was equal, if every crime against humanity was the same, if there was no difference whatsoever, why is it that Blacks in America (and in colonized Africa) have suffered greater than any other race and seem to have such difficulty pulling ourselves up by our collective bootstraps like other races? Ahhhhh, not an easy question to answer if you are racist and think there there is something inherently inferior about Blacks in the first place. The ONLY reason Blacks occupy more ghettos, we are more disenfranchised, is because we have been systematically oppressed in ways that far surpass anything that any other race of people has ever endured.

Next, ask them why they are so offended that a Black person would suggest that slavery was the worst crime against humanity. You see, inherent in racism is this notion that if Blacks claim what happened to us was worse than what happened to other races, we are an arrogant, uppity nigger. White people have to have to have suffered more. They have to be the most maligned. They can’t stand to let anyone say that what happened to Africans who were enslaved and their descendants was worst than the Irish and the Jews or anyone else in history because we aren’t human to them. If this were a real competition, and Africans born in America won the Gold medal for being oppressed, white people would contest the results, they would fight and scream that they were the rightful winners. Why? Because they don’t give a damn that millions of Africans were thrown overboard ships. They don’t care that white slavers raped women to make a profit from their children. They don’t care about the horrors we endured because all that matters to them is trying to silence our voices. They only care about refuting facts with their distorted lies in order to claim superior status.

One has to wonder what points white people lose, what privilege they have to give up if they lose the Oppression Olympics. Whatever the cost to them it must be great because they refuse to acknowledge that the American slave trade was the greatest crime against humanity ever. The truly non-racist person would say, “Wow, thank you for opening my eyes to the horrors of slavery. I think what happened during slavery was reprehensible and I for one am willing to adjust my thinking to help eradicate the racism that exists today because of it.” The racist will read the first paragraph or two and then say that Blacks are whiny, that what happened to other races was worse, and that we are just making excuses for our inherently lazy, criminal, dysfunctional behavior. I’m here to tell you that not one unhealthy behavior exhibited by Blacks in America today is not the result of our collective enslavement and the horrors inflicted on us by evil, sadistic white people. Sad, but oh so true.