COLORED PEOPLE:
The STRIPES of Healing
Founding Statement:
This biweekly newsletter will seek to explain the pain and suffering mainly people of color endure through no fault of their own. The dehumanizing excuses our people always seem to elicit from people in power that make our Christian Brothers and Sisters accept their reasoning as if it was uttered by the Almighty. Lastly what I see with my own eyes begs the question from my conscience. “Are we loving or can we really love our neighbor as ourselves”.
Issue 26: The Time Has Come
I must share an event that has been a long time coming. It is personal. About the growth that comes through the willingness to be vulnerable to life itself. The disappointments and the triumphs are dotted throughout the timeline of all that exists. I’ve shared with my loyal readers that have come with me on this journey one event that set me on this path of learning. It was a question I asked my brothers and sisters when I was a boy around the age of 11 or 12 whether me and my cousin could be boyfriend and girlfriend. Of course my parents were told and I caught a beatdown from them. I still needed an answer to my question?
The fact that I couldn’t get one was irrelevant. That denial of an answer let me know then that all questions needed to be answered no matter the subject matter period. In order for morality, character, right and wrong, love and loss or any good thing to grow inside a person we need to be told in straightforward terms how life should be lived. Now my answer when I became an adult to that little boy would’ve been, ‘Victor no you can’t be boyfriend and girlfriend with your cousin and here’s why’. ‘It is forbidden because you both are related by family and family cannot marry or have intimate relations with one another.’ Yeah, at 11 or 12 I knew where children came from and how.
This next revelation I want to share is that I’ve finally achieved a sense of clarity. Clarity of character, morality, integrity about what’s right and what’s wrong. When it happened and where was while I performed my duties in behavioral health. A young boy did not like being admonished for cursing me out in front of female staff. He decided that he would become violent and I put a stop to it. For the first time I didn’t feel my heart racing nor any sense that my actions were not right in the moment. I did restrain myself from laying hands on him in ways not authorized, but I did let him know his behavior would not be tolerated.
Discussing it with my wife I began to understand fully what God said in this verse of scripture. The Authorized King James version of the Holy Bible Revelation 3:16…So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spue thee out of my mouth. Absolutely it is about right or wrong. It is absolutely about good or evil. There are only two choices. There isn’t any compromise in the face of people’s actions that affect other people. Whether an elected official tries to play a proverbial mealy-mouthed ‘ahh it wasn’t that bad axiom’ that former U.S. Presidents that break the law should be off limits; that formal official should be disgraced.
We know all human beings have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, but when you commit crimes that affect more than just yourself then you have to answer for them. I applaud the normal discharge of their duties any official that simply does what they are supposed to do. There shouldn’t be a ticker-tape parade for holding someone accountable. No pat on the back should be forthwith. If any person commits a crime with foreknowledge of its detrimental effects on a society, then that person must be made to answer for it.
This is my belief and why I do what I do. Like the United States Army taught me if you allow standards to be degraded then you have set a new standard. Everyone better believe there will always be the worst kinds of people elected to office because the good people become complacent. Society is akin to fragility. Why? Because if the rules aren’t followed then sooner or later the ‘society’ becomes unrecognizable.
If you know right from wrong when it comes to the body politic, then say so. It doesn’t mean I have the right to inject my personal beliefs onto everyone else. Again I believe that’s why all those ‘WHITE MEN’ founding fathers of America on purpose left ‘RELIGION’ out of the adjudication of things pertaining to the laws of the land. Laws are for everyone. Leave your Bible thumping hypocrisy on the steps of your door.
Time will come for all of us regardless of whether we stop to acknowledge that ultimate truth. There are only two choices in life. Pick one.
Written by: Victor E. Moseley
Email: [email protected]