listening to the times’ 1619 pod

america is, and has always been, wild.

the government sent its military to steal land from the original indigenous people, then sold the stolen land for cheap to white settlers.

then enslaved africans to work the stolen land.

mad!

fam, plantation owners took out mortgages on actual living breathing enslaved africans.

+ the western money system made bonds out of this and people could invest and make high returns.

so many countries and institutions were not only complicit but outrightly profited.

ah!

this pod really really puts trump’s america into perspective. the context provided is dizzying.

america and the capitalism it is known for has its entire foundation rooted in brutality.

relentless, deadly exploitation of indigenous people, african people.

na wa.

they’re now on black face.

truly enlightening being able to draw the line straight from the birth of the minstrel show to present day cultural appropriation that exists side by side with continued system mockery and neglect.

hmm.

a lesson:

you do a disservice to your group and movement when you tell stories without showing/linking to the irrefutable data that back them.

incredibly limiting. however righteous the fevered preaching. truly sustained advocacy relies on clearly communicated data.

okay.

now examining the emergence of motown as an antidote for minstrelsy. as proof of the completeness of black americans. an announcement of undeniable equality with phenomenal music as vehicle.

worthy of note is the switch from enslaved displaced africans to black americans.

and therein, lies the crux of the issue.

the removal of otherness.

racists insist on acknowledging only the idea of a population of enslaved persons. the black community as fellow country people, to them, has and may always be, unacceptable.

fell asleep. alright let’s continue:

pod’s on america’s first attempt at structured healthcare.

set up to provide healthcare for the newly emancipated black americans who because they were freed with no compensation or housing provisions etc are reeling from disease outbreaks.

the gag is; the system was set up to fail. deliberately. because the white folks believed the outbreaks were nature taking its course.

that black americans, supposedly biologically inferior to white americans, were ill suited to freedom so they were going extinct.

wtf?

lol okoto what? okoto meow meow

so truman proposed universal healthcare for america and the alliance of racist white doctors (which at the time was almost all doctors) aggressively campaigned against it!

they also refused to protest against segregated care in hospitals.

collaborative effort is how progress is made tbh.

so the desegregation of american hospitals only happened so the hospitals could access funds provided by medicare.

and medicare became a thing through combined effort of black doctors and the civil rights movement.

yet, still, quality of healthcare for black americans is not as good as that for white americans.

black americans continue to be distrustful of the nation’s healthcare system. and the system continues to prove them right.

this distrust is data backed. and it is sad.

finally listened to the last episode.

america continues to systematically brutalize its own people. and remains insistent on projecting this very very thin veneer of being ‘a land of the free.’

while giving the rights to true freedom to only a part of its population.

i’d love podcasts on the nigerian reality too o. tracking colonialism; pre, during, and post. the fragile binding of this nation, etc.

anywho, podcast responsible for this thread is: 1619.

by the new york times
hosted by nikole hannah jones