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Don’t Fret My Sons And Daughters 

When You See Troubled Waters 

We’ve Learned To Swim And Those Who Can’t Can Tread

For Fear Alone Disarms Us 

And Water Can Only Harm Us

If Left To Rise Above Our Bowed Down Head ~ Verline Gee (My Mom)

No Stockholm Syndrome Here!

Stockholm syndrome is a condition which causes hostages to develop a psychological alliance with their captors during captivity. (Wikipedia) 

Stolen descendants of Africa remembered who they were.

Some European immigrants would exchange their birthright for whiteness.

Although they weren’t stolen, they allowed their identity to be sold.

For nearly 300+ years descendants of Africa were denied citizenship. (Chattel property can’t be “citizenized”, right?)

When you don’t know your father, you’re a called a bastard, right? But America thought we didn’t know our Mother…but we did! As we were stolen from her, we locked down on her DNA within us and it echoed in our genes and souls for nearly a half-millennia!

They told us…

“You have no Mother. You have no family”

Africa was our mother and we invented foster families!

“Your Mother doesn’t care for you. She didn’t even try to find you!”

That’s a lie! Although Mother’s physical reach and lack of fleets of ships limited her search for us…she wailed so loudly and so deeply and so often…that she kept us in her thoughts and dreams until we could commandeer ships and aircrafts back to her shores…and arms.

It wasn’t enough to own our bodies, our privates, our children and our labor. They wanted us to like it and smile, and dance, and sing and do a little jig. So they created salt and pepper shakers and aprons and picture books and movies that depicted us a smiling, happy, satisfied and useful.

They thought that just because we were chained that we were desperate.

They thought that just because we were limited we weren’t limitless.

They thought that just because we were beaten we were defeated.

And they wanted us to make them think that we thought that they loved us.

Black people are many things, however, we were not some part of some sick Stockholm Syndrome.

…These alliances result from a bond formed between captor and captives during intimate time together, but they are generally considered irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims. (Wikipedia)

Refusing to hate because of what it does to the hater’s own soul should not be confused with loving our captors and excusing their actions. We refused to be eaten alive with hatred the way it had ravaged the souls of white slaveowners. 

We were too good for hate. Love…for ourselves…and our people, kept us alive.

Believing we were happy helped evil slaveowners sleep at night and to take communion on the bloodthirsty altars of their theologically bankrupt churches.

We weren’t friends.

We weren’t family (Well…in some sick circumstances we were.)

We weren’t seen as equals.

We were only tethered by hatred, rape, dominance, manipulation, coercion, violence, fear and free forced labor.

Slaveowners believed that our great-great-grand mothers loved them just because they couldn’t get enough of her dark sumptuous curves. Consequently, he set up distance between his white wife and Black slave, a tension that still presents itself today between Black and white women.

Ha! Our compliance was a means of defiance.

How could we love someone who denied our humanity?

The fact they demeaned and denied our humanity made them unlovable…to us.

And the fact that they treated us inhumanely made them inhumane, and they wanted us to “love” them in order to redeem their wretched souls, which, had become enslaved by the same greed that had enslaved our beautiful Black bodies. 

We knew how to resist slavery of the body. Sadly, ironically, they didn’t know how to resist the slavery of their own souls. We fought in civil war battles and freed ourselves. They fought in wars and took spoils and further enslaved themselves. 

We were never “attached” to those who held us in bondage as the Stockholm Syndrome would suggest.

However, I believe that slaveowners’ infatuation with us, our bodies, our strength, our faith, our beauty, our resilience and our Blackness, was somewhat “Stockholmish” in that our compliance would somehow make them feel somewhat humane.

Hmmmm

Stockholm syndrome is a condition which causes hostages to develop a psychological alliance with their captors during captivity.

Perhaps the smart white people who write up diagnoses like this should consider a friendly corrective amendment such as:

*JamestownStockholm Syndrome is a condition which causes *slave traders, owners and rapistshostages to develop a psychological alliance with their *slavescaptors during captivity.

Hmmmm

My family did not have Stockholm Syndrome, but I am certain that my family’s slave traders and owners suffered from Jamestown Syndrome.

Sorry. I can’t do a jig for you, white people. Mother Africa is calling me to join her on the dance floor.

I am not your savior. I am not your lover. I am not your consoler. But, I can be your brother if you are truly woke enough and willing enough to free yourself. 

Your brutality and limited view of us was not…is not…strong enough to break us. Mother Africa gave us identity and stamped it into our souls…and our skin…and in our resilience!

We loved ourselves too much to love your treatment and assessment of us!

Educate yourselves! Learn real history! This wasn’t love! This wasn’t personal…for you…it was business. And it was survival for us.

Slavery is over. We don’t have to take care of your anymore. Help yourselves…and each other.

There’s no Stockholm Syndrome here! Tether yourselves to something … and someone…else! 

HELLO MY SONS AND DAUGHTERS

ACROSS THE DEEP SEA WATERS,

NOW DON’T YOU KNOW THE MOTHER LAND IS HOME?

YOUR MOTHER WON’T FORGET YOU 

AND ONE DAY GOD WILL LET YOU

RETURN TO ME NO MATTER WHERE YOU ROAM ~ Verline Gee (Mom)

I went home last week. 

I visited Ghana in West Africa. Mother hadn’t forgotten me at all. 

“Welcome ‘Home’! You are in Africa…Enjoy it. Make yourself at Home. ”

Home humbled me.

When I think of Home, it isn’t an address.

Home isn’t brick and mortar and living rooms and garages.

Home is the portal through which you enter & then engage the world each day.

Home is the portal through which you enter to decompress from the atrocities of the world each day.

Home is where you look at yourself in the mirror before taking on the day.

And Home is where you never second guess yourself.

Home is where you never have to make excuses for yourself.

Home is where you never dumb down.

And Home is where you are the majority, and majority rules.

Books live at libraries.

Merchandise lives at stores

Groceries live in supermarkets.

But our intact, non-apologetic, irrepressible, culturally-ordained, hence our truest selves, come alive at Home.

Home is not merely where we live. Home is where we come alive!

Home humbled me in Ghana, because I didn’t know I was so “Homeless.”

I was taught in school that Africa was ugly.

I was shown only the atrocities and poverty of Africa

I was warned against the darkness of Africa.

Mother Africa was so strong and so rich and so fertile and so ridden with potential that white explorers wanted to tame Mother, and own Mother and prostitute Mother and reduce Mother.

These evil white explorers and traders wreaked havoc on both sides of the Atlantic.

White traders stopped wanting to trade with Mother Africa and decided to remove the middle-man by colonizing Mother Africa and ravaging her shores and mines and trees and seeds, and sons and daughters and kings and queens. Colonizers raped Mother Africa, her children and her land. Motherfuckers!

Those who survived the evil brutality of supposedly religious slave-traders in Africa ~ then had to endure the rigor of unimaginably inhumane conditions of transatlantic slave ships and its crews. Then those who survived the evil voyage by avoiding sickness ~ or the temptation of throwing themselves overboard to safety ~ were then left to deal with the greedy, lustful white tyrants in the new land. These were white men and compliant white women who had purchased imported “property.” made in the image and likeness of God, mind you, to make them rich in cotton & free labor.

Correction! Slavery didn’t just make slave traders, slave-ship captains or slaveowners rich. Slavery…Correction! Hardworking Black people…made America rich ~ and converted America into a world super power.

Because the strongest of the strongest Africans landed on the shores of the new colony!

For the chance to become American, many white Europeans would deny their mother, their language, their customs and their culture. Being white would suffice, if it meant access, superiority and power in Africa.

Mother Africa’s children weren’t so weak. We refused to deny our Mother!

The new land tyrants wanted nothing to do with the power of Mother Africa, so they attempted to stop her children’s “gibberish”, separated her children further, pit African against Africans and cast shame on Mother’s sunkist skin.

What they didn’t know, because they could not understand, because they’d run away from their home…we were kidnapped from our home and sold into bondage. I don’t know about Ms. Europe, however, Mother Africa called to her children over the waters, in their dreams, in their songs, in their prayers, in their souls and in their DNA!

And because Mother Africa knew that it would be centuries before any of us would see her kind face, or embrace her strong neck, or kiss her warm dark cheeks again, she clothed us with pride, a sense of family, faith, respect and hard work. And she gave us a love for our Mother Africa that made Uncle Sam feel threatened. 

How can Sam be our uncle if he refuses to own our Mother as his sister?

So…their insecurities blossomed, thus…

They outlawed our languages,

Monitored our gatherings,

Sanctioned our religion,

Raped our women,

Dispirited our children,

Raped our children,

Belittled our songs,

and owned our bodies…

But never our minds and spirits!!

They couldn’t break us because Mother Africa had put us together so fearfully and wonderfully. And they didn’t understand us and were troubled by the fact that they couldn’t break us. And believe me, those Motherfuckers tried!

When it was unbearable we told our Mother Africa with our sighs and with our tears and with our songs and with our drums. Her frantic heartbeat for her stolen children resonated on the drums of her sons and daughters as they played and danced into the dark sky, the songs Mother Africa had taught them. The syncopation of the rhythmic and mystically majestic drums conjured Mother Africa’s spirit as if the thousands of miles across the sea and thousands of leagues beneath the sea, didn’t stand between us.

We loved Mother Africa, and she loved us, and that it was adequate compensation for being so unloved in the new world. 

So 400 years to the month after we first were snatched from her arms, Mother Africa, through her tribal leaders and keepers of culture, welcomed me and my family and 250 others, Home. 

Mother didn’t just see her children. We saw our Mother…and our Home. 

I didn’t know that Mother had been looking for me to return, because she could not come to where I was.

Home humbled me.

When I think of Home, it isn’t an address.

Home isn’t brick and mortar and living rooms and garages.

Home is the portal through which you enter & then engage the world each day.

Home is the portal through which you return to decompress from the atrocities of the world each day.

Home is where you look at yourself in the mirror before taking on the day.

And Home is where you never second guess yourself.

Home is where you never have to make excuses for yourself.

Home is where you never dumb down.

Home is where you are the majority, and majority rules.

Books live at libraries.

Merchandise lives at stores

Groceries live in supermarkets.

But our intact, non-apologetic, irrepressible, culturally-ordained, hence our truest selves, come alive at Home.

Home is where I can decompress a lifetime of atrocities and unfair treatment so that I can engage the struggle with a renewed sense of self, power and purpose.

Home humbled me in Ghana, because I didn’t know I was so “Homeless.”

I went Home last week and was reminded of who I am. I’m at home in my own skin wherever I go.

Home is not merely where we live. Home is where we come alive!

Dear Colonizer,

So now you’re rewriting history…again…to say that we as Africans actually sold our own people into slavery?  So, now you’re not to blame for transatlantic slave trading?

Colonizer, please!

Of course we as Africans sold prisoners of war to you. We were not the first to do so. But, what you fail to own is that once our ancestors realized the brutality of what you were doing…because America’s system of slavery was unique in the world and based solely on race and was brutal and very sexually and economically violent and inescapable…we refused to continue doing business with you. 

And when we refused to supply you with free labor…you supplied our enemies with weapons to attack us, thus punishing the unwilling middle man. You then robbed his land, only after kidnapping his children, raping his women and plundering his natural resources.

And you have the audacity to call us savage!

Colonizer, please!

And to show the shamelessness commitment to your own god called greed and power, you raped and stole, and beat and sold innocent people. You lied and brutalized in the name of my God of love. 

And you had the audacity to call us pagan!

You had already proven that raping innocent people was not beneath you. But, you stooped to a new low when you raped and manipulated the gospel and created and nurtured bastard children called white privilege and American exceptionalism.

Whore, please!

Hypocrite, please!

Colonizer, please!

And now you want to just let bygones be bygones without meaningful conversation about real history, justice or reparations.

As if the past no longer matters…as if there’s no connection between then and now.

Hmmm…So, let me get this straight. Four hundred years of systemic oppression has no relevance or detriment on today’s economic and political status of African Americans; but, 60 years of Affirmative Action has caused grown white men to cry in the streets:

“Blood and soil. We want our America back. Let’s make America great again!”

Weak men, please!

Scared men, please!

Colonizers, please!

Who hurt you, colonizer? Was it the Crown in Europe? Was it the State Church? The Pope? Is it the weight of self-imposed importance and worth? Was it the burden of the Doctrine of Discovery? I only ask because somebody must’ve really hurt you badly for you to have inflicted such pain on so many people. It must be hard to be you.

And because you were broken you thought you could…or should, break others. Break us. After 400 years you have discovered that the brokenness and weakness of your soul was not commensurate to the power and resilience of ours. 

You talked about God…we talked to God…and vice versa!

And if now the “playing field” were truly even…as you suggest…and it’s not, colonizer! It wouldn’t have been because slavery didn’t matter. It would’ve been because Black lives, and Black excellence and Black faith and Black communities and Black resilience all matter!!

You thought we were down for the count, didn’t you colonizer? You thought we wouldn’t return to Mother? You thought Mother wouldn’t remember us?

You thought rape and chains and rope and home-wrecking would break us. It did break our hearts, but, never came close to breaking our spirits.

You launched every evil your puny sick minds could imagine, and we just kept multiplying in number, in faith and in resolve. 

Didn’t you know we were kings and warriors when you stole us? Didn’t you know you were in for a fight, colonizer?

You walked us through the doors of no return, but guess what? We’ve returned!

You bathed us in the slave river and merchandized us with branding irons and separated us and distributed us like wares. 

Guess what? Your brand has worn off and we now determine our own future.

You chained us like criminals and marched us like prisoners of war, and then stacked us in ships like cargo and sailed us far from home. And guess what? We’ve returned to Mother on turbo wings and in Business Class seating!

We nursed what-would-become America into statehood and into an international superpower the same way we nursed your white babies on our Black breasts…Because we were strong, because we knew how, and because we were forced. 

And now you tell us to go back “home” if we don’t like the way things are handled in America. Well guess what? We were here standing here on what-would-become American soil when America was birthed. And in all likelihood, we were standing on what-would-become American soil…when most of you arrived. We were already speaking English when you arrived with foreign tongues.

We’ve been here 400 years since 1619…when did ya’ll arrive, colonizer?

We’re not strangers to America’s shores; we’re just estranged to her full benefits of citizenship!

You’ve questioned whether Black is beautiful? You’ve questioned whether Black lives matter? You’d better ask somebody…

You thought Africa was our shame? It was our pride…our strength. You should be so lucky to have been born in Africa! 

You’ve had your say for the past 400 years. Listen now to what we’re about to say…

The best is yet to come! Mother’s children are reuniting!

And do we need your permission or blessing?

Colonizer, please!!

While my story is an “open canon” (there will always be more to add to the story the more I discover and process), writer Julia O’Donnell summarized my story in the following article . . .

[Gee]nealogy

“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.”

-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

On its face, the lecture wasn’t so different from countless other events Dr. Rev. Alexander Gee had attended in his years as a Black pastor, community leader and activist in Madison, WI. But the way the lecturer that night spoke about African-American history struck a chord with Gee, and that night he found himself sitting at his computer typing his family name into the search engine on Ancestry.com.

That simple search marked the beginning of a journey that soon found Dr. Gee sitting across the kitchen table from his White cousin, drinking sweet tea and looking at old family photos of the descendants of a White slave owner who raped Dr. Gee’s enslaved great-great grandmother.

[Read more…] about [Gee]nealogy Story