Haibun 09/05/2020 …. In the darkest hour

An American Cemetery – September 2019 – gsk’19

Slavery officially ended in 1863 in the United States but that didn’t change how white people acted towards black people in both the north and the south, but especially in the south. In that country an unofficial apartheid flourished in the southern states keeping blacks and whites apart and the blacks in a pejorative position.

When it’s said that white people have been raised to see other people (not only blacks but especially blacks) as beneath them, as outsiders, not quite clean, ignorant and dangerous… to be feared and mistreated that is correct.. The government had and has through educational programs and its treatment of blacks throughout recent history has followed a sad tenancy and been the lead in treating blacks as lesser beings reinforcing age old prejudice.

in the darkest hour

tossing in troubled dreams

no light is seen

There is really a lot of change that we the citizens must make to overcome that age old system of prejudice … because that bug in the system is useful to a certain degree to those who love power. The citizens have got to get over it and move on. Not by substituting brown people or yellow people for the black people as scapegoats and whipping dogs but by seeing that people are people and working together.

On the Day of Memory, though of course we remember the Shoah, which was another attempt by humanity at genocide let’s remember not only the Jews but also all victims of the power seekers who move forward through our hate and fear. I think our societies are guilty of many attempts at genocide in the past, the present and if we’re not careful into the future.

in the darkest hour

fear and prejudice prevails

blinding human kind

We must begin to remember all the victims of racial and ethnic and religious violence. .. Almost 100 years ago the Nazis began their raise to power in Germany and Mussolini was about to form his first Fascist government. The Spanish civil war would soon take place between Fascists and Republicans. The Japanese would begin their Nationalistic war and expansion throughout Asia and the Pacific . Those who came to power could do so because they could manipulate their people through their baser fears and prejudices and their national pride.

To fight future totalitarian regimes citizens of the nations in the world must overcome their prejudices and fears or they will be just be puppets of war and blind participants in more holocausts. If the United States wants to truly be, as they say, a beacon of freedom, that great social experiment of democracy, it must become a nation of people free from prejudice, hatred and ignorance.

in the darkest hour

a nightingale warbles

who listens