How America Confused Sympathy for Empathy When Dealing With Blacks - A Juneteenth Timeline Of Our System

We hear the use of the word empathy a lot these days.  We see it used on social media daily.  We may not know the full story, the characters at play, or the circumstances but we choose to share our own feelings to another in hopes of providing comfort in the form of likes, comments, and shares.  We are exposed to an overwhelming amount of information as well which has led to the increased breakdowns in our social understanding and our ability to show compassion.  Basically, if it’s not trending virally, you probably do not care.  Our responses are becoming more of a group mindset rather than the individual point of view.  People are afraid to speak their truths yet we have access to more and more personal accounts of daily life.  What did my friend have for lunch? It’s on Facebook.  What color is my ex friend using at her bridal party? It’s on Pinterest.  What is everyone talking about at this very moment? It’s a hashtag on Twitter and Instagram.  Why are Black people in America still behind? Wait, hold up.

The White view of the Black race has been debated since the 1800s.  Where have we come since then? A Black President being elected in 2008 is supposed to be our version reparations for slavery and the systemic racism that has been in place since the end of the Civi War? Well they surely cannot empathize with us on any of these points but they believe that they due.  White guilt, is it real or is it simply a dream state where White people feel like they cannot do something to rectify the damages caused by their European ancestors in America?  The factual timeline shows the latter.  Today is Juneteeth.  We pieced together different moments in our political history that show how Whites have negatively intervened on the human rights of Blacks in this country for centuries.  

1619 - Black Slaves arrive in Jamestown, VA by the Dutch

1793- Eli Whitney’s cotton gin invention revs up the Industrial Revolution surging the demand of more slave labor / same year a Fed statute was passed against fugitive slaves allowing a cash reward for escapees

1794- Pres. George Washington passes the Slave Trade Act which intends to limit American involvement with international slave trading.

1800- First planned revolt by slaves in Richmond, VA gets exposed and all participants are hung. VA enacts stricter slave laws.

1807- Pres. Thomas Jefferson passes the Prohibition of Importation of Slaves act that legally bans the new slaves from being imported into the U.S.

1820 - The Missouri Compromise divided Congress into North and South with tensions increasing among free states versus slave states

1831 - Nat Turner leads a rebellion in VA and is hung as a result of its success / the Liberator, a newspaper, begins publishing information around abolition

1839 - Slaves aboard the Amistad successfully revolt by killing all of the ship’s captors, they are tried, acquitted, and sent back to Africa

1849 - Harriet Tubman escapes from Slavery and creates an underground channel for more slaves to be freed

1852 - Uncle Tom’s Cabin a novel depicting both the social and emotional aspects of Slavery is published by Harriet Beecher Stowe, its popularity reshaped how many Whites views blacks and slavery

1857 - The Supreme Court upholds that Congress has no right to ban slavery in states and that slaves are not to be considered citizens - Dred Scott

1861- Southern slaves states found the Confederacy and secedes from the rest of the Union commencing the Civil War

1863- Pres. Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation freeing all Slaves within the U.S. He was assassinated in 1865, less than a week after the Civil War ends

1865- In response to the 13th Amendment, Black codes are passed in the South which restricted the state rights of freed slaves. The Ku Klux Klan is established / in Texas on June 19th over 200K slaves receive word that Slavery is now illegal

1868 - 14th Amendment redefines citizenship to include Blacks born as slaves overturning the Dred Scott case

1870 - Hiram Revels is the first Black to be elected into Congress / 15th amendment gives Blacks the right to vote

1896 - Plessy v Ferguson creates the separate but equal doctrines which eventually lead to Jim Crow

1909 - The NAACP is founded under the leadership of W.E.B Du Bois

1914- Marcus Garvey launches first Black nationalist organization whose purpose was to promote racially pride among Black Americans

1931- 9 Black kids are charged with the rape of two White women in Scottsboro Alabama / the state finds them all guilty and they are sentenced to death / their convictions are overturned three times by the Supreme court

1954- Brown vs Board of Ed reverses Plessy v Ferguson on the grounds of educational equality

1955- Emmett Till’s death and the Montgomery bus boycotts increase tensions between Whites and Blacks around the country leading to the upsurge of nonviolent protests

1963- MLK Jr pens Letter from Birmingham Jail and gives the I Have A Dream speech during the March on Washington which at the time was the biggest demonstration at the U.S capitol

1965- Malcolm X is assassinated / protesters in Selma, Ala are attacked on the Pettus Bridge

1968 - MLK Jr is assassinated, Pres. Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1968

1970 - Pres. Nixon publicly declares the war on drugs which lead to increased police presence in Black and Latino communities allowing for racial profiling

1984- Prisons are privatized allowing funding contracts to specific groups

1992 - Rodney King’s attackers are acquitted for his beating despite videotapes of the incident being shown in court / race riots ensued in Los Angeles

1994- Pres. Clinton signs the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement bill which gave billions to prison funding, policing, and bans prisoners from receiving college grants / it set parameters that increased obstacles for those who have been in prison

1998 - Prisons become increasingly overcrowded due to the tough on crime tactics / low level crimes are passed down to jails and probation becomes more frequent

2006- Incarceration stats highlight huge race disparities among Whites, Blacks and Hispanics : 450 per 100K for Whites, 2,306 per 100K for Blacks

2012- G. Zimmerman murdered Trayvon Martin in Sanford, FL. He was acquitted a year later of his charges based on a stand your ground statute

2012- A black teen, Jordan Davis is murdered by a white store clerk Michael Dunn in Jacksonville, FL.

2013- Renisha McBride is killed by Theodore Wafer when she knocked on his door in Detroit, MI after she was in a car accident

2014- Eric Garner is killed by a chokehold on the streets of Staten Island NYC by NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo / He is not indicted despite footage from the scene being used

John Crawford is killed by officer in Beavercreek, OH at Walmart when he was seen with a toy gun

Michael Brown is murdered by officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri / He is not indicted in the murder of the teen

Laquan McDonald is shot 16 times in 12 seconds which was recorded by dash cam footage in Chicago / the officer is charged with murder

Tamir Rice a 12 year old was killed in Cleveland, OH when police responded to a call and saw the minor with a toy gun / the officers at the scene were not indicted for his death

Freddie Gray is killed while in police custody in Baltimore, MD

Sandra Bland is found dead by hanging while in police custody for a traffic stop in Texas- all of these unarmed deaths sparked the Black Lives Matter movement which included protests, boycotts, and stand-ins across major U.S. cities

2015- White supremacist Dylann Roof murders Black worshipers in Charleston, SC, upon his arrest he states that he attempted to start a race war

Kalief Browder commits suicide after experiencing 3 years on Rikers Island under the suspcion of theft,  he was held in solitary confinement for 2 out of the 3 years.

In 2019 we are still facing the racial divide among wealth in America between Whites and Blacks.  Systemic racism is the result of a society consistently disparaging the lives and wellbeing on a specific group.  We are the group.  What you would do with your 40 acres and a mule?

Tell us how you are celebrating Juneteenth in the comment section below!