Mo' Slavery. Mo' Slavery! Mo..Slavery!!

You know. This weekend I was on a high cause we had black folks doing all kinds of big things. Kipchoge, broke the 2 hour marathon, even if it wasn't an official world record due to the set up.

We had Simone Biles racking up medals at the world championships.

We had Tyler Perry making his studio and naming his stages after black actors and actresses (instead of whining about other people's shit). And note, I'm not really a TP fan. But I respect his hustle.

But then we gotta deal with the damn fools. Here's Steve Harvey, who I've had to correct before, pulling the slavery rabbit out the hat.

Now I know his brand took a bad beat when he met with Trump back in January of 2017. I gave him credit for it then because I recognize that having a seat at the table is better than complaining about who's at the table. Sitting at the table isn't an endorsement. Sitting at the table means you get a chance to leverage power. But negroes are too busy hating the president to understand this.

To be fair, this slavery is just around the corner BS is not unique to Steve. In fact the whole morning crew is dull as bricks on the subject. Matter of fact, every DJ on the station that carries him, in the area I live in, are no better. At this point I listen to it only to see what new dumb nonsense is going to pop out the DJ's mouth.

Like the DJ who was going on about Columbus day and how it's indigenous people's day cause Columbus was a rapist and murderer and thief. Two seconds later talking about how she was going to cut "her" lawn. Umm. No, Native American people didn't do private land ownership so, since you're on this "indigenous day" thing, you should be consistent and not own property either. Matter of fact, there are a number of poor native people on reservations that YOU should trade places with. Right? 'Cause what righteous person keeps possession of stolen property?

Matter of fact is that all nations are the result of conquest. And none of it was pretty. You think Ghana, Songhai and Mali were expanded peacefully? Sure. You believe that. You think the native Americans of both the north and south were gentle with all other tribes/nations? Sure. Believe that. Oh. Right. Only the white man doing it to non-whites is bad.

Anyway. One of the reasons I'm even posting on this is because almost four years ago Tavis Smiley did the same "They want to bring back slavery" shtick:

But at the conclusion of my talk, I was introduced to another question that still haunts me. I had handled most of the closing Q&A questions. Then one student hit me with this:

“Mr. Smiley, do you believe that given the crisis state of our democracy, we black folk could ever find ourselves enslaved again?”

Whoa. Didn’t see that one coming. Neither did the mostly white audience. A quiet fell over the room. I swallowed hard.

Looking directly at the student, I could see he was dead serious, and I wanted to treat his question with the soberness it deserved. But, truthfully, I stumbled as I began to respond, not knowing how to properly frame my response.

My answer? Yes...

Thus far it has been 998 days and Trump still hasn't proposed his "back to slavery" legislation. I'm also old enough to have heard this "back to slavery" nonsense for every Republican candidate for president as well as some other positions.

It's tired.

It's played.

And I've had enough of it.

You wanna know who the new slaves are? They are the illegal aliens that Democrats and Republicans have winked and nodded into the country. They are in fields (I've seen them). They are in poultry factories and other places where not only are they exploited but are also used to depress the wages of the citizen workforce, with particular devastation to the low/no skill [ex-slave] African-American population. They won't pay you, the citizen a fair wage needed to live in whatever city you live in, but will get [enter meso-American name here] to cross the border and live 5 to a fire hazard room or a van or a camper, or even under highway overpasses, for dirt cheap. Same company will then lecture you about their values.

All someone has to do with these Negroes is say Trump and they'll be blind to everything else.