Driving in D.C. always feels like a shitshow. All. The. Time. The parking in the city is terrible and you get horrible amounts of traffic. It’s like you have to hit a U-turn at every turn signal and hope that you don’t hit the next car that swerves into the lane. By the hope of Mawu, I don’t hit someone.
However, I learned a lot from the city and what it had to offer. In all my 25 years of living. Leaving and being in Charlotte for a year, I realized how much black excellence it’s metro area had to offer. I drive Lyft on my spare time, so it gives me a lot of time to think about my past life. I thought about these young girls while I was in the car waiting one day. The girls that tried to steal the car from a Pakistani man driving Uber to feed his family. In the process, his car somersaulted and crashed. People surrounded the vehicle in amazement and horror, looking at the man’s lifeless body. “Where my phone at?” one of the girls said after stepping out the car relatively unscathed.
Human bodies are commodities, consumed for the greater good of the individual. The concept of immense profit at the expense of others is something that has crippled a whole continent, let alone individuals. The slave trade of Atlantic Africa (where these girls have substantial ancestry) laid the foundation for corrupt systems of profit and it was how the ancestors of these young people even got the United States. Squeezed by the pressures of wanting to make it out of the hood or to gain some type of status; to make it big and not have to suffer in this life. The greed factor strangled them and with good reason. To survive.
Everyone’s needs are immediate and so were our ancestors. I can’t knock them for that. Most of us don’t think when we do something. We only do what we know is best. However, that’s where our moral compass comes along and leads us to decisions that will consequently have a beneficial ripple effect on the masses. Rulers, businessmen (and women), society at large did not take heed in West-Central Africa or Europe. Greed consumed and strangled the lifeless brains of their consciousness, leaving no mental real estate for reexamination and the effects on their fellow man.
The height of the slave trade was the most profitable especially from 1750 to 1791, right before the Haitian Rebellion by enslaved blacks. It aided immensely in the birth of the Industrial revolution and there was no stopping it. We’ve passed the Industrial revolution and the slave trade but it’s effects still linger. The trauma caused by families being forcibly ripped apart, the stigmas that affect people who just happen to be of a dark skin tone and the maltreatment of the descendents of enslaved persons in the Americas to this day. Washington D.C. has been nicknamed “Chocolate City” for a while now.
It’s black inhabitants have been marginalized since the Great Migration when it comes to housing, access to health care and so on. Urban decay was bound to come sure enough. Tale of Two Cities. The East side being more black and less developed and the Western portion of the city having a better outlook. Gentrification of the whole city isn’t helping either. Rising costs and feeling trapped. What else to do than to take and make the wrong pro(fit)?
Balancing humanity’s nuanced, ugly nature and making sure we are egalitarian as well is a steep challenge we are currently facing today. Because history matters. Because it repeats itself and never goes away. We can’t simply hit the delete button on this. We must hit CTRL-ALT-DELETE so we can go to the Task manager and look at the running system with many nodes. One of them being race and class in this country called the UNITED states. The tragic death of Muhammed Anwar in the capital(ironically) is a prime example.