This is ultimately how I feel about white people’s level of culpability in the race issue.

When I studied into slavery more I realized that very few white people in the past were “plantation owners.” That in fact most white people during that time were primarily renters. They rented slaves from “plantation owners.” They even I believe would combine their money with other families to rent a plantation so that you had one or two families sort of partnering to run a plantation.

This does not absolve culpability for inflicting harm on another human being but as I have started studying more about the status quo.

I have come to understand that while this does not absolve them it explains how it happened to an extent.

Firstly, violence of any kind traumatizes the human being. For most human beings they are afraid of violence and watching violence causes compliance.

If I could explain what I think most American white people’s ancestor’s were experiencing I would view it from this angle.

Imagine you are a white person during that time period and you actually do feel bad about the violence you are witnessing. You may not even be in the minority feeling this way.

However you have what we now call the 1% with all the money power and access to military power. That coupled with the fact that most people follow the status quo. Following the status quo is debatable. It’s pretty clear to me that if the status quo calls for you to harm innocent people , don’t participate. But apparently this still seems to be a concept that even the descendants of slave owners struggle with.

So there are two issues functioning here. While I would like to sympathize with white people that say my family was too poor to own slaves. I hardly think that would absolve them of guilt for upholding a status quo that still oppresses the innocent.

The second thing at play here is that in the past and even through the present. People who are not connected to power and wealth have very little “freedom” or “liberty.” The violence inflicted on the African worked in two ways on the psyche of the ancestors of our current white American population.

1. It terrified the white people of the past. If you can imagine a scenario where you and your friend are kidnapped by a hostile government. This government then tortures your friend in front of you to control your actions and extract information from you. While black people and white people may not have been friends it would have been obvious that they were in fact other human beings. This affect on the white psyche would have terrified them into compliance.
2. The second factor is of course the dehumanization. It became obvious that too many white people found the violence repulsive. It would have been obvious in their facial expressions. Perhaps a few of them would have begun to display sociopathic behavior . We also have to wonder if the so called “ white criminals” reported on during the time period of slavery were actually bad people since they existed outside the status quo and the status quo was actually criminal. That’s an entirely different topic. As I said though the dehumanization aspect was necessary to convince white people not to see a human being.

We are now left with a puzzle that we should all be working together to solve. Who were the 1% that implemented this status quo on the rest of the white people in America during that time. Do we have enough names and enough of a paper trail to figure out what their descendants are doing now? Not to come after them in any way of course but to merely assess whether their family is still controlling the status quo now ? We need to know this information because whoever this criminal organization is that imposed 300 years of terror on all ethnicities in the US needs to be identified for the purpose of knowing what we are dealing with here.