Listen to Experts, Not Politicians
Do not listen to politicians and business owners when it comes to coming out of quarantine.
Anyone who will put your life on the line for money does not deserve your attention.
Period.
Point blank, because once your loved one is gone, they are gone and a great economy is not going to take away your pain.
No time is ideal to lose a loved-one.
However, March and April 2020 has made the loss of loved-ones extremely difficult.
I know personally because my family is in the midst of laying a family member to rest in a way that no one should have to.
No real funeral.
No fellowship.
No contact.
No true celebration of life
Only 10 people or less can enter the funeral home at a time.
People have to watch the burial from a vehicle.
Those coming from Texas have to quarantine for 14 days because Louisiana has been a hotbed for COVID-19 infections.
Nevertheless, idiots like Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick recently told Fox News that there are more important things than living, like saving the economy.
While I know that the Bible says we should respect our leaders, the Bible also says thou shall not lie.
Therefore, Lt. Governor Patrick is a disgrace to leadership and does not deserve the title and position that Texans ignorantly gave him by voting him into office.
And if Texans, especially African-American residents of the state, listen to imbeciles like Patrick then they get what they deserve.
I hate to overgeneralize, but some of the actions of the Republican Party over the decades that I have been on this Earth do not convince me that they truly care about the African-American community.
Have you noticed that many Republican state leaders decided to reopen their economy after it was discovered that African-Americans were dying at a much higher rate than any other race?
The governor of Georgia has “reopened” the state, which includes the opening of barbershops, beauty salons, tattoo parlors and bowling alleys.
Nothing screams essential business more than a tattoo parlor.
Tattoo artists should give such heartless politicians free tattoos, which read, “completely out of touch.”
Luckily, local Atlanta politicians and business owners like rapper Killer Mike, who along with his wife owns a chain of barbershops in the Atlanta area, have urged businesses not to reopen or have refused to open their own businesses.
Killer Mike said that he will not endanger his employees and clients, which are predominantly African-American, when the illness is disproportionately affecting his people.
Comedian and radio personality Rickey Smiley took his message even further and put a lot of things in perspective via his social platforms.
Smiley urged African-Americans to stay at home and not trust politicians, using the Tuskegee Experiment as a cautionary tale.
The Tuskegee Experiment began in 1932 with hundreds of African-American men with syphilis and also men without the sexually transmitted disease.
Six hundred African-American men, mainly sharecroppers, signed up for the project believing they were receiving free medical care.
The group included 299 men with latent syphilis and 201 men without the sexually transmitted disease.
This offer of free healthcare was appealing because many of the men had never visited a doctor before in their entire life.
The men were told they were being treated for “bad blood” and believed that they were receiving treatment for their condition.
Instead, they were given placebos to see if African-American men responded the same way to syphilis as their White counterparts.
Ironically, the men were given medicine like aspirin when penicillin had been the recommended treatment since 1947.
The Tuskegee Experiment ended in 1972.
Because the men received no medical care for their disease, many of the men went blind, died or went insane due to the fact that they received no treatment for their illness.
Those African-American men basically became guinea pigs for the American government and the medical and research community.
Like Smiley said, do not fall for the okey doke like our forefathers before us.
Politicians like Patrick have already said that the economy is more important than living.
President Donald Trump constantly lets people know that he cares more about his reelection than the people that he serves.
If those people do not care about us, why should we care about them, their economy or their political future?
Yes, it is important that we save our economy.
But how has a robust economy improved the lives of African-Americans as a whole in the past?
When the economy has done well, African-Americans still found themselves at the bottom of the economic ladder.
So, if the economy tanks our position in society will not change much.
African-Americans should not put their lives on the line so that rich White people can stay rich.
Some rich, conservative White people seem to only care about their African-American brethren when their livelihood is at stake.
America belongs to White people during peacetime.
However, the minute a war breaks out many of those same people want African-Americans to die for a country that many do not even want us to be a part of.
When things are going well for them, we are invisible.
But when things go bad, we are supposedly all in the fight together.
Get the heck out of here with the tomfoolery.
If this is not our country, the economy is not our responsibility.
My responsibility is to my parents, aunts and uncles, especially those with underlying health problems.
I will not put them in danger for Patrick, Trump or the Easter Bunny.
It is time that America stop asking the have-nots to bail out the haves because at any other time the have-nots aren’t worth their time anyway.
Therefore, this time the shoe is on the other foot and I am not trading my comfort so that people that do not care about my family or me can be less uncomfortable.
