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THE NEW ISRAELITES |
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by Charles Carreon Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2005 10:25 pm Merriam-Webster defines a diaspora as “the breaking up and scattering of a people.” Before our eyes, in living color, a people have been broken up and scattered. The Israelites of biblical legend walked through the parted waters of the Red Sea. Today’s New Israelites have been driven forth from their land by the sea, deprived of everything, of homes, of work and school and relatives. There is no sound bite big enough to contain it, but the word diaspora comes close. African-Americans suffered the first diaspora when they were enslaved by the Northern European colonizing nations. They were stripped of all tribal customs, separated and sold without regard to blood or family ties, and taught to worship a white god. Since Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, the former slaves have battled their way toward equality in the distribution of social resources. During the twentieth century, in New Orleans and Atlanta and many other cities racial “minorities” became the majority. After Lyndon Johnson pushed through the Voting Rights Act in 1965, these “minorities” began to elect mayors and congress-people of their own race. Thus, one-hundred and forty-two years after black men and women were bought and sold in the New Orleans slave markets, Ray Nagin, a black man, is the mayor of New Orleans. But what can he call a city, and from what shall he create a habitation for his people? The second diaspora has thus begun, a great cultural migration outward from the warm waters of the Gulf Coast, where yet another, still mightier storm is menacing the coast, causing people to flee before the winds. Where shall they go, these uprooted children, cast about the surface of the earth? Who will let them share their lands, their fields, their open sky? A New Israelite shepherd wonders aloud and lifts his eyes up high to the mountain where long ago Noah's ark came to rest after the long, long flood that drowned the whole world. This flood here's only a baby flood and we've come to rest on a dry place at last. Now, just to cultivate and make it bloom. Yah, that's all a myth man, but you can believe it, and maybe even make it come true. Just make sure you get your share right here on earth, because that pie in the sky ain't never been eaten by no mother's son. |