#MolueMonologue – Soliloquy: “God’s Gift to Humanity”
(Lights up. Old man in a Molue seat (on a stage)
Worn cap, clenched fist. He looks straight ahead
—not at the audience)
#OldManInTheMolue:
Nation-building has never been easy. On a boat ride around Manhattan in July 2015, looking at the Manhattan skyline, I thought to myself: this was not gifted to the young American nation—each building was built brick upon brick, girder upon girder.
Interestingly, some ten minutes later, the tour guide said of New York: “African laborers built this city.” He was being respectful, of course—he could have said “African slaves,” which would still have been respectful, or simply, “Slaves built this city.”
His name is George—of the Gray Line Tours (around Manhattan). Find him and ask him what he meant…
George got me thinking.
All of a sudden, the grand New York skyline you saw as you sailed back from the Statue of Liberty came alive: I saw skylines behind skylines behind skylines. A cascade of skylines, representative of the eras in which they were built—perhaps of their wealth, or the technologies available.
Monuments that would stand for hundreds of years, during which their fame would draw men from the ends of the earth to gaze at them in wonder. Odes to modernity—modern man’s response not just to the pyramids of Egypt, but to the jazziness of an age of limitless possibilities.
They stood as monuments in and of themselves, but also as monuments to those who dreamt and built them in succeeding eras—and to the spouses, partners, and children who inspired them.
Clearly, I was awestruck. Men did this? Under what unction or anointing? What drove them?
All that was clear to me was that no part of this skyline was gifted to the young American nation—each monument was built upwards, brick upon brick, girder upon girder… BY AFRICAN LABORERS.
Kudos to those laborers who made America great!
She has always been great.
No one can make you great again.
AMERICA, you never stopped being great.
Let me say something I’m not sure has ever been said—at least, not this directly:
The African American is God’s gift to America… to humanity.
Let that… sink in.
(Took a while to sink in here too…)
Without the African American,
There would be no America as we know it.
Period.
Even Rush Limbaugh—
Yes, that Rush Limbaugh—once admitted as much.
Without enslaved Africans?
America would’ve been just another oversized British outpost.
Something like… Australia.
Great at cricket.
Maybe rugby.
But without the wealth…
The might…
The nerve to dream of independence.
Think about it.
European settlers—without free labor?
They’d have struggled to survive,
Let alone build a global economic engine.
Australia didn’t rebel.
Didn’t reinvent itself.
Didn’t even change its spellings.
Why?
Because it didn’t get rich.
But America?
America got rich.
Off the backs of stolen people.
Africans.
Enslaved.
Exploited.
Erased.
TheyBuiltThat.
African Americans built that joint.
And every racist in America knows it.
That’s the war you’re watching.
It’s not politics.
It’s panic.
Why does Mike Pence still cling to Trump like wet fabric?
Why are some Americans flirting with domestic terrorism?
Because in their soul of souls…
They know.
And they’re scared.
Scared of reckoning.
But what reckoning?
What revenge?
That’s projection.
They see themselves in the mirror and assume we’ll come back swinging with the same cruelty they’ve always known.
They forget:
Informed cruelty is not in our DNA.
Only a certain kind of people could engineer the Holocaust—
On that scale.
With that cold efficiency.
It wouldn’t have happened anywhere else.
Not like that.
Not that thorough.
History still shudders.
(beat)
Back to America.
Without African Americans?
No revolution.
No innovation.
No jazz.
Their labor birthed wealth.
Wealth birthed specialization.
Specialization birthed invention.
And many of those inventions?
Black minds.
Stolen ideas.
White-owned patents.
You think the cotton gin was invented to ease slave suffering?
Please.
If a slave died, they were replaced.
No one was investing in kindness.
The math didn't care.
The machine was built not out of pity—
But profit.
And we even have the name of the man who truly invented it.
(That’s another monologue.)
Blacks made America great.
And they will Make America Great Again.
Yeah.
I said it - Black will MAGA.
They will #KAG: Keep America Great
Through jazz.
Through art.
Through struggle.
Through soul....
They will Keep America Great
Still in chains—yet fought in WWII.
Fought for a world’s freedom they still didn’t enjoy.
Let me say that again.
Still. In. Chains.
Yet fighting for the freedom of the world.
Israel?
Owes its existence in part to the African American war effort.
Speaking of bravery—
The Tuskegee Airmen.
Painted their tails red.
Bright red.
In the age of stealth.
Message?
“Mess with our convoy… and see what happens.”
And the Germans?
They saw red.
They felt dread.
That’s not just courage.
That’s legacy.
They climbed mountains with weights on their backs.
Sometimes they reached the top.
Sometimes they didn’t.
But they climbed anyway.
To the racists?
Live your life.
Nobody’s checking for you that deeply.
To our brothers in the diaspora—
Our Black Butterflies—
We salute you.
To our sisters?
You are the best of us.
I watched Ledisi sing “I Blame You” on #BlackGirlsRock…
And it hit me like thunder:
The music.
The power.
The poise.
You, my sister, sit at the pointy spire of human evolution.
So I’ll end where I began:
Let the record reflect…
The African American is God’s gift to humanity.
I rest my case.
(Lights dim. Silence holds for a beat before fadeout.)
dk
OldManInTheMolue
🔗 https://youtu.be/2DlNaun_iro
No comments:
Post a Comment