by Dennis Lange
copyright 2012
——————
Enslaved blacks
To grow white cotton
For the gold.
—————————–
Less human?
How could masters miss
All those tears?
—————————–
Did owners
Do unto others
What they’d want?
—————————–
Can one pray
And his words be heard
As he preys?
—————————–
Darwin thought
Blacks inferior –
Not evolved.
—————————–
Thus, we see
Christ’s teachings – against;
Science – for.
—————————
Notes by the author:
One would expect that enslaving a subjugated people would be a result of war. Better than death for the conquered. That occurred in the Bible, also. And in the Bible, provision was made in Israel by God for those who became so indebted that there was no other way, that they could sell themselves as slaves (and be freed in the Jubilee Year). The grabbing of African natives from their homes just to sell them for profit seems to me to have been the worst kind of slaverey, the most insufferable and inexcusable. I don’t know what I would have done if I had grown up in the South during that time. I think many thought it was something they could not afford to stop doing and rationalized about it.
The haiku I write are lines of 3-5-3 syllables instead of 5-7-5.
See Haiku article here for explanation, if needed:
