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There will be a substantially higher percentage of Blacks on the battlefields of Iraq than at the nine lavish inaugural balls in D.C. on January 20. In fact, the few Blacks who will receive invitations resemble Associate Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court philosophically. The inaugural balls will only be a shade above plantation balls. “Celebrating Freedom and Honoring Service” is the theme of this year’s inaugural events. Our reaction has to be the same as Frederick Douglass’ was on a July Fourth celebration he addressed in New York. More than 150 years later, Blacks still have no reason to celebrate freedom, and our 400 years of service have been dishonored and still remain uncompensated, unlike Japanese internment, for example. In the first meeting between Blacks and a U.S. president, in 1862, Abraham Lincoln predicted the future of Blacks in the United States: “There is an unwillingness on the part of our people, harsh as it may be, for you free colored people to remain among us.” The following year, Lincoln started to ship hundreds of Blacks to Haiti while penning the Emancipation Proclamation. White mayors and governors in addition to Bush 43 are delivering inaugural addresses to whites, in January, but nobody has stepped up to the plate to address descendants of enslaved and colonized Africans. We have forgotten what it means to embrace self-determination. Black leaders are like third base coaches. They look to the dugouts of either the Democratic Donkeys or the Republican Elephants for hand signals. They relay the signals to Blacks on the field. This is the closest that Blacks will get to an inaugural address. It is reminiscent of picking cotton on a plantation. [more]