End the Heritage and Cultural Genocide of Black Americans Through Accusations of Reverse Racism & Attacking Their Progress

The time is now for the United States government to step in and permanently end the cultural genocide of Black Americans as it is, as the term reverse racism is stated by The Conversation, a “backlash against racial justice“.

Black Americans are racially black and ethnically Black and not all racially black people are also ethnically Black. The United States has a long history of racism and race based segregation based on the amount of melanin in ones skin, and the United States government used this racism to enslave and hinder any progress of Black Americans.

Due to the hinderances placed on Black Americans by the US government, Black Americans have had to carve out neighborhoods, cities and even schools for themselves in order to even begin to thrive and achieve. However, now there is an attack on all those achievements by some calling it reverse racism, where people of another race believe it is racism for Black Americans to have anything solely for themselves. They are pretending to not understand that it was necessary due to the centuries of racism against Black people in the USA, and now those centuries of building are a huge part of Black American heritage. Black Americans are an ethnic group, and the attempt to remove or make it illegal to provide the necessary upkeep what we have built is a form of heritage and cultural genocide.

According to the European University Institute, “Cultural genocide is the systematic destruction of traditions, values, language, and other elements that make one group of people distinct from another.” By definition, African Americans/Black Americans/Afro-Americans are the descendants of the African enslaved in the United States of America. There has been an attack on minority based businesses, calling grants for them as reverse racism, Black authors and Black books, and even historically Black colleges and universities in attempts to shut them down and withhold money from them.

Whenever other groups begin to attack the institutions and culture of Black Americans, who are one of the foundations of this nation, they are actively participating in the genocide of a people’s heritage. Black Americans take pride and look to their forefathers as a primary source of what it means to be ethnically a Black American. Removing a people’s history means to remove who they are, and that is cultural genocide. This is what the calls of reverse racism are doing – attempting to use the same thing the government used to enslave and hinder African Americans by calling it reverse when we try and secure a way for our future generations of Black Americans opportunity that cannot simply be stolen.

It is important of the United States government to issue a statement, both verbally and written, and make it law, that African Americans/Black Americans/Afro-Americans are an ethnic group that was formed in the United States of America as the descendants of African enslaved, who have their own unique culture, and that any removal of what makes them a distinct people is and should have always been against the law, especially since the movements led by African Americans made the USA a truer democracy. It should add that it is by no fault of the African American that the US government chose to make racial classifications that placed them at the bottom for centuries, solely based off of their race, and now that they have grown into an ethnic group, with the criteria that make them a unique ethnic group with their own culture, all on their own, such as their own heritage flag, holidays dating back to the 1700s such as African American Emancipation Day, museums and institutions of education, fashion, folklore, music, perspective, history, dance, soul food, art, African American Vernacular English and more, they should never be subject to unfair scrutiny and genocide of any sort as it should be against the law. Shouldn’t this be part of the Reconstruction that should have already been done after the Civil War? Of course it should have been. However, there was Jim Crow laws instead.

African Americans are not voluntary immigrants coming over after the Emancipation Proclamation and the Immigration Act. Black Americans are one of the foundational people, along with indigenous and white people, who were here at the country’s foundation, and the heritage and culture of the Black Americans who built the United States of America need not share their heritage with anyone else because it was through only their blood, sweat and tears that they are who they are as a unique people.

The time is now for the United States government to step in and permanently end the cultural genocide of Black Americans. Our heritage is our lineage and it needs to be preserved, not attacked and removed. Contact the legislature in your state and demand action today to prevent the cultural genocide of African Americans, the descendants of African enslaved in the United States of America.

Written by Mirika Mayo Cornelius | writer, author, founder of Black Entrepreneur History