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What 19th Century Harriet Tubman Could Have Taught 21st Century Kamala Harris
Wikipedia says the following about the great Harriet Tubman.
“Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Ross, c. March 1822 – March 10, 1913) was an American abolitionist and social activist After escaping slavery, Tubman made some 13 missions to rescue approximately 70 enslaved people, including her family and friends, using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known collectively as the Underground Railroad. During the American Civil War, she served as an armed scout and spy for the Union Army. In her later years, Tubman was an activist in the movement for women’s suffrage.”
It has been said after one enslaved man was rescued, he profusely thanked Tubman for taking such a great risk in helping him escape. Tubman ‘s response was “I would have rescued more if they did not think they were slaves.”This speaks well of how the different when defined socially by the dominant as being inferior too often internalizes that degrading view of themselves resulting in them believing they are nothing. This view of being nothing except what the status quo presumes and requires you to think, say, and do, can also prove to be a detriment for those relegated to some societal bottom with aspirations to rise to some top who move upward through using the tools of the master to make it while shedding who they really are since they presume they are nothing and thus completely embrace conforming to the dominant. So their achieved upward mobility with at best preparation based upon the norms and expectations of the dominant changes nothing except the complexion and gender holders of the interests of those who are oppressing them in the first place.In this historical 21st century day and age especially , there is merit in being ambitious but there is, true enough, even the greater need to prepare ourselves as much as possible so when opportunities knock we have the substance to rise to them. That is especially the case when you are culturally different from the status quo which never wants to give you a total break and never allows you to completly slip and slide like they always privilege their own. This is why it is true when you are demographically different defined in degrading ways by the dominant , wanting to rise upward, you must be at least ten times better than those on top realizing you will always remain under the microscope since you never are viewed as having enough.
You must remain then in the front, middle, and back of your mind to be much better prepared than all of them, especially the best of them.
It is why the adage there is no rest for the weary pertains most to those stigmatized as being on the bottom with ambitions to rise to the highest mountain top. You cannot just be good or satisfied with a razor thin resume like those so often on the top but have more substance than all of them.
Ironically and paradoxically though, in these early 21st century times there is as well the expectation for those who are different desiring to rise up to be seed carriers of change in this complex changing world but as usual for centuries, only through using the tools of those calling the shots. This is a leftover centuries long presumption now disadvantageous in a world laced with multitudes of inequalities plundering the marginal and excluded seeped in their deepest pits of despair and agony.
So,these days and times yearn for an urgent demand for more liberating mindset preparation for those different from those at the controls who are ambitious to get to the top. A liberating mindset going beyond cliche words like Decolonization and Critical Race Theory to weave new edicts and ethics of being which are effective Trojan Horse and more explicit practical routes of the sustaining access to and mobility within decent quality of life for the massive deprived and denied for everyone not just for me and you the ambitious ones crawling and clawing upwards.
This takes a proactive type of “creating new boxes rather than thinking out of standard boxes” masters tools preparation grounded in the implications of the nature of the unfolding 21st century present with its cracks in traditional systems of dominance rather than old textbook knowledge which celebrates historical systems of dominance crumbling now before our very eyes. Having preparation which has new words in need to be firmly spoken rather than wimpish old language which strangles and incarcerates those who full of ambition try to run to the top of places, institutions, systems, sectors, societies, and world orders.
Otherwise for the ambitious spawned in the disempowering degraded impoverished and bourgeois dungeons of societies wishing to skate to some top, to have in these times mindsets and cognitive styles bantered about in the realities and interests of those on declining tops is a preparation with doomed outcomes thus a waste of time and immeasurable resources. All such conformity to the declining desperate on top does is to feed their egos in their efforts to remain relevant as the world and societies within it goes to hell in a handbasket.
So in this day and age especially if you are degraded different coming from some societal bottom as you prepare to struggle to rise to some top, break away your minds and strategies from the traditions of disintegrating master rulers, look at the present and visualize a future that includes the different as well as those on top coming justly together in ways unimaginable in the past in the worldview those on top made with you in chains now free, liberated, as your preparation has made you become. Otherwise yes more from the bottom will continue to rise while still chained up only to reach some top promise land reproducing the same old oppressive stuff especially within ourselves and thus within all of us including me and you the ambitions ones.
Prof John Huston Stanfield ASARPI
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