By John Felder
Columnist

When a person gives up his or her ability to think for themselves, they are only capable of doing as they are told. Very often, people are placed in a state of frozen psychology when they forget their past. But just think back and watch a different story unfold historically.

As far back as the early settlers of this great nation, all the different races contributed to the formation of the United States of America.  Before Columbus invaded the American shores, there were 20 million Taino Indian people inhabiting North America , fishing and hunting buffalo and practicing Indian civilization. The Taino Native Americans extended from as far south as Mexico and as far north as Canada.

This continent was occupied by the force and taken from the Native Americans who were forced onto reservations, and later 93 treaties were broken on the "Trail of Tears" agreement under President Andrew Jackson. The country was taken by force from the indigenous nations that were the natural inhabitants of North America.

Centuries later, the U.S. is following the same process of forced land occupation in Iraq. If the world community doesn't learn from these incidents, it will not understand what is causing North Korea to develop nuclear capability as a safeguard in case the United States tries to do the same thing to that nation.

Every time we sing a song like "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal," it is not self-evident to be true when everyone, regardless of race, is not included in the "American dream."  America, America, God shed his grace on thee and crown thy good with "brotherhood" from sea to shining sea.

The world community is now keeping a watchful eye on the actions of the U.S. The President and his administration attempted to sell the people a tale that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, but no evidence has been found to date.

Now think back to a time during the 1940s, when the United States built a chemical weapons plant in Terre, Haute, Indiana  capable of producing anthrax bombs  for the British to use against Hitler’s armies and the Allies’ other enemies in World War II. ,as several news outlets have reported.

As I think back, I recall in my education experience that when I studied and received my academic diploma, I thought that I had reached the promised land, only to wake up to the reality African-Americans are repeatedly discriminated against in the hiring process, and in the salaries they are paid. I went back to school to earn a college education to secure a better life.

Today, inner-city children across the country are being disenfranchised from the educational system by curricula that do not incorporate Black history into classroom instruction. Here in New York City, the Department of Education is run by chancellor Joel Klein, who has no experience as a teacher and has nothing on his resume to suggest he could understand the needs of the urban communities that he was assigned to manage.

Dumbing down is a process necessary to maintain a system of racism. In order for racism to perpetuate, one hue of humanity has to maintain class differences by focusing on physical differences. In this process, the fat are pitted against the skinny, the light-skinned against the dark-skinned, intelligent against lesser-educated, the strong against the weak, and finally the rich against the poor, etc.

John Henrik Clarke, a black historian who wrote in his obituary that Jesus was black, described history as "a clock that people use to tell their political and cultural time of day. It is a compass they use to find themselves on the map of human geography."

I listen to classical music on WQXR F.M. daily. A few years ago, I attended the first African Initiative and Diversity program at Manus Music College, centering on black classical composers over the last 50 years. When I informed the public about  the concertos written by Chevalier De Saint-George, a black man, member of the Royal Army, an equestrian, a swordsman, and quite a ladies man about European high society, WQXR FM started pulling up his music and his concertos. All of humanity has culture and should be included in the education process nationally to create a curriculum of inclusion. There is only one race : the "human race."

In the origin of human kind, the oldest remains of man were discovered in Africa at Olduvai, Kenya in the Nile Valley civilization.

So "think back" and perhaps we can turn this entire farce called racism around and make the world function.