Rating:
  Review Date: April 29, 2007
  Website: Brother Ali Website
  Label: Rhymesayers

Brother Ali “The Undisputed Truth” Album Review 
About two months ago, shortly after the 400th anniversary celebration of the city of Jamestown, one of the first slave ports of the American colonies, the Virginia General Assembly passed a joint resolution apologizing for its part in the American slave trade. Now as honorable as this act was, it actually kinda angered me because neither any other states nor the federal government of the United States followed up with an apology of their own. It appears that the majority of this country either does not believe that slavery continues to affect us today, or does not think that we should apologize for the effects it has had.

“Only Two Generations Away …”
I grew up in the Midwest at a time when, at least from my perspective, it was an area overwhelmed with racial tension. I remember hearing black people talk about how they were still held down from four hundred years of oppression and racism. To defend themselves against this frame of thought, white people used several arguments to downplay the affects of slavery. I often heard them say ignorant shit like, “Americans weren’t the first ones to have slaves, you know,” or “Slavery was one-hundred and fifty years ago … get over it,” or “I’ve never owned a slave, how can I be to blame?” As if the history of world slavery even remotely compared to the atrocities committed in the American slave trade; as if African-Americans were placed on an even playing field the minute Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation back in 1863; as if the effects of slavery aren’t clearly splattered all over this country for everyone to see.

Nowadays, I just don’t seem to hear the topic come up much anymore. At least until I heard Brother Ali spit the following verse from “Uncle Sam Goddamn” off of his recently released album, “The Undisputed Truth”:

All must bow to the fat and lazy
The “fuck you, obey me” and “why do they hate me?”
Only two generations away
From the world’s most despicable slavery trade
Pioneered so many ways to degrade a human being that it can’t be changed to this day
Legacies so ingrained in the way that we think, we no longer need chains to be slaves
Lord, it’s a shameful display
The overseers even got raped along the way
Cause the children can’t escape from the pain
And they’re born with the poisonous hatred in their veins
Try and separate a man from his soul
You’ll only strengthen him and loose your own
But shoot that fucker if he walks near the thrown
Remind him that this is my home

This verse holds a lot of truth in it … truth that, unfortunately, many Americans to this day attempt to ignore. Now I can only speak for myself. But I can see clearly how slavery affected me personally, and I’m a twenty-nine-year-old privileged white kid from the suburbs! Historically speaking, I’m actually only four steps away from slavery. Counting backwards, the steps would be: Desegregation, Jim Crow, Reconstruction and slavery . just like that. Think that’s ridiculous? Well, let me explain …

Step 1: Slavery
Slavery started in the United States sometime during the 1640s, not too long after settlers killed off enough Native Americans to create room for their own colonies. More so than the slaves of ancient Egypt, Rome or China; more so than the slaves of the Greek or Ottoman empires; the Africans enslaved by American colonialists were not only treated inhumanely, but also institutionalized to a point where they “no longer need[ed] chains to be slaves.” They were robbed of their native cultures and languages, brutalized, whipped and raped, prohibited from learning to read or write, and forced to breed and create new generations of slaves.

Step 2: Reconstruction
I guess this is why it comes as very little surprise that following the American Civil War and emancipation, most former slaves were simply reduced to forms of semi-slavery such as sharecropping or debt bondage. In order to fix these problems, the United States created a plan known as Reconstruction intended to integrate former slaves into the social, economic, political and legal systems. The plan failed miserably and was officially ended in 1877.

Step 3: Jim Crow
Towards the end of Reconstruction, Southern and border states started to enact local laws called Jim Crow laws, which led to the creation of separate facilities for whites and blacks. This included separate schools, transportation and public facilities. Now although the Jim Crow laws mandated “separate but equal” status for black Americans, they really led to treatment and accommodations largely inferior to those of white Americans. This Jim Crow era lasted until 1954, when the Supreme Court ruled that school segregation was unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education. However, many Jim Crow laws remained in effect until outlawed by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and some even stayed around until the late 1960s.

Step 4: School Desegregation
Then in 1971, the Supreme Court passed a ruling in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education that upheld desegregation busing of students to achieve integration. Only one hundred and twenty years after the so-called emancipation. In my hometown of Columbus, Ohio, desegregation busing began for the public schools in 1977, less than one year before I was born. When my brother and I started attending grade school, we didn’t go to our neighborhood school. We were bused half way across the city to attend school with children from other parts of the city. This busing policy remained in effect for twenty years, until the city decided to stop desegregation busing in 1997, one year after I graduated from high school.

In reprise, there was the institution of slavery, which “pioneered so many ways to degrade a human being that it can’t be changed to this day.” In an attempt to fix this, the United States created Reconstruction. In an attempt to fix that, the South created Jim Crow laws. And in an attempt to fix those, the nation desegregated the schools. “Cause the children can’t escape from the pain and they’re born with the poisonous hatred in their veins.” Four steps in between “the world’s most despicable slavery trade” and me, a privileged white kid from the suburbs who was bused across town for thirteen years in the name of integration, and who now runs a hip-hop website. Shit, imagine the impact it must’ve had on the black kids. And people try to say slavery doesn’t affect us today? Right.

Open up your eyes motherfuckers! It’s time for the country to take responsibility for what it’s done and make some attempt to reverse the conditions it created. And there’s no better way than with a public apology and recognition of the ways in which slavery continues to affect our country. Big ups to Brother Ali for attempting to educate. Pickup a copy of “The Undisputed Truth” for more truth. Peace.