In Washington, members of Congress listened to the CEO of Boeing, Dave Calhoun, apologize to the families of 346 passengers who died in two 737 Max crashes five years ago. In January of this year, another Boeing 737 Max jet owned by Alaska Air had the emergency exit door blown off with 220 passengers and flight crew aboard. Fortunately, no one was killed. One would think that Boeing could build and inspect their airplanes.

Boeing said, “Every day, more than 80 airlines operate about 5,000 flights with the global fleet of 1,300 737 MAX airplanes, carrying 700,000 passengers to their destinations safely. The 737 MAX family’s in-service reliability is above 99% and consistent with other commercial airplane models.” It has taken Boeing five years to address the deaths of 346 passengers.

As tragic as the mess at the 737 Max jets, some are waking up to the reality of protecting the lives of their passengers. It has been over four centuries since enslaved Africans arrived at Point Comfort, VA. By the time of the Civil War, there were 4 million enslaved people in America.

The Civil War was to address the issue of slavery. The North wanted to end slavery, and the South wanted to keep their slaves. The Civil War ended in two phases. The first was when General Lee surrendered to General Grant at the Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. He only surrendered the army that he commanded. The western part of the Confederacy army surrendered two months later, on June 2, 1865. On June 19, Union General Granger arrived at Galveston, Texas, with the proclamation from the United States Executive, which emancipated slaves.

Granger’s orders on June 19^th

The War of Northern Aggression, as the Civil War is called in the South, was being fought due to enslaving human beings. While the North won the war, it lost the peace.

Slavery morphed into Jim Crow laws and the separate but equal mindset, which wasn’t equal. Racism and discrimination, especially in the South, continued.

I attended college from 1961-1965. The civil rights movement was well underway during those years. Segregation and discrimination weren’t a part of the Constitution.

What don’t you see in this photo of Memphis, TN, at the opening of Gone with the Wind?

Gone with the Wind was released seventy-five years after the end of the Civil War. Many white Americans haven’t addressed racism even today. A cursory glimpse at the Supreme Court’s ruling on Present Johnson’s two major civil rights bills, one would find that affirmative action has been gutted.

Johnson stated, “Freedom is not enough. You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘you are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.”

Many white Americans still haven’t even tried to address racism in America. There is a famous Japanese Buddhist parable called Three Wise Monkeys. The monkeys’ names are Mizaru, Kikazaru, and Iwazaru. Our Western names are “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.” We think we are wasting time viewing, seeing, and speaking evil. However, it can be viewed as instructing followers not to avoid addressing what we see, hear, and speak.

Mizaru, Kikazaru, and Iwazaru and the Three Wise Monkeys.

Mizaru, Kikazaru, and Iwazaru and the Three Wise Monkeys.

General Granger arrived at Galveston, Texas, finally to end the Civil War and issue the proclamation that emancipated all slaves on June 19, 1865. Over the years, June 19^th became the day that blacks were freed. It is now a national holiday. Juneteenth is a black person’s Independence Day.

However, even some 81-year-old white guy sees that blacks and other minorities aren’t as free as whites. The reason for this is due to racism. Racism is based upon whites feeling inferior to blacks. White supremacy is an attempt to claim white superiority over blacks.