I was locked in spiritual pugilism all day with myself.

I was suddenly made aware while in training for my new job that I have been a huge coward most of my life. Every time I shared my experience with the group, I was compelled to measure every comment for fear of being found guilty of … not knowing my place.

The memory of seeing my grandmother hang her head in fear beneath the lash of White judgment at the store when I was young shot through my mind. Then I recalled the shame on my aunt’s face as she paid for a conviction on a separate occasion by hanging her head in the same manner, humiliated, devalued and publicly disgraced in front of her whole family.

I began giving myself a beating for not standing up for myself and representing my people to the best of my ability all day and all night.

There is no judge or jury involved in these convictions by our White neighbors, but Black people are relegated to feel like they’ve been found guilty. Being labeled by White people, with or without cause, has cost us jobs, influence, hard earned reputations, and bottomless buckets of blood.

Even saying the six-letter word that begins with “R” which is at the root of this inexplicable phenomena in too many circles of White people these days is going to get you targeted. It is as if there has never been any such thing as that word. We were simply caught in a 400-year-long bad dream.

Belittling behavior

Racism has taught Blacks to make themselves smaller to make Whites comfortable with our abilities and successes. It is an essential survival skill — like not wearing blue or red in Englewood. Our collective capitulation can be seen as acceptance of our status as a permanent underclass.

The white flag has been hoisted.

Uncomfortable White people, especially those who are economically disadvantaged, tend to vent their frustrations towards minorities in general and Blacks in particular. History is littered with examples. Meanwhile, inflation, labor disturbances, and general ineptitude and buffoonery in Washington, D.C., continue to create more poor people.

Black people are disproportionally more affected by economic unrest than Whites in America, but many of these uncomfortable White people are new to the game we have had generations of practice learning to manage. There are more uncomfortable Whites than ever, and they are represented in the halls of leadership by politicians desperate to keep them that way while they lie and steal their fill.

This swirly, twitchy and unrighteous demographic is more powerful than ever and openly states its malicious intentions. All non-whites in America are presently besieged by forces whose very survival depends upon fomenting conflict in the land they claim to love more than everyone. This next election year may be the most vile, unwatchable and divisive yet.

Black and bleak

America has accepted these circumstances and abandoned the legacy of the generations which gave everything to advance civil rights.

Racism has gone mainstream.

The citizens of our nation — White and Black — seem unwilling to aspire to America’s ideals even though we all proclaim to love liberty, justice and equality. The commitment and effort required to preserve the integrity of those cornerstones of this republic appear to have been lost long ago.

Equal citizenship under the Constitution is a mirage that Blacks have wandered towards for generations across a desert of institutionalized persecution. That fact remains willfully invisible to a growing segment of the populace. Many Whites flat out deny racism even exists while supporting efforts to expand the disenfranchisement of Black people.

Traditionally we have dumbed ourselves down to avoid the backlash caused by White fear and hatred. We have bent our backs and averted our eyes. White supremacy is reinforced every time we do so. We endorse our oppression. We magnify our pain. We diminish opportunities for ourselves and for those who will follow.

Our children internalize the message that they are not good enough.

When Blacks see someone like Deion Sanders stand up and rebuke the insidious, systematic attempts to relegate him to “his place,” we celebrate as a people. We recognize the messages designed to constantly remind us of our wretched position in American society. These messages have effectively crushed our spirit and will — as a people — for generations.

Coach Prime may be a flawed symbol, but Black people are drawn to his brash, unapologetic affect. We have lost the collective courage to stand up for ourselves, caught in a pervasive malaise that validates our victimization for our enemies. Many of us have given our best only to be undermined and sabotaged. Sanders’ intrepid success in a system that thirsts to see him fail inspires us all.

Prime opportunity

Sanders exhibits the confidence of a human who believes himself worthy of freedom and equality.

Perhaps our biggest challenge as a people is restoring the confidence that has been beaten out of us. Black people must first begin to believe salvation is possible and invest more energy in the spiritual healing of themselves and their families. We must begin to challenge our reprisals with honor and integrity without fearing the obstacles before our race can assert its proper position in this country with confidence.

History has taught us that it is safer to cower. The ghosts of those who dared defy the system and paid the price loom in America’s workplaces, courthouses, and police stations. Those who oppose diversity depend on us forgetting the pain our forebearers endured, thereby making us complicit in our own oppression.

The freakshow in Congress has taught a significant number of Americans that it is right and just to condescend over Blacks and menace their aspirations. Black Americans are increasingly under attack by an ever-more aggressive system that is enabled by their own government. Same as it ever was.

Freedom tapped

Supreme Court Associate Justice Louis Brandeis wrote a famous dissenting opinion in “Olmstead v. United States.” The plaintiff was a police officer turned bootlegger who was convicted largely on evidence obtained by the FBI through tapping his phone calls. This was the first time the technique was used.

Brandeis spoke about what he called “the right to be left alone” in his dissent. He could foresee the pernicious potential consequences of a government that did not prioritize individual freedoms — indeed, justice for all — above everything. He believed that our government was obligated to protect the freedom of its citizens. He went further:

“Our Government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.”

The anarchists accepted the invitation, let themselves in and stabbed the American Ideal in the heart.

These segments of America that hate everyone outside their own groups openly operate like street gangs. The coercion and intimidation that is ruthlessly inflicted on their imagined enemies is reinforced and endorsed every time politicians and government officials successfully collude to assassinate crucial privileges and immunities guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.

America may deserve the impotent collection of snake charmers, criminals and heretics who are making everything worse in this country. We Black people better take a more personal interest in elevating our people. Each one of us better get a plan and get our feet moving.

Let me help you get started:

Close your eyes and imagine your children hanging their heads in shame for no reason, then your grandchildren, and their children, too. That is the future America holds for all of us. Same as it ever was.