An excerpt from Level.com
Why They’re Scared of Black People
From Ghana to George Floyd: the tale of Black resilience
By Jeffrey Kass
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| Photo Credit: Author |
As I walked barefoot along the same dirt path that once led kidnapped Africans to the Assin Manso River in Ghana, I felt the weight of history in every step.
When I finally placed my feet in the cool, flowing water — where European traders forced enslaved Africans to bathe before sale — I began to understand something that had long hovered just outside my comprehension.
The world’s fear of Black people isn’t just about skin color. It’s about strength. It’s about resilience.
That fear goes back centuries.
After enduring long, punishing treks — sometimes as far as 1,000 miles from inland villages across West Africa — captives were brought to this river. Shackled and exhausted, they were made to wash in the Assin Manso. Not out of care or dignity. But because slave traders didn’t want them to appear as “damaged goods.” They were prepared for market.
Once cleansed, their skin was rubbed with shea butter to shine — literally — to look appealing to buyers. Then, they were forced to march another 20 to 40 miles to slave castles along the coast. Places like Elmina and Cape Coast, where they were held in dark, airless dungeons for weeks or months until European ships arrived to carry them across the Atlantic.
I stood in these musty dungeons on the same floors where Africans were forced to sleep on top of each other in their own feces and blood. Most people wouldn’t last a day.
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Slavery in the United States wasn’t just about labor. It was about the complete dehumanization of a people — systematic violence, forced illiteracy, broken families, and stolen futures. And even when the Civil War ended slavery in 1865, freedom didn’t follow.
Instead, it gave way to nearly a century of Black Codes and Jim Crow laws. These were not simply “segregation” laws. They were legal frameworks built to criminalize Black existence, to re-enslave Black people through prison labor, and to suppress every attempt at political or economic empowerment.
There was also the era of racial terror — lynchings, white supremacist massacres like Tulsa (1921), Rosewood (1923), and Wilmington (1898) — when Black communities that dared to thrive were burned to the ground.
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And yet — in spite of all this — Black people rose.
Black people built businesses. Composed symphonies. Wrote novels. Led freedom marches. Won Nobel Prizes. Became mayors, governors, senators, and yes — a President.
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