An open letter to wokesters, the BLM crowd, and self hating Whites:
Dear Black racists, Leftwaffe, and the ignorant "educators" at colleges and universities,
This post may result in this writer getting "cancelled', but, in truth, there is nothing to cancel. This opinionist is neither a person of fame nor the employee of any company. In fact, he does not own his own business that can be boycotted and "shamed", nor any sort of half famous personality who can be brought to his knees by your silly, stupid, and in fact, evil Jacobinism, illiberality, and ignorance. This writer is a free man holding independent thoughts and opinions and beliefs, and he really doesn't much care what you think of him.
Having stated the above, please, if you have any sense of self respect and self worth, stop making English literature about you. And by "you" it is meant specifically Blacks who look for Blackness in works ranging from the time of Beowulf to the 1950s in England. Almost overwhelmingly none of that literature has to do with you or Black people despite what you have seen in moving picture portrayals of such films as the awful Robin Hood Prince of Thieves in which one of the Merry Men was a Blackamoor. The Robin Hood legend started before there were, or at least, very few Blacks in England. And those few Blacks were either ambassadors or servants. No Robin Hood legend, and there are many of them, feature, or even mention a Black or a Blackamoor member of the Merry Men.
But, of course, the Robin Hood legend is a "folk" legend, so, therefore, is not "literature" in the proper sense. But to inject a sense of race into the legend (other than Norman versus Saxon) is just plain stupid. It would be like claiming Ulysses S. Grant's chief strategist was a Japanese samurai because Japanese-Americans feel that they were left out of the history of the Civil War.
English literature was not written with Black people in mind, despite Shakespeare's Othello. The character of Othello was a type loosely based on perhaps a historical character. And in the play Othello was not the victim of racism in any way. He was the man in power and the man able to punish. The only, and this may appear to be a racist statement, Black thing about him was that like many Black men who have married, or have relations with White women, he is jealous of his privilege and sees every White man as a threat. And he is willing to do away with her once he believes that he has "dissed" her. But that is a more universal psychopathic behaviour than it is Black behaviour.
Traditional English literature has nothing to do with Black people. In fact, it hardly mentions Black people at all. Austen's Mansfield Park mentions the slave trade in passing, but that is all it does. From Beowulf to Look Back In Anger, with the exception of Othello, do not mention Black people except, at the best, in a passing manner.
And why is this? The answer is so simple that even an idiot child can "get" it. That literature was written by and for an English readership living in an England or Great Britain the opening of the gates of colonial immigration in the late 1950s. Those novels, plays and poems were written by and for Anglo-Saxons, Anglo-Normans, Anglo-Celts. They were not written for Black people or by Black people. To pretend otherwise is to pretend that a purchase from Wal-Mart equals a purchase from Nordstrom (as far as it has fallen) or Rolex. You can pretend that your Timex watch looks like a Rolex, or pretend that your Rolex is a Timex, but you're fooling yourself.
So please, Black people, the Leftwaffe, and the woke, please don't read English literature and try to make it something that it is not. Enjoy it, if you can, for what it was and is; story telling and eloquence from the British Isle about the people of the British Isles (and by extension, America pre 1940). Those works were not written for, or about you. Don't try to make Tolkien's Orcs into Black people and bitch about it when , in fact much of the Lord of the Rings saga was based on Nordic mythology. You make yourselves look silly, egotistical, and stupid like a person trying to sneak a tamale into a Cornish pastie competition.
Look at your own literature, whether African or Black-American and champion that instead of trying to termite literary traditions of the British and other Europeans. Quit riding on the backs of the people you purport to hate. It does nothing but shows your weakness.
