LINEAGE RESTORATION MOVEMENT

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Look at the paternal lineage on this family tree, using my paternal lineage as an example. What's the thing that is constant? In every generation, it is the "Balanta" which is passed down. This is your LINEAGE or ETHNICITY. The different colored XX are part of your genetic profile but it is not the same as the CONSTANT thing that is passed down from fathers to sons or, on the other side, from mothers to daughters. Now, if either of your paternal or maternal lineage ancestor survived the middle passage, then you are directly related to the LINEAGE and ETHNICITY of that place and people. THAT is the PRIMARY culture which the LINEAGE RESTORATION MOVEMENT is helping people to RESTORE because that is the thing that was severed by the middle passage. The yellow XX in the chart, for example, is not the thing that you lost in the middle passage. In fact, if that was contributed after the middle passage, then we are not even having the same conversation. So, while we acknowledge the dna contributed to the ROOT BRANCH OF THE LINEAGE ANCESTRY, it is you maternal and paternal lineage ancestry that is of concern to those who want to reclaim what was lost because of the criminal trans-Atlantic trafficking of people of African lineage and heritage. That is where you will find the language that was taken from you and the culture that was taken from you.

Lineage Restoration Movement Declaration

1. AWARE that the criminal Trans-Atlantic Trafficking of People with African Lineage and Heritage consisted of a minimum of 36,000 voyages that are documented in Davis Eltis’ Trans-Atlantic Slate Trade Database;

2. NOTING that Thomas Cooper, in the Supplement to Mr. Cooper’s Letter on the Slave Trade , suggests that for every 100 people with African lineage and heritage who were kidnapped, trafficked and enslaved, 1,000 were murdered in European inspired or exacerbated warfare on the African continent, 20 were murdered on the “way of death” on the African continent and the Middle Passage, and 70 were murdered during the “seasoning” process, for a total of 170 million deaths;

3. FURTHER NOTING that Joseph Miller, in The Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade 1730-1830, suggests that for every 100 people with African lineage and heritage who were seized, 74 reached the marketplace in the interior, 64 arrived at the slave forts and the holding pens on the coast, 57 stepped onto soil across the Atlantic, 48 lived to behold their first master or mistress, and only 28 to 30 of the original people with African lineage and heritage seized were alive three to four years later;

4. CLAIMING that Portugal and Brazil were and are responsible for at least 7,300 slave voyages (26.8%) and at least 5,074,900 (45.9%) of the people who were forcibly, illegally, and immorally transported from the African continent and, using Cooper’s order of magnitude, were and are responsible for the murder, kidnapping and enslavement of more than 73 million people of African lineage and heritage;

5. CLAIMING that Britain was and is responsible for at least 11,632 slave voyages (42.7%), and that least 3,112,300 (28.1%) of the people who were forcibly, illegally and immorally transported from the African continent, thereby being responsible for the murder, kidnapping and enslavement of 52.2 million people of African lineage and heritage;

6. CLAIMING that France was and is responsible for at least 4,038 voyages (14.8%) and at least 1,456,000 (13.2%) of the people who were forcibly, illegally and immorally transported from the African continent, thereby being responsible for the murder, kidnapping and
enslavement of 21.6 million people of African lineage and heritage;

7. CLAIMING that Spain was and is responsible for at least 1,116 slave voyages (4.1%), and at least 517,000 (4.7%) of the people who were forcibly, illegally and immorally transported from the African continent, thereby being responsible for the murder, kidnapping and enslavement of 8.5 million people of African lineage and heritage;

8. EMPHASIZING that almost every country of the Western Hemisphere, and especially the British Mainland of North America, the British Leewards, the British Windwards and Trinidad, Jamaica, Barbados, Guyana, the Spanish American Mainland, the Spanish Caribbean, Northeast Brazil, Bahia, Southeast Brazil and other areas, participated in some degree, in the criminal Trans-Atlantic Trafficking of people with African lineage and heritage;

9. FURTHER EMPHASIZING that 40.6% of all kidnapped and trafficked people of African lineage and heritage were shipped to Brazil, 29 % to the British colonies in the Caribbean and North America, 14.3% to the Spanish colonies in the Americas, 12% to the French colonies, and 2.7% to the Dutch Americas;

10. LAMENTING that untold numbers of families, clans, tribes, societies, villages, nations and civilizations on the African continent were invaded, disrupted, disorganized, pillaged, raped and destroyed as a result of the criminal Trans-Atlantic Trafficking of people with African lineage and heritage;

11. COGNIZANT that for more than 6 centuries and 30 generations, the theft of the fruit of labor of the people of African lineage and heritage on both sides of the Atlantic, and the nearly incalculable wealth that it produced, has redistributed income and wealth earned by the people of African lineage and heritage on both sides of the Atlantic to generations of people of European lineage and heritage on both sides of the Atlantic, leaving the former impoverished as a group and the latter relatively privileged as a group;

12. INFORMED that Joe R. Feagin in Documenting the Costs of Slavery, Segregation and Contemporary Discrimination: Are Reparations in Order for African Americans? calculates that the value of the slave labor expropriated by whites in the United States from 1620 to 1865 ranges from about $1 trillion to as much as $97 trillion, depending on the rate of interest chosen;

13. INFORMED that the cost of labor market discrimination for 1929-1969 (in 1983 dollars) was $1.6 trillion and that the cost of anti-black discrimination from the end of slavery in 1865 to the year 1965, the end of legal segregation would likely increase that wage-loss estimate to several trillion dollars;

14. INFORMED that the estimate of the cost of continuing racial discrimination in employment has been put in the range of $94-$123 billion dollars;

15. CONCLUDING that, since the 47.5 million people of African lineage and heritage in the United States represents less than 4% of all the people of African lineage and heritage in the world today, the sum total of the wealth transfer by means of slavery, segregation and contemporary discrimination from more than 1 billion people of African lineage and heritage to people of European lineage and heritage amounts to more than $600 trillion dollars (taking into consideration lost interest over time and putting it in today’s dollars) and does not count the value of the wealth that this stolen labor created;

NOW therefore, we the undersigned, hereby declare:

1. The economic damage to and condition of the victims of the criminal Trans-Atlantic Trafficking of people with African Lineage and Heritage (CTATOPWALAH) has been well studied, identified, and calculated.

2. Less studied and understood is the damage to and condition of the IDENTITY of victims of CTATOPWALAH.

3. Identity locates an individual as a part of a family, a community, a region, a culture, and a historical period.

4. On the African continent prior to CTATOPWALAH, identity was formed by the knowledge and preservation of one’s maternal lineage, transmitted from mother to daughter and paternal lineage, transmitted from father to son. Depending on each family’s village tradition, identity, and all that it included – language, culture, spirituality, land, and one’s place in the world and universe (history), was determined either by maternal or paternal lineage.

5. Health and well-being, therefore, required the preservation of one’s lineage. If you did not preserve your lineage, you lost your location or place in the world.

6. In the same way that CTATOPWALAH caused severe and devastating economic damage, it also created severe and devastating LINEAGE DAMAGE.

7. By using violence and terrorism, people of European lineage and heritage prevented the victims of CTATOPWALAH from speaking their native language, using their native names, and returning to their families living in their ancestral homelands.

8. Consequently, the descendants of the victims of CTATOPWALAH no longer retained knowledge of their lineage identities resulting in an IDENTITY CRISIS.

9. New identities such as Guinea-man, slave, negro, colored, mulatto, nigger, black, African American, New Afrikan replaced the lineage identities.

10. The strong existential yearning to reconnect with one’s family, community, region, culture and natural place in the word inspired noble attempts to reclaim one’s lineage identity and resulted in the appropriation of fictitious or place-holder identities such as African (a European construct and designation), Christian, Muslim, Jew, Moor, Hebrew Israelite, Kemetian, New Afrikan, Rastafarian, Pan African, Aboriginal, Native American, Blood, Crip, Black P Stone Ranger, Black Gangster Disciple, Nation of 5% and so many others. These man-made identities can and do change.

11. However, lineage is unchangeable – the descent from fathers to sons and mothers to daughters, is permanent. Thus, who you are, your identity, will always be determined by lineage. At the most fundamental level, you are your ancestral lineage.

12. Our most ancient ancestors admonished, “Man, know thyself.” One’s greatest duty on earth was to honor one’s ancestors. Not knowing who you are and who your ancestors are was considered the greatest tragedy that can befall someone.

13. Because health and well-being are dependent on the preservation of one’s lineage, the attempts to appropriate identities that are not based on one’s actual ancestors have failed to repair the LINEAGE DAMAGE.

14. THE CURRENT CONDITION OF THE DESCENDANTS OF THE VICTIMS OF THE CRIMINAL TRANS-ATLANTIC TRAFFICKING OF PEOPLE WITH AFRICAN LINEAGE AND HERITAGE REMAINS ONE OF IDENTITY CRISIS.

15. The identity crisis is now the main internal obstacle preventing the repair and advancement of the descendants of CTATOPWALAH.

16. The system of white supremacy remains the main external obstacle preventing the repair and advancement of the descendants of the victims of CTATOPWALAH.

17. The Lineage Restoration Movement is the response to the IDENTITY CRISIS just described.

18. The objective of the Lineage Restoration Movement is to demonstrate that repair and healing for the descendants of the victims of CTATOPWALAH will remain incomplete until such people RESOLVE ONCE AND FOR ALL THE IDENTITY CRISIS BY REDISCOVERING THEIR MATERNAL OR PATERNAL ANCESTRY.

19. Knowledge of one’s ancestral lineage is the foundation for answering all of the questions and solving all of the problems that people of African lineage and heritage face today. It reconnects the victims of CTATOPWALAH on both sides of the Atlantic. It identifies the natural organizing units needed for a United Front against the common enemy of those Europeans who today, still use a refined system of white supremacy.

20. The natural ordering and organizing of humanity is observable. Trillions of cells and several biological systems are organized and united into what is called an individual human being. That human being is part of a family, which is the product of previous family members or ancestors. This is permanent and unchangeable. Thus, the natural order of humanity is ancestors, family, individual. People of different families with common ancestors form a community. Communities form the highest unit of human organization which are nations.

21. Nations are the biggest unit which can organize the behavior and resources of a people through what is called government. Since there is no single planetary government, then the highest level of human organization at this time is a nation. Natural nations existed prior to CTATOPWALAH and were based on ancestral lineage and not on arbitrary designated territorial boundaries indicated by cartography.

22. The lessons of history teach that the natural nations of people with African lineage and heritage MUST FORM A UNITED FRONT to defeat the systems of white supremacy, colonialism, neocolonialism and any forms of exploitation and injustice committed against people of African lineage and heritage.

23. The stronger the natural nations of people with African lineage and heritage, the stronger the UNITED FRONT.

24. Until now differences in class, religion, culture, economics, geography, politics, education, music, fashion, language, skin tone, hair, noses, and even sports, were used to divide and conquer people with African lineage and heritage.

25. The Lineage Restoration Movement has observed that people who share lineage ancestry have the firmest foundation for uniting on both sides of the Atlantic.

26. When such unification happens for each group or nation of shared ancestry, communication and shared resources increase that group or nation’s strength, as the saying goes, “Strength in Unity”

27. A UNITED FRONT of all people of people of African lineage and history so organized by ancestry and strengthened, can be achieved PROVIDED that the necessity of such a UNITED FRONT is well understood.

28. Only in this way will the division and disunity between people of African lineage and heritage on both sides of the Atlantic be overcome and the dream of the previous generation’s Pan African ideal achieved.

THEREFORE , the Lineage Restoration Movement

1. DECLARES that for wealth to translate into well-being, people must have a spiritual element within them. Without that, “success” will work against the people;

2. DECLARES that the proper spiritual element needed by the victims of CTATOPWALAH can only be developed through restoring their ancestral lineage since their health and well-being, including their spiritual health and well-being, depend upon restoring and preserving their ancestral lineages;

3. ENCOURAGES the current Reparations movement to prioritize solving the IDENTITY CRISIS of the victims of CTATOPWALAH by using proprietary genetic testing from African Ancestry to restore knowledge of one’s maternal and paternal ancestral lineages;

4. REMINDS the international community that any Reparations must include the following: right of each person to choose among and receive the remedy of one of the four natural options: (1) US citizenship, (2) return to the African continent, (3) emigration to another country and (4) the creation of a new nation on American soil by and for the victims of CTATOPWALAH ;

5. RESOLVES that FOR THE MOST EFFECTIVE USE OF REPARATIONS RESOURCES, THE PRIORITY FOR THE REPARATIONS MOVEMENT is to train and develop a professional class of genealogy researchers from among the victims of CTATOPWALAH and deploy them as part of a modern day
government Workers Project that will go throughout the United States and determine the genetic ancestry lineage and family history of every person claiming to be the descendants of the victims of CTATOPWALAH;

6. DEMANDS that every college and university establish a special program for training this class of genealogy researchers and all students entering the program should be granted free tuition and a living stipend for four years of study.

7. DEMANDS that guaranteed employment (through the government program) is provided for the program graduates for the next fifteen years so that every descendant of the victims of CTATOPWALAH can have their ancestral lineage identity restored;

8. STRONGLY RECOMMENDS that each lineage ancestry group or nation form a centralized body in each country such as the Temne Abara Nation and the Balanta B’urassa History & Genealogy Society in America to whom Reparations resources can be transferred and managed;

9. FURTHER RECOMMENDS that all such centralized ancestry lineage groups in each country form an umbrella organization that serves as the UNITED FRONT for each country;

10. FURTHER RECOMMENDS that all such UNITED FRONTS in each country form an umbrella organization that serves as the highest UNITED FRONT for the LINEAGE RESTORATION MOVEMENT internationally;

11. WARNS that failure to restore the lineage of the victims of CTATOPWALAH severely threatens their future health and well-being;

12. WARNS that failure to restore the lineage of the victims of CTATOPWALAH is continued injustice;13. REPEATS that where there is NO JUSTICE there is NO PEACE.

Signed:

1. Foday K. Conteh (Jul 26, 2020 22:10 EDT)

2. Siphiwe Baleka (Jul 26, 2020 23:03 EDT) 

3. Sânsáu Tchimna (Jul 27, 2020 11:47 EDT)

BASIC PRINCIPLES OF THE LINEAGE RESTORATION MOVEMENT

1. The Lineage Restoration Movement (LRM) is a response by the descendants of the people who were trafficked from the African continent, carried across the Atlantic ocean, and enslaved.

2. The LRM recognizes and understands that in addition to the theft of land, people, and labor, IDENTITIES were also stolen creating the current IDENTITY CRISIS experienced by black people in the Americas today.

3. Justice and healing, therefore require the return of that which was stolen.

4. In order to return the land and people, the stolen identities must (first) be restored.

5. The principal aim of LRM is to restore the ancestral lineages that were severed as a result of the criminal Trans-Atlantic trafficking and enslavement of people from the African continent.

6. This can be achieved by taking proprietary genetic tests from African Ancestry which uses technology that enables the identification of one’s maternal and paternal lineage.

7. LRM is trans-national since people of the same lineage were trafficked by people from multiple nations and enslaved in multiple nations.

8. LRM aims to organize the various ethnic lineages in a Lineage United Front to more effectively achieve Justice due to the victims of the criminal Trans-Atlantic Trafficking of People with African Lineage and Heritage (CTATOPWALAH).

9. LRM believes that at this time, FOR THE MOST EFFECTIVE USE OF REPARATIONS RESOURCES, THE PRIORITY FOR THE REPARATIONS MOVEMENT is to train and develop a professional class of genealogy researchers from among the victims of
CTATOPWALAH and deploy them as part of a modern day government Workers Project that will go throughout the United States and determine the genetic ancestry lineage and family history of every person claiming to be the descendants of the victims of CTATOPWALAH.

10. LRM demands any Reparations must include the following: right of each person to choose among and receive the remedy of one of the four natural options: (1) US citizenship, (2) return to the African continent, (3) emigration to another country and (4) the creation of a new nation on American soil by and for the victims of CTATOPWALAH.

CLASH OF CULTURES: EXPLAINING THE RACIAL WEALTH GAP TO MY WIFE

WIFE: Ughhhh! We have no money! We still have a lot of credit card debt! You aren’t good at managing money!

ME: Wait a second. Our credit card debt was $6,900. I just paid $3,000 and reduced it by almost half. What are you talking about?

WIFE: We have no money!

ME: Let me explain something to you. I am President of the Balanta B’urassa History & Genealogy Society in America (BBHAGSIA). It is a non-profit organization. The average salary for a nonprofit president/CEO is $118,678. For non profits with an operating budget less than $499,000, the average CEO salary is $60,206.

Thus, as the BBHAGSIA, my work this year is valued at between $60,000 and $119,000.

In the past, as a Driver Health Editor, I wrote bi-monthly articles for a magazine client. In the first three years, they paid me $600 for 600 words. The last three years, they paid me $300 for 600 words. Since September of 2019, I have written 81 articles for the Balanta website that average more than 2000+ words.

By this calculation, the 81 articles I have posted to the BBHAGSIA website is worth between $72,900 and $145,800.

Now I have another client that started paying me $353 for a 2000+ word article. After 15 articles the pay increases to $470. After another 15 articles the pay increases to $588. After another 30 articles the pay increases to $706 and after another 15 articles the pay increases to $1,177.

By this calculation, the 81 articles I have posted to the BBHAGSIA website is worth $64,115.

Currently, I am consulting with two foreign governments, and I have diplomatic experience going back to 2003 when I worked at the African Union and negotiated immigration and citizenship issues in Ethiopia on behalf of the Rastafari community in Shashemane. In fact, my experience as an Ambassador for my people began when I was ten years old when, as a state champion swimmer in an all-white sport, my father groomed me to be an ambassador for the race since I had such high visibility and profile. Now, the average salary of an early career Diplomat with one to four years experience is $81,077. For a diplomat in the United States, the average salary is $105,511.

Thus, the value of my diplomatic work this year, which has included meeting with Ministers of Culture, Tourism and Sport in two countries, as well as organizing COVID-19 food distribution, should earn me a salary of $105,511

Finally, I am a consultant to another start-up venture which, at this time, doesn’t have the money to pay me. Nevertheless, I have put in 58 hours of work for them. My normal consulting fee is $100/hr but I am only invoicing them at $50/hr.

Thus, I have done another $5,800 worth of work.

Now add all of that up:

NGO President $118,700

Content Creator $72,900

Diplomat $105,511

Consulting $5,800

TOTAL $302,911

In addition, in 2019 I wrote and submitted 14 grants for a total of $581,804. If I received 10% to 20% of that as administrative fee/salary, that’s another $58,000 at least added to my salary.

So, this past year, I have legitimately done $360,000 worth of work, yet I have no money. WHY? This is what you don’t understand because you don’t understand the history of African American people. But I learned early in life four things:

1) If I were to depend on money for my happiness, I, as a black man in America, would NEVER be happy;

2) If I were to spend 40 hours a week working for someone else, I would never have the time to build my own business, build my own society, build my own government, and determine my own future;

3) If I were going to be a credit to my race and a leader of my people, I would have to sacrifice high paying jobs and their creature comfort rewards and do the things that needed to be done whether they paid or not;

4) I needed to pursue work that made me happy and was beneficial to my people and de-prioritize getting a high paying job with benefits working for white people.

So the fact that we don’t have any money has nothing to do with my being a lazy, unskilled, untalented man and unworthy husband. It has to do with what is called

THE RACIAL WEALTH GAP.

BACKGROUND TO MY MARRIAGE

My wife and I are happily married. Like most couples, however, occasionally we have an argument and from time to time, some of those arguments concern our finances. As a result, recently I had to explain to her THE RACIAL WEALTH GAP.

But first, you need a little bit of context about me and my wife. I met my wife through a mutual friend in June of 2016. At the time she was living in China and I was living in Springfield, MO. Before that I had been a wage slave employee working for a white-owned company and making $57,000 salary. However, I started my own company and in 2015, in my first year as Founder and CEO of Fitness Trucking, I made $109,000. For the first time in my life, I didn’t have to worry so much about money. I could pay my rent and bills, eat whatever food I want, travel, and buy things. I started living life a little, not just surviving. At this time I was also paying $800 a month child support for my two sons, who lived just a few houses down the street with their mother. Life was good and I felt confident, except that I was lonely. Springfield is 97% white and during this time I resolved that I would only date black women. Unfortunately, that made things kinda tough.

I am a 5’8” 150 lb. national champion swimmer and my Fitness Trucking core business is health coaching. They say like attracts like and birds of a feather flock together, so I like my women smaller than me. It makes me feel “big”. But I am not shallow. The boys’ mother is a big woman (relative to me) - when we met she was about 190 lbs. but that didn’t stop me from falling in love with her and raising her seven kids from a previous relationship (yes, I said SEVEN)….

But our relationship became very unhealthy (like my parents’ relationship which ended in divorce when I was ten) and we decided that it was better if we separated. I realized that there were lots of requirements for a healthy relationship, among them physical attraction. Women like to feel “desired” and a vibrant sex life is the glue in a marriage. I learned that even though I loved my wife, I wasn’t physically attracted to her and this created some of our many problems.

So by 2016, I realized that besides all of the character and integrity requirements - honesty, caring and considerate, integrity, adventurous, feminine, etc. - there were other things that I needed, and a physique that I found attractive was one of them. But I wasn’t requiring anything that I myself didn’t have and wasn’t offering.

First, I wanted a woman who was fit and healthy and enjoyed physical activity as much as me so that we could share this aspect of life. Unfortunately, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health, 80.6% of African American women over the age of twenty are overweight or obese. So that means that for every 100 black women, 80 of them are not attractive to me. That’s not saying anything against these women. Remember, I am a SMALL man but I like to feel BIG, so I like a woman I can wrap my arms around that fits into me and I can feel like her protector. I’m quite sure women like such a man and feeling, too.

Next, I have a high level of education, having graduated from Yale University in 1996. I’m what people call an “intellectual”. Fortunately, the National Center for Education Statistics reports that black women are the most educated group in America and earn 68% of all degrees awarded to black students. While formal educational achievement is not all that important to me (the boys’ mother never went to college and I was ok with that), at least a healthy intellect or the ability to value and respect my intellectual pursuits is important. I buy books the way a lot of women buy shoes….. which leads us to money.

My desire is that I make enough money so that my wife doesn’t have to work if she doesn’t want to. What makes her happy is her choice. As a man, I feel it is my responsibility to provide for her. If we have children together, my preference is for my wife to stay at home and raise the children. But if she wants a career, I support that, too.

But here’s the kicker - I’M NOT CHRISTIAN!!!! I’m not interested in the Bible or going to church. But, the Pew Research Center’s 2014 Religious Landscape Study revealed that 79% of African American identify as Christian. So, out of 100 women, 80 are overweight or obese, so that leaves just 20 women that I might be attracted to. Out of those 20 women, about 80% are Christian, and educated black Christian women love them some church and Jesus and are looking for a “god-fearing man” which to them means a Christian man. So if I exclude them, that leaves just 4 available black women for me. Now, at this point, these 4 black women have to 1) be single; and 2) be attracted to me. Now, what are the odds that I am going to find my black queen in Springfield, MO???? At 44 years of age at the time, such women were in their twenties and weren’t looking for a man my age….

So I started using dating apps and to my surprise, I wasn’t getting any attention. I couldn’t understand it! Here I was, a successful athlete, entrepreneur, I had traveled to forty countries, I was active, etc. . . I thought I was a good catch. But then I did some research and discovered that as a black man, I was the least likely to get any response. (But the situation was even worse for black women!!!!)

In 2016, I was a rising star. My business was becoming a success, I just signed a six-figure book deal with Touchstone Books (division of Simon & Schuster), a book tour was being planned for 2017, I had just won seven gold medals at the US Masters Swimming National Championships and set my first national record, I was ranked in the top three in the world and was heading to the 2017 FINA World Championships to become a World Champion. I even made an appearance on Good Morning America. I wanted someone to share this life with. I wanted a wife and I just couldn’t find one…..

One day I jokingly asked a Chinese friend of mine if she could find me a wife. Two days later she showed me a picture of Zhou YuTong, a friend living in Liuzhou, China, and the rest is history….

Now, the reason I went into this background is for two reasons. First, because there are a lot of people, some merely ignorant, others prejudiced, mean-spirited and hateful, who, without knowing me or my wife, have a lot of negative things to say about my marriage. In their eyes, I have betrayed the black woman and the black race. And I understand this point of view and have written extensively about the historically negative effect of mixed race relationships on African people, especially between blacks and whites. Thus, I am quite aware of the contradictions in my own life. However, to these people, I also point out that:

1) my marriage is to another non-white person

2) Balanta people and Chinese people have a history. When Balanta people waged war against their Portuguese colonizers, it was the Chinese who first gave Balanta people weapons and military training for the liberation war

3) A man of my stature in traditional African culture, is expected to have many wives and also have “diplomatic marriages” to form alliances with other peoples.

4) From the Balanta perspective, the point of marriage is to find another person that consistently increases your vital force energy and for whom your vital force energy increases theirs, and then have children together. This is a happy marriage. It ensures that the greatest amount of vital life force energy remains perpetually in one’s posterity. One can now understand the real and spiritual danger of being in a toxic marriage.

Since I fulfilled my debt to the ancestors by giving them two sons from a woman of African descent, I was free to find a wife that provided the greatest increase to my vital life force energy. That is called “the pursuit of happiness”.

5) when I asked my Balanta ancestors for a wife, they sent Zhou YuTong. This was confirmed when I visited the most ancient homeland of my Balanta ancestors.

Now, the other reason I brought up the background of my marriage is so that one can understand the challenge my wife and I face when it comes to navigating our life together, especially when it comes to wealth building. Coming from her culture, I found it necessary to explain the racial wealth gap to her.

EXPLAINING THE RACIAL WEALTH GAP TO MY WIFE

As soon as we met, Zhou YuTong and I decided we were both ready for marriage and we wanted to marry each other. In order to do this, we had to go through the K1 Visa process and I had to submit tax returns to prove that I could support her. She and her family were happy to see that for the past two years I was making more than $100,000. When I took two trips to China at the end of 2016, I paid for everything and showed my wife a wonderful time. When the K-1 visa was approved, I arranged for her to fly to meet me in Budapest, Hungary for the Masters Swimming World Championships (where I re-proposed to her) and from there she returned with me to start her new life in America. The first year she was not allowed to work (until she got her green card) so she stayed at home and I took care of her. At that time I was doing a lot of public speaking, earning $2,000 to $2,500 plus travel expenses for a one-hour presentation. Thus, during that first year, she traveled with me on all those business trips and in this way got to see America. I was making money, giving interviews, and she lacked for nothing. My income put me in the top 12% of Black American wealth (Upper middle-class) and our expectation was that life would just continue to get better and better.

Fast forward to October, 2019. After a seven year business relationship, I lost my flagship client. That was 70% of my income. Then in February 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic erupted. I lost more clients and there was no more travel for speaking engagements. Our finances tanked. I dropped back into the “working-class/poverty class. During this time I used a credit card to make ends meet, the first time in my life that I ever had credit card debt. Meanwhile, I don’t own my house. I still rent. I don’t have any retirement savings. Plus, I owe a lot of money in back taxes.

I stopped paying taxes after 2016 because I was no longer going to give the fruit of my labor to a government I don’t recognize nor support nor never chose to become its “citizen” (see my post Interpreting the 14th Amendment).

I realized that the majority of the government’s budget, $3.8 trillion, comes from average people like me and not from the super-wealthy people and their businesses.

MOST OF THE DISCRETIONARY SPENDING GOES TO THE MILITARY WHICH IS FIGHTING WARS, KILLING PEOPLE, AND SPREADING A SYSTEM THAT CONCENTRATES WEALTH INTO THE HANDS OF A FEW RICH WHITE PEOPLE. THIS IS A SYSTEM WHICH I DON’T SUPPORT.

THE MONEY THAT THE GOVERNMENT SPENDS ON HEALTH, HOUSING, EDUCATION AND OTHER SERVICES ARE CLEARLY FAILING THE BLACK COMMUNITY IN AMERICA, SO WHY WOULD I WANT TO SUPPORT SUCH A GOVERNMENT BY PAYING THEM INCOME TAXES ON MY EARNINGS???

Then I started learning about international law, the banking system and the Federal Reserve and realized

1) my great, great, great, great, great grandfather and grandmother were both brought to America against their will before the United States’ Declaration of Independence;

2) The Declaration of Independence states,

“Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”

3) After President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, my emancipated great, great, great grandfather NEVER freely consented to be governed by the United States Government

4) The 14th Amendment forced citizenship on my great, great, great grandfather and his descendants who never freely consented to this citizenship

5) I am not required by law to file Income Taxes

I wanted to use my money to build build my business and achieve my dreams. For about 100 years my family had been working and giving 100% of the fruit of their labor to slave owners. Those slave owners built a government that today still wants me to give 33% of my earnings to them. How exactly, does one remove consent from the United States Government?

I refused to vote, I stopped paying taxes, and I started restoring my lineage ancestry.

As my wife began to realize how precarious our financial situation is, she began to feel very insecure and even accused me of being financially irresponsible because, in her eyes, from her cultural point of view, I should have been saving money and buying a house. In China, everything is about upward mobility and asset accumulation. This is what caused the argument. So I had to explain some things to her.

1. First, she didn’t understand African American history in general, or Balanta history specifically. So I had to explain to her that my family had been in the United States for five generations before me. The first two generations were enslaved - they worked from sun up to sun down with no pay. All the fruit of their labor was taken from them and used to build white businesses and white society.

2. Second, I had to explain to her that the third and fourth generation had to live through Jim Crow and all that entailed.

3. Third, I had to explain to her that the fifth generation and my generation (the sixth) live with the racial wealth gap that would take 228 years to overcome.

Now, let’s go into more detail or you can skip to the video at the end of this post.

In essence, I was trying to explain to her that she can’t hold me to the same standards and expectations for either a white family or a Chinese family.

So let’s get into some of the details why.

Wealthiest countries in the world.

The United States of America is the wealthiest country in the world, followed by China. However, income distribution in China is a lot more equitable than in the United States.

Compared to other countries, the concentration of wealth concentrated in the top 1% is far greater in the United States than anywhere in the world.

This means that more than anywhere, in the United States, a few people have most of the wealth and the vast majority of people are competing against each other for what is left over.

Compare the United States With China

Now, the ethnic diversity in China is very low. 90% of China is ethnically descended from the Han people. There are 55 other ethnic groups that make up the remaining 10% of the population. China’s economic development was not based on slavery, racism or ethnic discrimination. Thus, they have no system of racial superiority that distributes wealth to one racial group over others.

Meanwhile, the economic development boom in China allows for wealthy Chinese to come to America to invest. They come with capital and have the strength of a national economy behind them. With such a start, they are able to succeed and accumulate more capital in the United States compared to any other group. African American people, by contrast, didn’t choose to come to America. They were ripped from their families, kidnapped, and trafficked illegally. For their first 245 years in the United States, everything was taken from them, including all the fruits of their labor, and their status in law was on the level of being consider as a chattel, an animal, a piece of protperty.

Now, when slavery ended in 1865, the black people needed land. A few black people got land and by 1900, there were a million black farmers and African Americans had built very wealthy towns such as Tulsa, Oklahoma which was called “Black Wall Street”. However, the white racists took their land and took control of the local, state and federal government and created laws to cheat and steal from black people. They destroyed Black Wall street and the other towns, too.

The 1870 census showed that my great, great, great grandfather Yancey was one of two black men listed in the town business directory for Cary, North Carolina. He owned 12 acres at the time but I don’t know what happened to the land. Today, there are less than 40,000 black farmers and black people own only 0.9% of the land in the United States.

This was the result of 89 years of Jim Crow segregation in the United States. Meanwhile, eighty years ago, a federal agency, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) created “Residential Security” maps of major American cities. These maps document how loan officers, appraisers, and real estate professionals evaluated mortgage lending risk during the era immediately before the surge of suburbanization in the 1950’s. Neighborhoods considered high risk, or “Hazardous” were often “redlined” by lending institutions, denying them access to capital investment which could improve the housing and economic opportunity of residents. This is why white neighborhoods are wealthier and black neighborhoods are so poor.

After the end of Jim Crow segregation in 1954, black people still faced lying, cheating white people and their governments. Though the laws changed, there was still discrimination and black people had to fight for their rights. The Civil Rights movement gained them some political rights such as voting, but not economic rights and the racist system to cheat black people remained. However, things were changing as a result of the black insurrections in the 1960’s and the white people had to come up with new ways to cheat black people and steal their labor and wealth. So they created a new kind of slavery system that was based on deception. First, they allowed some black people to go to college and get an education. They wanted a small group of black people to become successful, mostly entertainers and athletes, and a few smart black people to serve as managers. This they called “affirmative action” and they used it to trick black people into thinking that the United States was not a racist country and that black people had the same opportunities as white people. During this time, the President Nixon lied to my grand uncle John Blake and told him he wanted to help black people and give them jobs. President Nixon convinced my Uncle John to serve as the Director of Jobs Corps and gave him a $2.5 billion budget. Meanwhile, my father, Jeremiah Blake, was given one of those good affirmative action jobs when he graduated from Fisk University. However, at the same time, President Nixon came up with a plan to re-enslave black people and on June 18, 1971 right after hiring Uncle John and just two months after I was born, he announced the “The War on Drugs”.

The War on Drugs began when I was born and continues today. By the time I went to college, the United States was spending more money on the War on Drugs than they were spending on educating black people. Between 1980 and 1984, FBI anti-drug funding increased from $8 million to $95 million. Department of Defense anti-drug allocations increased from $33 million in 1981 to $1,042 million in 1991. During that same period, DEA anti-drug spending grew from $86 to $1,026 million and FBI anti-drug allocations grew from $8 to $181 million. This is how the white supremacists used TAX dollars to establish the new system of legalized slavery.

By contrast, the budget of the National Institute on Drug Abuse was reduced from $274 million to $57 million from 1981 to 1984 and anti-drug funds allocated to the Department of Education were cut from $14 million to $3 million.

Between 1988 and October 1989, the Washington Post alone ran 1,565 stores about the "drug scourge". This is an example of how the white supremacists used THE MEDIA to justify the War on Drugs.

In September 1986, the House of Representatives passed legislation that allocated $2 billion to the anti-drug crusade and shortly thereafter, the president signed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 that included mandatory minimum sentencing. Once elected, President Clinton endorsed the "three strikes and you are out" law and passed the $30 billion crime bill which authorized $16 billion for new prisons. During Clinton's tenure, the white supremacists slashed funding for public housing by $17 billion (a reduction of 61%) and boosted corrections by $19 billion (an increase of 171%), "effectively making the construction of prisons the nation's main housing program for the urban poor".

Drug offenses alone account for two thirds of the rise in the federal inmate population and more than half of the state prisoners. Approximately half a million people are in prison or jail for a drug offense today, compared to an estimated 41,100 in 1980 - an increase of 1,100 percent.

By 2005, four of five drug arrests were for possession. By the end of 2007, more than 7 million Americans - or one in every 31 adults - were behind bars, on probation or on parole. 31 million people have been arrested since the drug war began. There were more than 1.5 million drug arrests in the U.S. in 2016. The vast majority – more than 80% – were for possession only. Nearly 80% of people in federal prison and almost 60% of people in state prison for drug offenses are black or Latino. One in nine black children has an incarcerated parent, compared to one in 57 white children. One in 13 black people of voting age are denied the right to vote because of laws that disenfranchise people with felony convictions.

A lot of money and military weapons were given to the police and they became armies of colonial occupation in cities wherever there were a lot of black people. Even though the white people use drugs more than black people, most of the people who were imprisoned were black people.

Even though the United States only has one-quarter the population of China, it imprisons almost twice as many people than China. Most of these people are black.

That means a lot of black children’s’ fathers are in prison. When they get out, they can’t get jobs because they have a criminal record. So black families become dependent on government aid just to survive. It has nothing to do with black people being lazy or stupid or violent. Most of the drug convictions were because of the cannabis plant!

The Drug War transferred the labor and wealth from black communities into the white employees of the legal system and the white investors of the prison industrial complex. For example, the largest private prison corporations, Core Civic and GEO Group, collectively manage over half of the private prison contracts in the United States with revenues of $3.5 billion in 2015.

Unfortunately, on August 6, 1999, I became a victim of the drug war, too. At that time, I was growing my own cannabis plants in abandoned buildings as well as raiding the US Army Corp of Engineers’ secret hemp field on Chicago’s south side coast along Lake Michigan. I took garbage bags full of low grade hemp, extracted the THC in the kitchen and put the THC into butters and cooking oils, as well as baking items and salad dressings. I managed to sell my products “low key” to restaurants and started a lucrative business. Except that President Nixon’s declared drug war, now under President Clinton, was considered criminal activity. I was arrested and charged with felony possession of a controlled substance. Because of my “status” as a privileged son of the Blake family who had graduated from Yale and the fact that I was going to reveal that the US Government was secretly growing cannabis, I was given probation and not sent to prison. However, that conviction prevented me from getting any good job despite my degree from Yale University.

But let’s look at what happened. From the moment of my birth until 2019, America declared the War on Drugs and sent an occupying force of militarized police into black areas of the largest cities, arrested large segments of the black population, seized their property, convicted them, and re-enslaved them under the legal justification of the 13th Amendment. The entire industry employed millions of people who took their paychecks from the city and out to segregated white suburban communities where they paid taxes and reaped the rewards of tax-based expenditures - better schools and services. In this way, for over forty years, black families were broken up, mostly black men were re-enslaved, and the wealth of black communities was transferred to white communities.

Then, on May 31, 2019, the Illinois House of Representatives passed House Bill 1438 by a 66-47 vote. The bill included expungement provisions for those arrested for marijuana possession prior to decriminalization.

“The most historic aspect of this is not just that it legalizes cannabis for adults but rather the extraordinary efforts it takes to reduce the harm caused by the failed war on marijuana and the communities it hurt the most,” state Sen. Toi Hutchinson, D-Olympia Fields, said during a Senate floor debate, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Thus, the state of Illinois is now admitting that they were wrong and that I was right. It is a victory, nineteen years delayed, but a victory, nonetheless.

However, let’s take an even more closer look at what happened. After declaring the Drug Way when I was born, then capturing, arresting, and convicting me as a prisoner of the war, which gave them the legal authority to re-enslave me, they then decided that the activity for which I was criminalized was no longer criminal, and overnight a $344 billion dollar industry was born.

Except, cannabis was legalized for some people and still criminal for others…. (the red line below represents the illegal market)

The sectors of the cannabis market with the most investment were cultivation, retail, and biotech pharmaceuticals. As we have already seen, black people no longer had land for cultivation, their business/retail districts had been destroyed and they certainly played no part in biotech pharmaceuticals.

What this means is that for more than forty years, white people decided that black people should become criminals and re-enslaved for building an economy based on the cannabis trade. Then these white people decided that they should be able to profit from the trade, so they created laws and a system that enabled them to benefit from a $344 billion market. The new system used non-racist language and laws, but access to the opportunities was certainly not equal. Instead of the profits of the new market being used to build the black communities and families that were the victims of the War on Drugs, it was used to make the white capitalists even more wealthy.

In late 2000, a new project called the Reparations Assessment Group began making preparations for lawsuits. The dollar sums mentioned were staggering. Harper’s magazine estimated that it could require $97 trillion to pay for the hours of uncompensated work done during the slavery era, which would require extracting, on average, about $300,000 from every American of non-slave descent.

None of this money has been returned to me. Combining Reparations with the value of my current labor (calculated at the beginning of this article) makes my TRUE net worth at least $650,000 . . . .

So after all this the result is that there are 47.5 million black people in America. 4.75 million own 75.4% of all black wealth.. These are mostly the celebrities and entertainers.

The rest of the black people - 90% - have just 25% of black wealth. In fact , the bottom 50% of black people in America - more than 23 million people - are worth less than 1 dollar.

IT DOESN’T MATTER HOW MUCH INCOME I MAKE . . . .

Even though for a few years I made more than $100,000 a year, my “wealth” doesn’t even come close to the wealth of white people making the same amount of money.

IT DOESN’T MATTER THAT I HAVE A DEGREE FROM YALE UNIVERSITY. A white person who dropped out of high school has greater wealth.

IT DOESN’T MATTER HOW HARD I WORK. I STILL WON’T CATCH UP TO WHITE PEOPLE.

NO MATTER WHAT WE DO, UNLESS WE ARE ENTERTAINERS OR CELEBRITIES IN THE TOP 10%, NOTHING WE DO WILL CLOSE THE GAP BETWEEN US AND WHITE PEOPLE.

THE SYSTEM IS SO RIGGED, THAT EVEN RICH BLACK PEOPLE WILL MOST LIKELY END UP BEING POOR LIVING IN AMERICA.

OWNING A BLACK BUSINESS ISN’T GOING TO HELP.

Few cities have enough black owned businesses to begin with and the rate of African American businesses failing today is at an all time high. 80% of businesses crash and burn within the first year.

Black-owned businesses nationally average only $58,000 in annual revenue compared to $546,000 for white-owned businesses and are outperformed by most ethnic groups.

As a result, only about 120,000 black-owned businesses, out of the 2.7m in the US, have employees on payroll.

Research shows that:

1. Prior family business ownership is less frequent among Black entrepreneurs than among Asian and White entrepreneurs.

2. Black entrepreneurs also have lower education levels and fewer years of managerial experience than Asian and White entrepreneurs do.

3. Black families have lower wealth levels than White families do, which results in the lower equity levels of new Black businesses compared to White businesses.

4. Black-owned and Hispanic-owned businesses experience less favorable loan application outcomes than do White-owned and Asian-owned businesses

5. Minority-owned firms that focus on co-ethnic retail markets do not perform as well as those that do not focus on co-ethnic retail markets

6. These traits result in lower success at starting new businesses, greater propensity to enter business lines with low entry barriers (thus higher failure rates), and lower business survival rates.

The major problem is this: To have a successful business you need customers who want and can afford your product or service. Because of this racial wealth gap, black owned businesses who’s business is targeted specifically for the black community have a very small customer base compared to America as a whole. Thus, if a black owned business wants to compete with white business, it must produce products and services tailored for white Americans. This can present a problem for some black businesses that want to serve their community. For example, when I write health articles for the white community, I get paid well. When I write articles for the Balanta community, I don’t get paid at all. The Balanta community needs the educational materials more than the white community. So I have to make the sacrifice and work for free in order to serve my people.

So the idea that I am going to become wealthy, that I am going to close the racial wealth gap, that we are going to live lives comparable to white and Asian people in America, is TOTALLY UNREALISTIC. Given the current conditions it will take 228 years for my offspring to close the racial wealth gap. The current efforts to reduce the wealth gap are all wrong.

EQUALITY in America isn’t going to do it. Changing the laws so that they are color-blind and race-blind and provide equality before the law and equal opportunity mean that black people will have to compete starting at the bottom and against overwhelming odds.

EQUITY in America isn’t going to do it. Even receiving Reparations is not going to close the racial wealth gap as long as the only systems in place are the systems of white supremacy that built America and their codification and refinement through positive law.

The only solution is JUSTICE which is defined as 1) no one is mistreated and those that need the most help receive the most help.

When JUSTICE replaces WHITE SUPREMACY (meaning whites must always be the most dominant and on top of the hierarchy), then we will be able to live and experience life. Remember, a healthy soul with a healthy spirit in a healthy body living in a sick society is not healthy!

INTERPRETING THE 14TH AMENDMENT: A CONVERSATION WITH A VETERAN OF THE BLACK LIBERATION LEGAL STRUGGLE

Note: The following is the direct transcript of a conversation I had with a veteran of the black liberation legal struggle who has taught law school for more than three decades. I asked to permission to make their identity known and received this response:

“First - thank you for asking. I would prefer that you not share it with any identifying information. Neither my name or my page name . My Facebook discussions are often intended to be short, incomplete and I often deliberately stop to avoid "value" battles. Again, thanks for asking.”

Therefore, respecting their privacy, I will use the honorable identifier BLM Legal Scholar where BLM stands for “Black Liberation Movement”

Siphiwe Baleka: I really would like some discussion on the interpretation that the 14th Amendment was only an offer and not a grant of citizenship, and the implications of the failure to make an informed acceptance or rejection of the offer.....

BLM Legal Scholar: I know that interpretation is around. It is not the way I interpret the clause.

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside."

At the time of adoption of the 14th amendment the cause applies to anyone is born in the United States or Naturalized. There is no qualification in the plain meaning of the amendment: It could have said "may" or "can" instead of "are". If the amendment said may or can it implies additional steps are required and uncertainty of outcome.

"Are" means to exist. Definitely not open to interpretation. 

So adoption of the amendment - everyone who had been born in the United States or naturalized were citizens, no additional step required. A person can always reject the citizenship.

Siphiwe Baleka:  At the moment of emancipation, isn’t imposing citizenship the antithesis of “freedom” and how would an emancipated slave meaningfully reject the citizenship?

BLM Legal Scholar: I am not arguing the correctness or the moral function -- I thought you were asking me a legal question. I gave you a legal interpretation.

Siphiwe Baleka:  Yes, I appreciate your response, but as I originally posted, I wasn't asking so much a question rather, I wanted "discussion on the interpretation that the 14th Amendment." You gave AN interpretation and one that is consistent with the historical application. However, that is what is being challenged and I am hoping that this group can help challenge that interpretation. To clarify status and jurisdiction at the moment of Emancipation IS a legal matter. What is the meaning of emancipation? What is the meaning of freedom? Black's Law Dictionary, 11th Edition states:

"Emancipation Proclamation. (1863) An executive proclamation, issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, declaring that all persons held in slavery in designated states and districts were free."

That same dictionary states,

"free, adj. 2. Not subject to the constraint or domination of another; enjoying personal freedom; emancipated <a free person>."

So it is not a moral question, it is a legal question on the applicability of the 13th Amendment (April 8, 1864) and the 14th Amendment (July 9, 1868) to "emancipated" or "free" people "not subject to the constraint or domination" of the United States Government. This is what I am hoping to discuss - were the emancipated free people "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" on July 9, 1868 and if so, how (beyond the simple assumption that the 14th Amendment has been so interpreted)?

BLM Legal Scholar  interesting. . . . what do you think "subject to jurisdiction thereof" means separate from formerly enslaved?

Siphiwe Baleka: According to Imari Obadele,

"the Fourteenth Amendment, in an attempt to bestow citizenship upon the African newly freed from slavery, incorporated the rule of jus soli, 'all persons born or naturalized in the United States and of the state wherein they reside.' A sound principle of international law, the rule of jus soli was obviously intended to provide American citizenship for persons born in the United States through what might be termed 'acceptable accidents' of birth. Thus, a person born in the US as a result of his parents' having come to this country voluntarily -- through emigration and settlement or vacation travel or business -- could not be denied citizenship in the country of his birth. He might have dual citizenship, gaining also the citizenship of his parents, but he could not be left with no citizenship. His birth in the US under such conditions would meet the test of an "acceptable accident."

By contrast, however, the presence of the African in America could by no stretch of justice be deemed 'an acceptable accident' of birth. The African, whose freedom was now acknowledged by his former slave-masters through the Thirteenth Amendment, was not on this soil because he or his parents had come vacationing or seeking some business advantage. Rather the African -- standing forth now as a free man because the Thirteenth Amendment forbade whites (who had the power, not the right) to continue slavery -- was on American soil as a result of having been kidnapped and brought here AGAINST his will."

BLM Legal Scholar: That statement does not answer the question of what does "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" mean. Independent of whether it applies or should apply to African descendants - at time. Your initial argument was freed African descendants were not subject to the jurisdiction thereof.

Siphiwe Baleka: Yes, my argument was freed African descendants were not subject to the jurisdiction thereof. And Imari Obadle just explained why they weren't subject to the jurisdiction because "all persons born or naturalized in the United States and of the state wherein they reside" is based on the international legal principle of jus soli - which is intended for legitimate accidents of birth as Imari Obadele described. Again, the legal principle of jus soli was not applicable to the emancipated slave because 1) his birth was not a legitimate accident; and 2) as previously mentioned, his status at the moment of emancipation was “free”, or "Not subject to the constraint or domination of another". As Imari Obadele further explained,

"The rule of jus soli, in protecting the kidnapped African from being left without any citizenship, could operate so far as to impose upon America the obligation to offer the African (born on American soil) American citizenship; it could not impose upon the African -- a victim of kidnapping and wrongful transportation -- an obligation to accept such citizenship. Such an imposition would affront justice, by conspiring with the kidnappers and illegal transporters, and wipe out the free man's newly acquired freedom."

In other words, "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" only applies to people covered by the principle of jus soli . . . .

BLM Legal Scholar:  Okay. if they were not subject to the jurisdiction - that is a statement of interpretation and value. Interesting view.

Siphiwe Baleka: again, this is why we need discussion. According to the principle of jus soli, the United States had no jurisdiction at the time of emancipation. Could we get, for example, a coalition of black lawyers to make a determination on this?

Here's another perspective. The same Black's Law Dictionary, 11th Edition says:

"citizen, n. (14c) 1. Someone who, by either birth or naturalization, is a member of a political community, owing allegiance to the community and being entitled to enjoy all its civil rights and political protections; a member of the civil state, entitled to all its privileges."

Now then, the slave was emancipated January 1, 1863. The 14th amendment offered/imposed citizenship on July 9,1868. So during the interim, the emancipated slave could not have been a "citizen" else there would be no need for the 14th Amendment. Therefore, what was his status? Refugee? Stateless?.... Since the emancipated slave was not a "citizen", he owed no allegiance to the United States. Such allegiance was imposed by the 14th amendment without consent, thus re-enslaving him under a new status at law called "citizen".

Now concerning our current status vis-a-vis citizenship in the United States today, it can be argued that we are not citizens using a combined "threshold" and "seed of bad fruit" defense. Consider, for example, a case of an illegal search and seizure which discovered illegal drugs and resulted in seized property. The whole case, and therefore the return of the seized property, hinges on the probable cause issue. If it is demonstrated that police officers erred in searching the car and seizing property because there was no probable cause, then the possession of illegal drug charges disappears. In this instance we can combine what is call the “threshold “ defense and the “seed of bad fruit” defense.

Probable cause functions as a key which allows police to enter into one’s property. The moment a police enters your house or begins searching your vehicle, that officer crosses a threshold. Without probable cause, the officer can only cross that threshold illegally. Crossing the threshold illegally provides defendant the “seed of bad fruit” defense which states that because the officer’s action is illegal (foul or bad fruit) then everything that follows from that illegal action is also illegal (foul or the seeds from bad fruit) and therefore inadmissible. Thus, although police did seize illegal drugs, It is argued that it can not be used as evidence for a possession charge because it was obtained without probable cause, illegally and therefore not by the due process of law. 

Now, with respect to the issue of citizenship, the moment of emancipation made the slaves free, i.e., "Not subject to the constraint or domination of another", without citizenship from January 1, 1863 until July 9, 1868 and owing no allegiance to the United States of America. Citizenship could only be offered by the 14th Amendment and accepted or rejected because the emancipated slave did not embody the principle of jus soli.

CONSEQUENTLY, CITIZENSHIP REQUIRED THE FREE AND INFORMED CONSENT OF THE EMANCIPATED SLAVE. 

As a free person, the emancipated slave was not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.Thus, the United States ILLEGALLY CROSSED THE CITIZENSHIP THRESHOLD BY INTERPRETING THE 14TH AMENDMENT AS A GRANT IMPOSING CITIZENSHIP IN VIOLATION OF THE FREEDOM OF THE EMANCIPATED SLAVE. Having thus illegally crossed the threshold, all following citizenship claims are now considered "bad fruit" unless the emancipated slave (and his or her descendants) expressly waive their right to make a free and informed acceptance or rejection of the 14th Amendment offer of citizenship. Technically (legally) speaking, then the status of African American people is undetermined and they are properly "stateless".

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