TULSA MASSACRE: A ONCE THRIVING BLACK WALL STREET LAID TO WASTE.

ICHEOKU says it is always better late than never and therefore Joe Biden should be commended for finally acknowledging the great injustice done to black people by white people in the 1921 Tulsa massacre in Oklahoma. Over 300 black people were killed and their entire flourishing black neighborhood was burnt down by irate white mob. But the calamity took one hundred years before being acknowledged by an American government. What took America so long to do this, afterall Barack Obama was president for eight years with Joe Biden as his Vice President. Why did the acknowledgment not come much earlier? 

Joe Biden has been in Washington DC for over 50 years but he never cared about the Tulsa massacre nor considered it worthy of mention until now. Why? During his several decades as a United States of America Senator from the Great State of Delaware, when he could have brought attention to the Tulsa massacre, sponsored legislations to acknowledge the massacre, pay compensations to survivors and their descendants as well as immortalize the victims, he did nothing. Why? Joe Biden did not do anything about the massacre when it could have mattered most by showing him as a "blackist" and not a racist; but now that he is nearing his exit from this earth, he is suddenly rushing to make amends for his many years of being a racist or at least a racist apologist by going to Tulsa now to spew nonsensical platitudes about a massacre which he apparently condoned for so many decades. 

Was it because he never heard about the Tulsa massacre until now or that in his continuing pandering to the black community, he has repented and is now making amends and purging his soul of his many past sins of racism. Anyway, ICHEOKU is not here to upbraid Joe Biden for finally doing what should have been done several decades ago, but only to emphasize that he does not deserve too much accolade or credit for now finally recognizing a hundred years old massacre which he kept silent about for so many decades that he is somewhat complicit in it by  his silence. The massacre was both monstrous and atrocious; and only people who were somewhat incohoot with it and who were on the side of the perpetrators could have kept quiet about it and for this long. 

But as we commemorate the Tulsa massacre and condemn both the act and the attendant conspirators silence which lasted for this long, let us also remember other massacres throughout the world. There was the Biafran massacre of Indigenous Peoples of Biafra which was carried out by Nigerian government in concert with the British government as well as American support between 1967 to 1970. Over 7 million Biafrans perished as a result of the well orchestrated and methodically executed massacre and neither the British government nor America government or even Nigerian government have ever acknowledge the genocide nor apologized for that bloody atrocity till date. 

It is good that America finally acknowledged the Armenia genocide and it will also be good if America can also acknowledge the Biafran genocide and compel both the Nigerian government and the British government to also similarly do the same. May the souls of the people lost in Tulsa massacre continue to rest and so also the souls of 7 million Biafrans as well as other souls lost in similar manner throughout the world. Joe Biden has no clear conscience going to Tulsa now to shed a pretentious crocodile tears because he has been aware of the Tulsa massacre for so m any years but maintained a conspirator's silence about it for over fifty years. So what is the message he is trying to now give or the image he is trying to suddenly project when he did not speak all these years in condemnation of a very atrocious bloody maltreatment and mass murders of fellow Americans. 

FoxNews Tucker Carlson once said that if you cannot speak the truth when it matters, nothing else you say thereafter matters. Joe Biden had since 1973 to speak up in condemnation of the Tulsa Massacre and it would have mattered then that he spoke up, but he did not. Now, he is just an ebbing flow and nobody should really care about what he said in Tulsa because it does not matter, not any more. He was only reacting to current circumstances and not from a violated conscience which could not stand such a man's cruelty and injustice to fellow man. If what Joe Biden said at the centenary commemoration was an apology, it should not be accepted; but if it must, may be belatedly in the interest of moving on. But his long silence was not a case of where silence was golden, rather it was an atrocious and shameful complicity by default. 

On a final note, how about the government commencing payment on the much talked about issue of reparation by paying an adjusted market rate compensation for the Tulsa Massacre and destruction of what once was a thriving very affluent black neighborhood in America. But no, it was the usual mere platitudes that he took to Tulsa, believing that the same black people who forgave all his racist past last November 3rd, 2020 will also not be firm and resolute with him to demand justice for their folks that were massacred in 1921 in Tulsa Oklahoma with their prominent neighborhood completely destroyed and wiped out. It is a shame of America and it will forever live in infamy, regardless of his visit. ICHEOKU says it is about time some of these past horrible deeds are monetized to make black folks somewhat whole as all the talks cannot restitute what was taken from them.