June 07, 2008

The Day of the Numerican

This story is unique and yet ubiquitous. It is one too often left untold because it is unfolding in real time in families across America. Our family history is written forward, yet linked back to the legacy of slavery.

John Lee Harris says of the Numerican Nation:
"In as much as we are not immigrants, in the traditional sense of the word, I prefer to think of us as the Numerican Nation: A spiritual people borne of slavery."
And he writes:
I’ve postulated that our family’s identity is inextricably bound-up in the past; therefore, we are Numericans.

Numerican is constitutive of two words, Numen and American.

In ancient times the word numen denoted a local divinity, or presiding spirit of a place. The word American simply refers to “the New World”.

Our forefathers lived and died in the Carolinas’; their numen and/or spirit reside there:

Whereas Africans, Eurasians, and Native Americans entered, new Americans emerged, a spiritual people borne of slavery. Their identity forever changed through the passage of time.

Implicit thereto is the fundamental belief that historians simply got it wrong; 250 years of bondage left the Numerican Nation without global roots.

June 04, 2008