Black people were set free, but their freedom was short-lived and short-sighted. Black people were total free in an environment that was totally racist. White people were free to do whatever they wanted to do, while Black people were free to do the same thing they were doing while they were enslaved by whites. Black people were not allowed to talk or communicate to white people under any circumstances. They were free to enjoy life, but in a way that wasn't of their own choosing.
From a black perspective, despite the majority white government and white landownership, they were still a 2 class society, even more separated than when blacks were enslaved. White people ruled the roost, and black people were prisoners in their own country, and even in a 'white' country. Black people were not allowed to participate in government and gain special privileges from white people. The laws did not allow blacks to vote in elections, so every black person operated under laws that were set into place by white people, who then turned around and said their laws were set by God.
White people could do whatever they wanted and they had superior status that didn't really need explaining. Black people were a minority, but none of them were allowed to have more than a small exception to the normal rules. There was a couple exceptions to this, but they were as rare as an exception to one's thumb. An example of this was black people who got presidential or prime ministerships. Other exceptions were cases where black people were married to white people, or where black people went to white people's schools or got grants from white people.
White people's thoughts, feelings, or moods were of no consequence to black people. I did not realise this at the time, to be quite frank, I was oblivious to such things. I just thought I was completely free in my environment, until I was forced to look at it through a different lens. The lens of my own freedom. A freedom that I wouldn't have foreseen.
Forgiveness shouldn't be confused for a lack of understanding, on my part anyways. It made perfect sense to think that with all the things white people have done for me (although some of the time, those things were not beneficial for the black nation or black people generally, yet they were still done because of the relationships that were built between white people and black people) white people had the right to be better than me. I was fortunate enough to hear and say many times that white people's lives were better than black people's. I didn't or didn't see what they were trying to say, but even when they spelled it out it was still somehow too difficult to grasp. No one ever had a hard or quick answer to what 'better' meant, to me or other black people in some cases. 'Better' meant easier, but also meant better off, like they were more secure.
I thought they were using their majority to suppress me, and their sympathy and false benevolence meant that they knew what I was thinking, and my thoughts didn't matter. They had the power, literally, to make things easier for me, or for other black people, but instead the law was used by them to make it difficult for me, and easier for them. Any exceptions to this rule that I had from other times in my life, these were exceptions that I made myself, in my head, for self-reasons. I had convinced myself that this was my destiny.
I didn't believe in God, but I only said that I didn't. I wanted to understand what they were saying, but I simply didn't. I didn't understand why white people had the right to say that they were better people than I was. I had no idea that this was the result of a white power structure, and that I was no longer a member of that power structure. I thought that I was free, but I was a slave, without the knowledge or ability to realise it.
I was free in that I didn't believed I was in chains, but I had no idea that moving around in a small room doesn't make it any bigger, and it doesn't give me the knowledge of how big or small it was. Moving around in the room of my own life, made the room, my room, feel big. Before I looked outside of the room, and I knew that it had to be big. There just had to be more room because it seemed so much bigger, bigger than anything I had ever seen in my life.
Moving out of my room seemed intimidating, and I was scared that I wouldn't be able to cope.