What happen
to our Black Wall Street mentality (Tulsa Oklahoma 1921)? What happen to our
Rosewood (Central Florida 1923) way of thinking? What happen to the African
American community depending on one another for survival? What happen to us
knowing that if we stand with our fellow brother and sister we can defeat all the
opposition that comes our way?
At what
point will we realize that it will take us unifying and pooling our resources
and money together to be a force to be reckoned with. The time for the
individualistic way of thinking is over; it has proved detrimental to our race.
There is POWER in numbers, we have done it before and we can do it again.
Since the murder
of Trayvon Martin (Feb. 2012)…….and I’ll go as far back as the murder of Sean
Bell (Nov. 2006) the African American man has been under attack; and I would
dare to ask when did the African American man stop being under attack? We have
marched, we have so called ourselves boycotting and we have rant and raved on
social media and there has been no change. Matter of fact it seems to have
gotten worse. Police are killing our men, women and children with impunity and
it will continue to happen unless we, African Americans put our money where our
month is and come together. We can complain all we want, the system is not
hearing us but they will hear us when we stop depending on them, when we stop
begging for jobs, when we stop being selfish with one another……you know that
whole crabs in a barrel mentality (urban dictionary definition: A syndrome
where a group of like situated people hurt those in their community attempting
to get ahead. Often this is applied to people in an impoverished community
where one person is starting to get ahead. The collective community becomes
jealous or filled with a sense of self-loathing, so they find a way to pull
that person back down to the community's level).
When we
become a threat to the establishment then and only then will we be heard, that’s
when we’ll be taken seriously.
We have
proven that we are capable of building a nation, our ancestors proved that. We
have built communities and they have been successful and they prospered. What
is keeping us from doing it again? Are we that jealous of our brothers and
sisters that we can’t come together to defeat the system that is trying to
destroy us? Do we not trust our brother to do the right thing? Have we gotten
so full of ourselves with our six figure jobs, our degrees and our place at the
upper management table that we have forgotten that we aren’t really a threat?
Sure we take home our nice salaries, we have beautiful homes and cars and some
of us our entrepreneurs, but are we assisting our fellow brother in getting up
that ladder as well? Regardless of the gap in social or economic standing, because
as we all know you give a black person $5 and they think they’ve arrived,
looking down on others that don’t have as much or don’t look a certain way, but
I digress on that one. These are questions that I would love answers too……because
sadly if we don’t take action like RIGHT NOW, we will cease to exist in the
next 50 or so years.
It is pass
time for us to put down our thinking that we can do it all by ourselves and
start coming together to build up our communities. So that we can have a seat
at the table, a voice in what happens to us, to what happens in our community.
Otherwise we will continue to be the second class citizen that’s content with
what we’re given and content with the treatment that we’ve been shown.
We are
better than that, we deserve better and it’s time for us to act like it.
