Today I want to address the issues we are currently facing in our community. I know yall are used to us being funny and entertaining but I am getting to the point where I am literally afraid of what is going to happen to us as a people if we continue in this way. For all of the strides and advances we have made throughout the years, what do we have to show? Sure we have rich blacks, we have blacks in politics, we have blacks doing all kinds of things that our ancestors thought were impossible to achieve, but what about our situation in society. Why are we in almost the same exact place we have been in for like 50 years? These are some things that I think we as a people need to consider looking at…
We need to start by taking a good look in the mirror. We are our own worst enemies. We don’t support each other as a community; we don’t even support people in our own families! We should look at family oriented cultures such as Asians and East Indians, as an example of how supporting family can help out everyone involved. When one of them moves here and they are able to get on their feet, they send for more family members and then live together and work together towards the common goal of making a better life for themselves. I know what you are gonna say, Nikki- I cant have nobody in my family come live with me, they may steal my stuff and my house while I am at work! Well I understand and clearly do not think you should let Uncle Molester or Cousin Cracky come and move in, I am just saying we need try to encourage and enable the members of our family and communities that we live in, in order to start the changes that need to happen to us as a society.
We have a troth of self-hate. How many studies have you seen where they offer black children a white or black baby doll and the white one always gets picked when asked which one was “pretty, clean, or good”? How many times have you heard someone talk about how they need to stay out of the sun so they don’t get dark? Or talk about how a light skinned person may seem bougie- although they have never met them or spoken to them. Why do dark skinned men go in and out of “style”? We still have a slave mentality. It has been 400 years and we still feel and act on the effects of what the white masters instilled in us. We talk about ourselves so bad yall. We talk about someone if they have too dark of skin, too light, too big of a nose, too skinny of a nose, big lips, thin lips, big butt, no butt. No matter your skin tone, I am sure you have been talked about by your own people at one time in your life. And don’t let me start on hair- that’s a whole ‘nother bag of worms…We seem crazy and confused to other races. We don’t want to be light, but we can’t be too dark. Why? We need to start looking at ourselves like we really are a beautiful multi-hued race of people. We have so many sought after and beautiful assets that in Hollywood all of the big white/Latina stars all have some sort of black trait. See they are trying to steal our beauty away from us. But we need to grasp it and appreciate it in ourselves. We are the race with the sought after characteristics of beauty, we are the race with the soulful music that they pattern theirs after, we are the ones with the style and swagger you see them replicating on the runways, we are the ones with magical cooking skills that can turn a pot of assorted unwanted items into something like Gumbo. We are responsible for getting our self love and respect back before we can make them respect us.
We need to work with our children. Have you seen them? They are a mess; they have no morals, no values, and no education. Why- they haven’t been taught any better. The only things they think they can be are a rapper/ball player /singer/dancer so they don’t try to do more. Guess what? Not every kid in the hood has talent. Not every child is gonna make it out by becoming the USA’s next big thing, the rest will fall behind and end up slangin and getting locked up or be another unemployed person in the system. The sad thing is that there are many brilliant kids who due to a lack of resources and opportunities will use their knowledge for evil. But whose fault is this? Not theirs. They were led astray by the break down of the black family, by the welfare inheritance their mother’s leave them with, by parents and family members becoming addicts, teenage mothers and parents who have been locked up. Since the parents have been left with no hope, why would the kids have any? The parents of our youth have lost faith in themselves and in society and because of this have turned to other means in which to get by. Then the children grow up with this same mentality and this keeps us from getting anywhere as a race. How proud can we be of a black governor/president when such large numbers of our children are failing out of school, are given poor school facilities, are dying if AIDS, are living in poverty, are hungry, are having babies, are getting locked up on bogus charges, are dying?
Stop blaming music. Music has always been an issue of debate between generations of people. Back in the 1920’s older people hated jazz and everything that it stood for, they said that it supported drug use, alcoholism, and sex. The same thing happened in the 1950’s when Rock N’ Roll became popular, the same concerns were voiced. No one wanted their children to listen to the popular new music that they believed was going to cause all of society to fall apart. Well now we have Rap and R&B. We are in the same situation that we have continued to be in with the older generations, they apparently don’t recall the days when their parents talked bad about the music they listened to like it was going to ruin them as people. It is not the music’s fault that our teens and children think it is ok to call a woman a “ho” or a “bitch”, or that it’s cool to get shot at and put in jail, that it ok to dress like a prostitute at the age of 12, that sex at 9 years old is normal. It’s the parents, it’s the school systems, it’s the politicians, and it’s us as a people who have failed them.
Where have all of the leaders gone? Why haven’t we had a decent “black leader” since Malcolm X and MLK Jr. were assassinated? How am I really supposed to respect a man who wears a permed pompadour because he promised James Brown he would? We really need someone who is educated, opinionated, charming, and who cares about the state of black people in society. I am tired of seeing these people who are supposed be on our side when later it is clear that they were only trying to make a name for themselves, or their goals are self serving, or they just want the lime light. Are there really no more decent, caring race minded people any more? Have we really bought into the idea of being politically correct and political equality, when we still have to get minority scholarships to go to college, get hired by affirmative action, and sometimes only get hired because your company has to fill a quota? Do we really have faith in a government who would let a city full of black people like New Orleans suffer and die in the street like dogs when there were plenty of resources available if only they had let them get through the barricades they had set up in order to force the people to stay in the decimated city? And conversely the same government who when the majority white area of Malibu was affected by the fires put people up in hotels, were giving out spa days and held carnivals, basically gave them a party for being white.
Stop blaming everyone else. It is and has never been their responsibility to get us to and equal playing ground with them. First of all why would we ever think that the people who enslaved us and thought of us as animals would want to help us be equal to them? There are plenty of them who don’t agree that we are less, but during slavery there were plenty of abolitionists too from the beginning. We need to invest money and time into our communities to help save them from gentrification. We need to rally and vote for items that stand to help and hurt us once they are put into law. We need to fight with the cities and the school boards about the state of our school districts. We need to run for office and vote for politicians who are looking out for us as a people. We need to start looking down and helping our brothers and sisters accomplish their goals.
If we don’t wake up soon we may end up back at the “big house”. Don’t laugh because the way they have things right now, we are very close to it becoming a reality. What do you think they get out of so many of us being in jails? What do they get out of looking the other way when “upstanding white citizens” commit crimes? What do they get out of keeping us ignorant and on welfare? What do they get out of dividing us as a people by using our own self hatred as a weapon? What do they get out letting a whole culture in black society be divided and broken? We need to start thinking about not only the future of our children but of our society as a whole. I personally think that Harriet, Nat, WEB Dubois, and other influential deceased blacks would be outraged at how we are today. We have no appreciation, no regard, and no conscious of the past and what they brought us through. Not only that we have dropped the ball but it seems that no one is ready to pick it up.
