Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can't ride you unless your back is bent.
I will admit that during the presidential campaign I was never overly excited about Barack Obama. I was too aggravated about things going on around my city to really let go of my anger to let the hope movement affect me. Regardless of all of that, I never thought I would see a man that looks like me being elected president and running my country. There’s no way I can not get caught up in watching him take that oath. I am going to work Tuesday but as soon as he steps forward to put his hand on the bible everything is going to stop and I will take that moment in and try not to cry. Since Monday is MLK Day and Tuesday is the inauguration, I’m just going to take this time to be black, proud, and optimistic about what the future could be for
There are only two things that you can’t do. The first thing is you can’t get fired from your job trying to take off from work to watch the inauguration. The man has a hard enough task as it is without you adding to the unemployment rate just to watch the speech. Trust me, it’s going to be replayed all day so if you don’t have the time off then don’t do anything crazy.
The other thing is that while he’s speaking you can’t forget the Emancipation Proclamation, the March on Washington, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Think about all the people who sat at lunch counters, marched, and gave their lives just to have a chance to see things like the inauguration. You have to remember that because acknowledging your foundation is how you get the strength to do the things you need to do because Wednesday morning President Obama has the keys to the house and that’s a whole different ballgame. Tuesday is just the beginning and you have to be even more engaged than you were during the campaign.
I would like to apologize to Mychal Bell for wearing black clothes on the day of the
I have been checking the black blogosphere and visiting the same sites that posted stories about you until the rally. I have seen nothing about the need to send someone to down there to help you deal with all the pressure or to get you some counseling because you were getting in trouble before the Jena incident so it’s obvious you had some other issues. It’s our fault Mychal because we still think it’s 1965 and things are over once we get the symbolic victory. The only saving grace to me is that you didn’t deserve to be in jail as long as you were so it’s good we came down there in that aspect. It’s also a good thing that the presidential campaign was in 2008 instead of 2007 because you would still be in there now and the famous folks that spoke out on your behalf would have been too caught up in the election to talk about it. I hope you can forgive our lack of following through to the end.
P.S.
My friend Lawanda really wants me to call out Michael Baisden for making himself famous at your expense but since we don't listen everyday we can't say you didn't mention it. Although if you had mentioned his personal problems as much as his legal ones when it was popular you could turn your show on at any moment and hear his name.
On a personal level I am not experiencing any real problems at the moment that I can speak of. On a broader scale I am pretty melancholy. I don’t pretend to be anything but some random. I am just one small voice in a very large scheme of things. I try not to be overly pessimistic because like I said before, you have to have some hope to keep going. I'm not writing this for anyone or to inspire anything. I just have to get it off my chest.
I ride through my city and look at the buildings leaning and the blocks full of abandoned homes. The last two weeks I have saw the faces of two babies murdered by their fathers and one elderly woman killed by her son. I read a piece by Jarvis DeBerry that made me realize that I and almost every black person I know has become desensitized to the death of young black men as long as someone doesn’t tell us he was not a thug and I am trying to deal with that revelation and change it. If someone shot me would the news take the time to let the public know that I wasn’t a dealer on the corner and if they didn’t how empty that would make my parents feel to know the taking of their son’s life was placed behind the Winn Dixie sales paper in the metro section. Someone I know had her rear windshield shot out by a stray bullet on her lunch break. I could tell a few more strories but people would think I am lying for dramatic effect. I have this sad ritual I do whenever things feel like they are getting to rough in
There is rioting in the city of
Maybe this is just me being low in spirit at the moment but we have this inauguration next Tuesday and there will be millions of black people with tears in their eyes. Who knows, I may have them to that day. Up until that day and every day after I am going to be wondering why I don’t see evidence of this new found hope in the folks that are suffering. It seems to me like the people who are inspired do bigger things by Barack Obama were already on the right track anyway. There are some sad things happening and I don’t think the affected are in any condition to just get motivated by a speech and a slogan on a t-shirt. We either have to lock them up to protect everyone else, take all the babies away from them or get some serious policy changes to get the funding to help them out. It’s too bad we made it okay that no one asked candidate Obama about these kinds of policies when he was running so we wouldn’t scare some white voters.
I wish I had the tunnel vision it takes to judge the condition of the world on my own personal condition or just rich and successful black people. I would go home and watch my 55 inch flat screen, watch The Housewives of Atlanta, sip on a glass of cognac and call the bank to hear that after paying all the bills that were do there is still a positive balance. If I could block the reality out like that I would be good; but I am trying to always improve myself as a man. Yesterday someone shot a beautiful teenage girl and no one knows why. If the size of my television or debating how the Obama’s should decorate the White House helps me get over that soon then I have not progressed as far as I think. I might as well spend the money I was saving to buy books for my daughter at the strip club tonight. I can't do that. You have to keep trying to get things right because when we figure it out life is going to be so damn sweet! I guess I will try again next week.
The last week of conversations and soul searching have caused me to have a self revelation and I think it’s a topic the black community needs to have with itself if we are every going to change some of the issues we have with violence and crime in the community. I’m probably going to piss some people off and be labeled a hater. I don’t care because what I am about to say is the truth. If two year olds are going to get murdered for child support then I have no concerns about pissing people off anymore. I know there are many men who feel like I do so I will write this for them.
Thursday there was an editorial letter in the news paper by Minister Willie Muhammad of The Nation of Islam titled “Black men must lead the way to end violence”. I agreed with everything he said in that letter 100% but there was a paragraph that stuck with me. He said, “It is time for the clergy, social groups, community activists, civil rights groups, and everyday citizens to come together for the sole purpose of helping to reduce this pattern of senseless violence.” He’s right but the problem is that the people in these groups are not making the decisions that have us in this situation. It’s time to address the black community’s love affair with the thug mentality and figure out why those guys get the same respect as responsible men.
All my life I have had to work against the image of the ignorant thug as an example of masculinity. I pride myself on being a respectable man and a good father. Outside of a schoolyard fight I have never harmed another black man. There is not one woman anywhere looking for me to claim my child or telling stories about how I harmed or disrespected her. Anything I have was earned without any shortcuts. Frankly, if every black man conducted themselves like I do there would be no crime in the community. Yet, in my lifetime living in this city I have had my masculinity judged based on the character of some fool that doesn’t have half of my character. It’s an eye opening moment in life when you realize that you can never have the girl in school that you have a crush on because her boyfriend is 16 years old with a car that cost more than your house. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t read and stopped going to school in the 8th grade.
Thugs strut around our neighborhood and get treated like kings. We have an entire genre of music and entertainment that glorifies them. Even after they are convicted of crimes that destroyed their communities we support them like they are political prisoners in the struggle for freedom and fight the justice system so you can get out sooner and go right back to the same corner. Beautiful women compete for the chance to gain their favor and be with them and all those women are not sitting in the hood in public housing either. I have seen my share of educated professional sisters with some of the craziest guys. Everyone knows a sister with a man that doesn’t match because his wild nature is sexy and he reminds her of 50 Cent. I know this is about the brothers but the question has to be asked that if a man has several children in the same neighborhood, what was it about him that made all those girls that know one another want to get with him. It’s the fame these brothers have that causes it. They are not the outcast. The glory for those who reach the top of the mountain of this lifestyle is so great that even some successful brothers with legitimate money hang out in the same places they do. That’s how some rappers and athletes get into so much trouble. They are going to places where the hustlers go because they wanted to be him growing up. We even give them good solid excuses and free passes when they keep doing the same stupid things over and over and call other people who try to speak against the ignorance snitches and haters and put them in danger for trying to be responsible.
I and many brothers navigated our way through all the trappings to develop into responsible adults yet sit here at the beginning of 2009 with our manhood in question because of a bunch of ignorant goons who survive by destroying their community and have lots of fun and pleasure in the process. Everybody falls in love with the street solider until it’s time for real work. That’s when they turn to all the regular hard working cats and want to hold them accountable for fixing things. If all the groups Minister Muhammad mentioned in his editorial get together I will be there. I will even bring some brothers with me. If I get there and don’t see the deadbeats, gangsters, pimps, hustlers, goons and the drug pushers in the same room ready to accept responsibility for all the damage they did and start pulling their own weight then I am going home and watch T.V because if the guys who dwell in the mess aren’t going to change then how do you fix it? After 34 years of living my life the right way and having to prove myself in the same environment that these guys grew up in it’s hard for me to calculate how I have to do more work than they do.
I have more respect for Pastor John Raphael more than anyone in this city. The reason is that he’s a man that is making the lives and future of the young men in his community a priority when he really doesn’t have to. I respect that to the highest because how many of us have made the decision that a section of our community is just going to act wild and destroy themselves? The truth hurts sometimes and the reality is that we have regressed to the point where our outrage towards an act of violence is dependent on the value of the victim or the status of the perpetrator. Just like today when the NAACP met with Chief Riley about the killing of Adolph Grimes by police officers. I have no tolerance for police brutality and if these officers did something wrong then they should be punished. His family deserves that justice. However, for the last twenty years they have been over 100 Adolph Grimes that were probably killed by a person who looked just like him and we hardly say a thing. What about those families? What happens when you slowly start to accept a certain level of violence is that eventually the mentality will fester just like the dream deferred Langston Hughes was talking about and it will evolve into thinking that murder is a way to eliminate any problem. I think this week we saw the end result of that in the murder of two year old JaShawn Powell. You can only keep that accepted destruction confined to a certain criteria so long. I wouldn’t be surprised if crimes like the one Danny Platt committed keep happening in some form.
It could be the foolish dreamer in me or my deep love for my dark skin; but I have always held out hope that this was all a passing phase and that somehow we would get by it without a certain amount of pain. Even after the numbers of kids I knew as a teenager or a child were being killed or locked up I still had my hope intact. After seeing what happened to that baby and the reason why, my level of hope is less than it’s ever been. It might be a little less but I still have some. Just like Pastor Raphael, I know the rest of us need to do something. I have been trying to figure out exactly what I can do to bring about a positive impact. Because I can never ignore the reality around me when I think about things like this, I now have to reconcile some sad truths about what’s happening in certain areas of this community. That is when my hope and desire to make things better clashes with my aggravation. I will tell you about that part tomorrow.
The holiday season is over and there’s about 6 weeks before Mardi Gras season. That means it’s time to be productive. This will be the first regular week in a long time. That means the coffee will magically disappear without anyone making another pot before I do. There will also be that one person in the office that seems to have computer software problems even though 20 other people are using the same software and have no issues at all. One thing I was guilty of in 2008 was slacking off too many days at work. While things are in decent shape, I still could have done much more so that’s my focus. I guess it’s hard to tell since I am drinking coffee and writing this blog but trust me at 9:00 AM I am going 100mph.
I was just sitting here trying to get my energy right after being upset for most of the weekend. It’s hard because everyone in the office is discussing this 2 year old baby’s murder. When you add that to the rain and fog the vibe is kind of dark. Nevertheless, I will try and focus on the positive. 2008 was the first year of my adult life that I didn’t make at least one questionable decision. For a full calendar year I didn’t do one thing that caused me to look at myself in the mirror one morning and say “What the hell were you thinking?” I should be proud of that. I used to have a goal of no more than three bad decisions as the sign of a good year but I managed to get through without one. Being this sensible is safe and rewarding but it sure is boring and it might drive me crazy. I guess I will get to work while I play my rainy day music.
