Forty Eight Years After Dr, Kings Death.….…

Forty Eight Years (48) after the life of Dr. King was snuffed out by an assas­s­in’s bul­let at the Lorraine hotel in Memphis Tennessee ‚the ques­tion remains whether we are any near­er the dream Dr King gave his life for.
Sure America has had it’s first Black President . Yes a lot of white Americans vot­ed to elect and re-elect President Obama and for that we can all be encour­aged as it regards race rela­tions. Nevertheless the National envi­ron­ment has been sour and uneasy to say the least since his ascen­dan­cy to the presidency.

This sense of unease and dis­qui­et of course did not come from the peo­ple who elect­ed the pres­i­dent, it was cre­at­ed by those who nev­er vot­ed for him. The dis­qui­et emanat­ed from that per­cent­age of white America which is opposed to Obama not because of his poli­cies . In fact even if he sup­port­ed every pol­i­cy they embraced they would move away from those pol­i­cy posi­tions as if they nev­er sup­port­ed them.
At the same time there is a sense of deni­a­bil­i­ty which per­me­ates their rhetoric when they are con­front­ed with those facts they sim­ply come up with argu­ments which make sense to no one, not even themselves.

We must face the con­se­quen­tial truth that America has a very long way to go in remov­ing from the minds of many the desire to excel at the expense of oth­ers. We must con­tin­ue to labor in the pur­suit of edu­cat­ing those still in the dark that they can feel good about them­selves with­out debas­ing others.
Most impor­tant­ly as a peo­ple we the descen­dants of African slaves must endeav­or to change our own cir­cum­stances through our actions rather than look to oth­ers to fix our problems.

Despite the hard work of the mar­tyrs who strug­gled and are gone before us one of the biggest prob­lem we face today is lack of edu­ca­tion. We sim­ply refuse to take advan­tage of edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties avail­able to all.
Immigrants come to America from Africa, Asia, The Caribbean and oth­er parts of the globe pen­ni­less and their American born chil­dren become Governors and Senators. Bobby Jindal, Nikki Haley, Marco Rubio and oth­ers are tes­ta­ment to that fact.
As long as the doors to schools and col­leges are not board­ed up and we are not barred by troops from enter­ing, what is the rea­son our young peo­ple are not grad­u­at­ing high school much less attend­ing college?

The real­i­ty is that it is incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult to get our peo­ple (even the so-called edu­cat­ed) to read any­thing which does not have enter­tain­ment val­ue. Our con­ver­sa­tions are dom­i­nat­ed by the mun­dane and the periph­er­al. Music Videos , Movies, Video Games, World star Hip Hop and the lat­est tele­vi­sion shows which debas­es our peo­ple seem to be what even those who pur­port to have a sense of direc­tion is drawn to.

The big buzz today is that there are not enough recog­ni­tion of black tal­ent by Hollywood this they say is reflect­ed in the lack of nods toward films which has black Actors. I got­ta tell you I could not care a Rat’s behind about their movies I nev­er watch them any­way. What amazes me is the fact that a nation of rough­ly 50 mil­lion peo­ple (with­ing a nation) are so depen­dent that we expect oth­ers to do for us what we ought to do for ourselves.
Spike Lee and Jada Pinkett Smith are threat­en­ing to boy­cott the Oscars but is that the way to go?

In my sub­ur­ban coun­ty there are hard­ly any black films in the the­aters, so I’m told. But let me ask you this how dif­fi­cult is it for black mil­lion­aires to see these slights as poten­tial oppor­tu­ni­ties for suc­cess? How dif­fi­cult is it for peo­ple of col­or to start com­pa­nies which makes, dis­trib­ute and show black films ? Why must we con­stant­ly be in the busi­ness of foist­ing our­selves on oth­ers ? They built their movie stu­dios and the­aters let them have it. For the year 2015 Black Americans spent over a tril­lion dol­lars on goods and ser­vices . Literally all of that mon­ey went right back into the hands of the monied class.
Are you telling me that we can­not do a bet­ter job of build­ing our own wealth ?

The National Basket Ball Association has made many oth­er­wise pover­ty strick­en Blacks past and present incred­i­bly rich. So too has the (NFL) and Major league Baseball, Bot to men­tion the music Industry and yes the very same Hollywood.

Yet for the most part that wealth has been used sole­ly for las­civ­i­ous­ness and immorality.
The result is that a large num­ber of Blacks earned incred­i­bly large sums of mon­ey yet they end up broke.
Whose fault is it that you make tens of mil­lions some­times hun­dreds of mil­lions and end up broke?
There is no deny­ing there are still large inequities in the sys­tem how­ev­er the way to beat those inequities is to do for your­self , ren­der­ing their slights inconsequential.
When you do for your­self oth­ers come run­ning to you . Just ask the Jews about how that is done in America.….…
We keep mak­ing excuse after excuse and blam­ing the peo­ple who for­ev­er abused us . We plead to his bet­ter angel, If he had a bet­ter angel would we be where we are today?

Even those of us who want to make change are enam­ored with the idea of con­fer­ences and meet­ings to dis­cuss pret­ty much when to have a meet­ing to find a way for­ward. In the end when a sim­ple cost ben­e­fit analy­sis is done all we suc­ceed at was hav­ing meet­ings and conferences.
How about we just have a change of atti­tude? How about we shuck the fan­cy suits and hats and put on some dirty jeans roll up our sleeves put our shoul­ders to the wheel and take our future into our own hands?

Every year mil­lions of Zebras and Wilderbeasts trek across the African plains search­ing for food and water. The two groups gen­er­al­ly trav­el togeth­er because they depend on each oth­er, if for noth­ing else the sheer num­bers which pro­vides secu­ri­ty from predators.
True there is strength in num­bers yet real preda­tors who need to eat are not total­ly deterred. So the Lioness and oth­er preda­tors bide their time watch­ing and await­ing the right oppor­tu­ni­ty to pounce and pounce they do.
On the weak stragglers .
The injured strag­gle who lags behind.
The ones that some­how refus­es or are unable to keep up with the pack.

In try­ing to com­mu­ni­cate the mes­sage of self reliance and sur­vival to my boys I often­times used the Serengeti as a teach­ing tool to make my point.
Unfortunately whether we want to face the stark real­i­ty or not this plan­et is a large Serengeti.
All of us has deci­sions to make some of those deci­sions are as impact­ful as life and death.
For Black peo­ple across the Globe from the Australian Aborigine to the Kiwi’s In New Zealand, whether it be the peo­ple in the Caribbean, those on the moth­er­land , those liv­ing in the Americas and all places in between.
We must decide whether we decide to eat or be eaten.
No one will feed us.
No one will keep us safe, but ourselves.