Black People Must Step Up And Take Responsibility For Their Own Lives.

I watched the movie the “Butler” recent­ly. I don’t usu­al­ly get to catch a movie, I’m always too tired. On the occa­sion that I both­er to drag myself to do so, it’s usu­al­ly to see an auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal film. I like those films because they usu­al­ly pro­vide a win­dow into the Subject’s life, depend­ing on the abil­i­ty of the Director to cap­ture that sub­jec­t’s sto­ry and trans­late it through the Actors.

The Butler tells a tremen­dous tale about Cecil Gaines a man born and raised on the cot­ton fields of the American South. Young Cecil wit­nessed his father being mur­dered, shot to death. His trans­gres­sion? Having the gall and temer­i­ty to chal­lenge the piece of trash who had just raped his wife. I won’t give away the movie, I would sug­gest though, that every­one who haven’t seen this film, do so. At a time when blacks in America are stand­ing on the side­lines of their own des­tiny, it is impor­tant that we use every tool at our dis­pos­al to kin­dle the dying embers of rev­o­lu­tion­ary fer­vor. A fer­vor which has been doused by our accep­tance of the drug of tran­quil grad­u­al­ism, Doctor King warned against. Not only should all 37 — 40 mil­lion American blacks be mind­ful of the tran­quil drug of grad­u­al­ism, they should ignite that with the fierce urgency of now, cour­tesy of President Barack Obama. (“You must be the change you wish to see in the world”.—Gandhi)

President Obama did not gloss over the need for African-Americans to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for their own lives in his speech com­mem­o­rat­ing the 50^th Anniversary of Doctor King’s icon­ic “I have a dream speech”.

Raising the issue of personal responsibility is not very popular in parts of our community. It is far easier to blame them, the man,  they, than take responsibility for our own lives . We have to assume responsibility for our own communities and our own circumstances. It ought to be clear by now, no one will fix things for us. We could begin with our men being more responsible by not assuming having multiple baby mothers makes us men. Maybe we could find a way to have our young women aspire to more than just pushing a baby stroller with babies they are ill-equipped and cannot afford to raise. That would exponentially lower that frightening 71% of all black babies in America being born to single black females. I totally get all the arguments about the hurdles which are placed in the way of black upward mobility. Guess what? They are not about to come down, the same forces which placed them there in the first place are still engaged in erecting barriers, they are not into bridge-building. We simply have to find a way around them.

Responsibility come from deal­ing with the prison indus­tri­al com­plex and what it means to our peo­ple, while we simul­ta­ne­ous­ly deal with how we raise our young men and women in a way which will keep them out of Courts. Understandably, there are com­plex­i­ties which has to be con­sid­ered inso­far as the details are con­cerned. We sim­ply can­not con­tin­ue to stand around wait­ing for the grass to grow to eat, cat­tle do not, we can­not afford to either. We could begin by start­ing new busi­ness­es and sup­port­ing them. Every oth­er eth­ic group in this coun­try has done so. It is an incred­i­bly empow­er­ing con­cept. It does us no good to con­tin­ue to be the peo­ple who buy what every­one else pro­duces. yet pro­duces noth­ing any­one buys.( “Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there”.—Will Rogers).

Every house­hold must take respon­si­bil­i­ty for the child/​ren it puts into the pub­lic domain. We sim­ply can­not depend on teach­ers to dis­ci­pline our chil­dren , they are not allowed to any­more , they sim­ply call the Police. We must stop blam­ing the Police when they arrive and cart off our dys­func­tion­al kids, that’s what they are oblig­ed to do by law. We must stop blam­ing the judges who put them in jail, they are doing what the law man­dates. Stop blam­ing the Legislators who drafts those laws, usu­al­ly they tell us what they plan on doing, yet we do not vote. Those who like their poli­cies vote. We Do not vote so they decide to take that right away. They put our chil­dren in pris­ons and they don’t have to wor­ry about us ever. Check mate.

The time for action is now>