It is an unhappy truth that racism is a way of life for the vast majority of white Americans, spoken and unspoken, acknowledged and denied, subtle and sometimes not so subtle -- the disease of racism permeates and poisons a whole body politic. And I can see nothing more urgent than for America to work passionately and unrelentingly -- to get rid of the disease of racism. ... Somewhere we must come to see that human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and the persistent work of dedicated individuals who are willing to be co-workers with God. And without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the primitive forces of social stagnation.
Martin Luther King Jr."Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution"National Cathedral, Washington, DC, 31 March 1968
Rescuing ourselves…
My people are suffering. They are suffering because of the color of their skin. And as a whole our nation is bleeding. As long as poverty can be disguised behind a skin color instead of having the multicultural face that it is, poverty will be allowed to be dismissed by a subtle racism that says that’s just how they are. You are right Kanye, George Bush does not care about Black people, but unfortunately it’s not just him. We can no longer depend on anyone but ourselves to demand our uplifting. It will only come if we all take it upon ourselves to bring it about. But it is not just our fight, because in the process we will be saving our country’s soul.
Being in England has focused my thoughts on what it means to be a Black American. We really are like no people on the earth, in that our history starts on our arrival in America. Unlike Blacks, here in England who are, Africans, or Afro-Caribbean, or any other peoples, our story begins as sub-humans not belonging to our land or recognized as citizens until 40 years ago.
Faced with this unusual reality, people often ask, why do Black Americans fair so badly? How could Katrina happen? What can we (Black Americans) do to fix it?
I have been thinking on it, and been inspired by the impossible task to answer that last question…
What follows are the thoughts that I have developed, but I want to know what you think? What are your suggestions?Repoliticize our society.Black culture was once a highly political society, it had to be, as we were faced with the great questions of who are we as Americans? How can we gain our equality? What should that look like? That struggle energized a generation of political operatives.
Mired in years of continued inequity, faltering economic prospects, completely failed by our political elite who desperately cling to power, why would anyone believe politics would be a means to our salvation. But a devotion to educating ourselves on the political issues facing our family is the first step in solving our problems. Imagine if every 15 year old on the streets of Anacostia, DC or in rural Mississippi could talk about the political necessities of proper representation.
I was inspired by my visit to South Africa, where no matter what the seeming education or age, each rural south African could speak about how the International Monetary Fund structural adjustment programs were effecting their lives. This was not because of some miraculous vision they get in their sleep, nor even because all are literate daily newspaper readers, but because politics of all levels breathes through their society.
To be honest, I am not sure what this would like exactly, but I know that in my family from the time I could sit on my grandfather’s lap, he spoke of our struggle in the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s… the trouble with President Regan, and the importance no matter where my life went to educating myself on our nation’s political realities.
Putting Spirituality Back into Our CoreReligion, predominately Christianity, is still the core to our culture, but what I find is often missing is our spiritual foundation. There was a time when we were the world’s moral compass; when our struggle was the world’s struggle for humanity.
Guided by the pragmatic approach of Dr. King, we made ourselves into unexpected moral crusaders… not that my grandfather’s generation were all saints, far from it… But the spirituality and morality the encompassed all forms of their lives, was always their guiding character.
Church leaders were our leaders because they guided all aspects of our lives and we organized ourselves into the church’s philosophies. The church is still important, but its message is no longer lived, no longer valued as it was. Maybe its delivery and message are stale? But to lead us out of the wilderness, our best strength, the family we create in the church will have to be our guide again.
Non-violence as our guiding principleDr. King’s message was a pragmatic one. We represent only 16% of the population and today we are not even the largest minority in America. We will never possess the means to violently or economically free ourselves from our second class citizenry.
As Dr. King Explains in
Letter from Birmingham Jail, “Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. My citing the creation of tension may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth.”
The aggressive acts of civil non-violence will bring about the economic freedoms we desire, and remoralize our society. If we demand that non-violence as the principle that freed us from Jim Crow, be the principles taught in our schools, taught as the pragmatic answer to our problems we could change the core of our family.
We have a problem with violence because we are not taught other means of channeling anger, and frustration. Change and power seems to only come about through violence, and in the absence of the values of non-violence, how can we expect alternative actions? And of course the only ones who are injured are our own family. But this need not be the case.
Imagine along side PE and Music, we teach our 5 year olds the value and principles of non-violent answers to problems.
BLACK EDUCATION POWERWe need to reclaim our schools. There was a time when the hot words were creating Black Purchasing Power, and buy black first. What about retaking our economically segregated schools. BLACK EDUCATION POWER. What if we started leveraging our power in urban centers and within the Democratic power for changes to the education system.
Too often we don’t value education, or expect anything from it. And while the Democratic party depends on our votes to stay in power, they do NOTHING to address our most pressing concerns, WHEN IS THE STATE GOING TO START EDUCATING OUR CHILDREN?
Our Brown brothers and sisters have the same concerns, and we need to start organizing our demands for more money and better facilities for education.
There is strength there, but we need to be resolute, make education the primary means to our salvation.
Reintegrate FamilyOur families are in trouble and hurting. The reasons are to many to list here. The affliction of drugs, spread by the government on our people, worsening economic problems, lack of future for our people, the incarceration of our people, to just scratch the surface.
But our people have overcome so much worse. And we have thrived on this suffering through the strength of our families and communities. As they have died, so has our soul. I, you, we all have to dedicate ourselves to developing the best children and being the best we can be in our families. We must commit ourselves to viewing all our darker pigmented people as family, taking them in, up lifting them as we would anyone within our blood lines.
LOVE OURSELVES“I got love for my brother,
but we can never go nowhere unless we share with each other.
We gotta start makin' changes.
Learn to see me as a brother 'stead of 2 distant strangers.
And that's how it's supposed to be.
How can the Devil take a brother if he's close to me?” -
Changes
As Tupac, explains we need to start loving ourselves and seeing each other truly as family.
Sure we have problems, things we like and hate, just as family, but we need to love it all.
Instead as Kanye Said,
“We hate ourselves and love their wealth” –
All Falls DownI end with King, who today I say, we will not stop fighting, we still have the hardest part a head of us.
You rid us of the scourge of Jim Crow and lawful inequality. Now we must tackle the unseen immorality of systematic oppression. Your fight against this was cut short by a bullet, but we can all take it upon ourselves to fight on.
Anatole France once said, "The law in its majestic equality forbids all men to sleep under benches -- the rich as well as the poor." ... France's sardonic jest expresses a bitter truth. Despite new laws, little has changed ... The Negro is still the poorest American -- walled in by color and poverty. The law pronounces him equal -- abstractly -- but his conditions of life are still far from equal.
Martin Luther King Jr."Negroes Are Not Moving Too Fast"Saturday Evening Post, 7 November 1964
He was so prophetic. We will keep fighting, cause he knew what was a head.
I must confess, my friends, the road ahead will not always be smooth. There will be still rocky places of frustration and meandering points of bewilderment. There will be inevitable setbacks here and there. There will be those moments when the buoyancy of hope will be transformed into the fatigue of despair. Our dreams will sometimes be shattered and our ethereal hopes blasted. We may again with tear-drenched eyes have to stand before the bier of some courageous civil rights worker whose life will be snuffed out by the dastardly acts of bloodthirsty mobs. Difficult and painful as it is, we must walk on in the days ahead with an audacious faith in the future.
Martin Luther King Jr."Where Do We Go From Here?"
Thanks to genocideisnews
at Daily Kos For compiling these MLK quotes which can be found in this Diary
