BET political commentator Jeff Johnson, aka “Cousin Jeff,” says the African American community needs to cease and desist the futile and failing practice of waiting for President Barack Obama or Jesus to swoop in from the White House and the heavens to save us from the myriad of problems that we are well-equipped to solve ourselves.
“Obama ain’t going to fix it, no government agency is going to fix it, Jesus ain’t coming. He done touched you [to do it],” Johnson said while signing copies of his highly anticipated book, Everything That I’m Not Made Me Everything I Am, at CNN Center in Atlanta. “And so it’s our responsibility to use the gifts, resources, talents, abilities and vision that we have to create a solution instead of complaining to people that don’t care and charging people whose job it’s not to fix the problem that we’re responsible for.”
While signing his book, Johnson spoke about solutions to the exponential rise in teen murders in Chicago and around the country. He derisively dismissed the notion that someone can merely implant hope into young people who are besieged with a pervasive sense of hopelessness every day.
“Black children aren’t violent because they want to be. They are violent because they exist in conditions that are normally lacking opportunity, lacking education, lacking employment, lacking resources. And so to even imply that we got to infect young people with hope, when the rest of the community is hopeless, is insane,” he says Johnson.
Johnson says we can eradicate many of the deplorable conditions in our community ourselves, but we must adhere to some simple, effective principles:
1. “If we are going to inspire young people, we got to empower parents; we have to empower organizations, empower communities. We have to utilize resources to create opportunities and we have to utilize existing resources more effectively.”
2. “You’ve got 18,000 black churches in communities closed on Monday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, ’cause normally Tuesday or Wednesday is Bible study. Open up the church and use that as a training center. Open up the church and use it as a counseling center. … In the black community, we have resources; we just don’t effectively use them.”
“If we don’t start thinking outside the box not only is this violence issue — not just in Chicago, but around the country — is going to increase, [and] it’s going to be our fault,” he says.
–terry shropshire
