Up against the wall is where we find ourselves today. The skill set of what it takes to be ahead is not within our purview in any significant way. It’s notable though that The Roots have come out with a song sharing with people how they are trying to get in touch with God and rhyming in their song. But how is it that a hip-hop group as great as The Roots can have lower record sales than a lesser talent who is bellowing and shouting, “who and you and what the f— are you to me?”
That’s sad, and sadder still is the fact that we don’t comprehend and examine that there is a process in motion that makes us the laughingstock of a larger group and an industry that slaughters free thinkers until they conform in sheep-like fashion.
We hear our women and the leaders of our future crying out to us to save face, and yet we continue to spit out rhymes that deserve no other label but disgrace.
Why sacrifice intellect and critical thinking for vulgarity and cultural sinking. Children are prone to be too easily influenced and to remember lyrical content, unaware of the mental malaise they are subjecting themselves to when they hear black men tout their mothers and sisters as conquests and easy lays. The lowest common denominator is too easily arrived at in this hideous formula for maligning each other and the entire race.
Everybody wants to show their underwear and abandon reason and rules without care. We are too willing to turn a blind eye to HIV/AIDS and live in denial about the toll it takes on the entire society.
We speak through social networks and tweet irresponsibly, as our race continues to falter every day.
But we’ll say a line and celebrate like Friday is the only perfect day, and the day we live for week-in and week-out. But the attack on our community seems to slip by us, while we are caught up in the throes of cultural inequity.
The concepts of taking a company public or securing a patent for a scientific find are foreign to us and we don’t care to know any more than the fact that they exist. We don’t see the significance these developments might have on our lives and we relegate ourselves to the lower rung of the economic chain.
It’s tragic that when we look at the social network groups that have grown from our chatter, we hesitate and even refuse to utilize them for community development and things that matter. But we see young sisters fighting policeman like they’re in a real battle, and brothers are slammed against walls, but we are not at all rattled. Each of these instances is recorded and played in meetings in places that you are not privy too. They discuss how ignorant the behavior is and determine the best methods for addressing us, and it’s all based on what we do.
The remembrances of the struggle and pride in overcoming seems to have fallen from our ill-conceived notion of grace. We are no longer a proud people, we are barely involved in directing and determining our own way. We can’t point to any relatively recent advances that we have contributed to on any significant level. We’re not participating in a meaningful way in public trading, or space exploration or even economic revitalization.
We just continue to bounce off the wall and react to the fate that befalls as though we are surprised and totally unaware of what we did or didn’t do to get there. But if we stop now and stake our claim, and bind together to make a change, it is more than possible to attain control and make real gains. While pseudo-intellectuals pontificate the state of the black race, we should develop a new set of principles of what that state should be. You see the state, as in federal government and national administration, with all of its powers and special interests, still can’t dictate to Muslims to eat pork, or convince Christians that Christ doesn’t live, or discourage Buddhists from forgiving. Nor can those entities console a fatherless child, or comfort a young brother coming of age in an world filled with fear.
The question is, will we take a stand and write new chapters for our life stories? No more black on black crime, no women disgraced in an obscene rhyme, no hatred against each other, no high school and social dropouts. But more Ph.D.s and scientists, more brothers loving sisters and children at home, and ultimately more respect for ourselves going forward and into eternity.
Get off the wall and stand tall.
Peace.
Munson Steed
