The Conundrum of the Black Struggle

The Conundrum of the Black Struggle

There are two major issues that contribute to the perpetual state of oppression as far as black people are concerned.

1. We don’t ask questions concerning how we developed our current thought patterns, or the way we process events that take place in our lives (e.g. Why we are so easy to forgive the most vile injustices against us.).

2. We don’t seek answers for ourselves, but rather hope and wish for our oppressors to suddenly develop a conscious and subsequently supply the relief we so desperately need.

The answer to the enigmatic conundrum, in which we find ourselves perpetually being oppressed and subjugated under, will not be solved by looking outward. This is an issue that must be solved from within. We must stop looking at the oppressor and demand that they respond, because they will not, it is not in their best interest. Their very survival relies on their ability to oppress us.

We, and only we, possess the power and resources to lift ourselves up from the gutter of oppression. It starts with absolute economic empowerment achieved through the practice of black group economics. It is sustained through consistent education of our people that extends beyond the parameters of the attainment of academic skills.

To my Christian brothers and sisters, I am not here to issue condemnation or ridicule of your faith; however, I am here to issue an indictment of your approach. Far too many of you are praying to God to deliver you from a giant that equipped you with the power to slay. You are talking, preaching and singing about faith, but you are failing to walk in it. Faith takes action; faith dares to be bold and step out of the confines of the status quo

To my self-proclaimed conscious brothers and sisters, I am issuing an indictment of your approach. Far too many of you spend way too much time attacking those who don’t believe what you believe and those who don’t know what you think you know. Your energy would be better spent attacking the system that is oppressing and conditioning the minds of those you continually verbally assault, but then again, those people don’t fight back, and the system does. Well, welcome to the war. I have been in this war for some time, fighting on a number of different fronts, and I have yet to see anyone converted from their views or beliefs due to verbal assaults from people with opposing views. In fact, the natural response in these instances is to hunker down and defend their beliefs.

So, then I have to question the motives of those that openly assault other blacks who don’t see things their way. You can’t really be about black empowerment, because you are spending more time attacking blacks than you are attacking the mechanisms of white supremacy. This means that your motives are self-serving as you personally stroke your own ego for knowing what amounts to very little in the scope of it all.

Black men, it is time to step from behind your narcissistic behavior in order to step up and step out to lead our people. It is time to stop the grandstanding and competing with one another. It is time for us to reengage the back, home in a manner that fortifies our presence in a manner that facilitates the complete development of our progeny.

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Yes, we have created situations in which we have children in more than one household by more than one woman; however, this must not stop us from developing a presence in each of those homes. No, we can’t live in each one, but we must develop a presence in that home, and this presence must go beyond the paying of child support and weekly visits. It must extend to giving attention to the needs of that home, especially when there is no adult male presence in the home.

Contrary to popular belief and cultural paradigms, our responsibility to the mothers our children do not stop with supporting our kids. The moment that we planted our seed within her womb, she became our family; therefore, she became our responsibility, subsequently making us responsible for her, until the point another man chooses to take her for his wife. This is true male responsibility. I know that this is not easy, because I live it every day; however, it is what is required of the black man. We have abdicated our roles as leaders, protectors, coverings and providers, and now we must reclaim our roles.

Black women, you have systematically made the black man your enemy. The level of contempt and hostility that is consistently aimed at black men is remarkable. As you can see, I have not given the black man a pass. Yes, black men have abdicated their roles in the black collective. Many of them have found it to be an acceptable course of action to procreate and then abandon their progeny. There have been some who have found it to be within reason to be abusive towards you and others who have deemed it necessary to crush your dreams. For that, I personally I apologize, but now it is time to move forward.

It is time to realize that you are not without some culpability in the creation of the devastation of the black family nucleus. A long time ago, I wrote in my first book, The Invisible Father: Reversing the Curse of a Fatherless Generation, that behind every great black man is an equally great black woman. I iterated further that the reason that she is great is the fact that she is aware of his weaknesses and vulnerabilities, but instead of exposing them, she covers them — giving him the confidence to function in his strengths without having to be overly concerned about his weaknesses. No man wants a woman that exposes his weaknesses.

Far too many of our black sisters have deemed it necessary to expose the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of our black men, and then have the audacity to want to know why black men are pulling away. What you have considered to be your greatest strength is actually your greatest weakness.

There is nothing a man, regardless of race, despises more than disrespect and contempt. If you want to reach him, if you want to get his attention, that is not the way to do it. We black men need you by our side, if we are going to pick up the torch that has been lying dormant and quenched for some time now. We need your warmth and love. We need you to give spiritual birth to our visions and dreams after you have incubated them in the warmth of your spiritual womb. We need your love, encouragement and affirmation, because we were designed to respond to it.

And, we must all take on the responsibility of educating and empowering our youth. It is time to stop expecting a whitewashed Eurocentric education system to educate our children. We must take on the invaluable responsibility of providing our youth with their identity. Men, this begins with us. We are the source of identity, purpose and self-worth to our children. We are the model of masculinity and manhood to our male progeny, and we are the source an elevated self-image for our daughters.

Our elevation begins with asking ourselves some tough questions about how and why, and it will be culminated through our response to the answers to those questions. No one else is going to come to our rescue because everyone else is benefitting from our demise. It is time to rise up and live at the level of our design! ~ Dr. Rick Wallace, Ph.D.