My Greatest Fear as a Black Man
I have spent countless hours researching, analyzing and developing strategies that could lead to the freedom of my people. I have examined the teachings of great black men such as Frederick Douglass, Carter G. Woodson, Booker T. Washington, Malcom X, Dr. Martin Luther King Junior and many more. I have taken a panoramic survey of the current situation in the black community, and though the path to empowerment is clearer now more than ever, my greatest fear as a black man, a black man who loves his people unapologetically, is that my people have become so filled with self-hatred and bitterness toward one another that our journey to empowerment may never be fully initiated.
When I examine the current landscape, and I evaluate the collective behavior of blacks, I find that we are in a situation now that is worse than at any time in our past. We have more things and possession, and we have more of our people with college educations; however, we still only own less than half of one percent of the aggregate wealth of this nation — meaning that we have made absolutely no progress in the way be building wealth in over 150 years.
While our economic situation is dire, where we are struggling at even more is in the area of self-love and unity. We are a people divided. Our families and homes have been completely devastated, and our men and women have never been further apart. Additionally, the hostility between black men and black women is at an all-time high. Instead of owning our culpability in our current state, everyone is looking to point the finger at someone else. Meanwhile, our children, which are our future, are suffering at the hands of a public education system that is completely hostile towards them.
Yes, the nefarious machinations of white supremacy have a role to play in the current condition of blacks. In fact, even the self-hatred and inferiority complexes that are at the core of much of the turmoil in the black community was actually the design and intent of white supremacy. However, when it comes to white supremacy, we still must grapple with this truth, every ounce of power and control that it executes over us is the direct result of our willful compliance.
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My greatest fear as a black man is that all of this pseudo-consciousness that is being propagated around social media will be of no consequence, because it will not lead to any meaningful action. My greatest fear is that black men will spend more time attempting to discredit and disqualify one another than they will spend working together to bring about change.
My greatest fear as a black man is not that the strategy of white supremacy is superior, but that blacks will not even come together to develop a unified strategy of their own. We have allowed every divisive mechanism possible to come in and drive wedges between us in every conceivable way. There is the ongoing battle between the men and the women. Not to be outdone, the Christians are at odds with the Muslims and the Gays, and black men who consider themselves to be community and national leaders are all at odds with one another.
We have reached a point in which unity has almost become a bad word. If I did not know any better, I would think all of this internal strife is the result of a fear to face the real enemy. Yes, my greatest fear as a black man is that it will be easier for us to destroy each other than for us to face our oppressor on the battlefield of life.
There is a blueprint that is backed by an exorbitant amount of pragmatic and empirical evidence — a blueprint that can lead our people to the proverbial promised land where we can experience authentic liberation and power. However, we cannot get past our differences. As Marcus Garvey once said, “We are a people cursed by petty differences.” Our conditioned minds cannot get past the differences to see the commonality that inextricably binds us all to one another.
I wake up every morning grappling with this fear. I ask myself have I committed my life to a war in which my people are not even willing to fight. Have given my heart to something that is incapable of understanding its value? There are far too many days that the answer to that question either eludes me or returns to me an answer that I find unacceptable. When I speak to the children in the inner city, or I speak with the parents of these children, I realize that I cannot give up or relent, but I must press inexorably toward my goal of empowering the minds of these individuals. One of the mottos that I have worked to inculcate into the minds of those whom I work with in the inner city is “No Surrender; No Retreat,” but my greatest fear is that the hatred and the self-loathing will consume them before the positive seeds of self-elevation and self-determination can take root.
These people need leaders who are willing to model the behavior they teach about. They need leaders who will step up and fill their spaces in the communities. Our children need people who will embrace the challenge of educating them holistically.
When it comes to me and my destiny, I have stared down and conquered every last one of my fears. I am not afraid of anything that may come my way. For the greatest thing of value I have to lose is my life, and I give it freely for my people.
It is not for me that I fear. I fear for those who need to be taught, but will find that the teachers are few because they can’t unify to develop any strategic plans to educate and empower our people. I fear for the young black boys who are targeted as early as five-years-old to be designated with learning disabilities and behavior disorders for the sake of profit — all while pushing them through the school-to-prison pipeline. I fear for young black girls who will never know their fathers and will fail to develop a sense of identity or self-worth, something that is sure to take them down a road of self-degradation and destruction. I fear for black women whose contempt for the black man only serves to guarantee the loneliness that drive the hatred I the first place. I fear for the black men who continue to leave nothing but broken homes in their wake, because they have never been exposed to true black masculinity.
I fear for the black family nucleus, which is already in disarray, because the massive gulf that is currently between the black man and the black woman is being widened even further by those who would rather attack than reconcile, reopen wounds instead of facilitating healing, and lay blame rather than owning their own culpability.
My greatest fear as a black man is that we will stand at the Jordan River only to be consumed by the wilderness of our own self-hatred. ~ Dr. Rick Wallace, Ph.D.
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