Stop Blaming the System ~ The Lack of Black Progression
It is time that we, as a collective, stop blaming the system, and take responsibility for our own mess. If you wish to be presented with a lucid synopsis of the explanation of why Blacks can make no reasonable and sustainable progress in America, and most other parts of the world, simply take three minutes to scroll your social media timeline today to observe what is trending.
While we are debating and discussing an apparent suicide (or not) of Aaron Hernandez and the announcement that Serena Williams and fiancé are expecting, we still remain in last place is socioeconomic positioning, two-parent households, median wealth, earning median, business ownership per capita, and the lists goes on.
My point is not that either of the aforementioned celebrities are being discussed, but the gravity placed on the results of those discussions. It is not unusual for people to live vicariously through celebrities, so how their lives tend to travel matters, but our reality, as a race, does not afford us the luxury of living vicariously through the lives of those not readily connected to our struggle. And, I am not accusing either of not being or being anything other than who they are. What I am saying is that neither, in and of themselves, hold the answers to our dilemmas.
Yes, there are answers to our dilemmas, but we have become so irrelevant in the grand scope of things in this country, that it will take something we are yet to prove we have, unity, strategy, agenda and commitment (long-term commitment) to rise above our current reality.
As I have stated on more than one occasion, we are so far behind the eight ball that it will take Black men who are willing to plant seeds in the hearts of young Black boys — seeds that they may not live long enough to see come to fruition.
In my last communication with Dr.’s Claud and Joann Anderson, the prognosis was gloomy. Dr. Claud
Anderson had long predicted that if Blacks, in significant numbers, did not adapt his Powernomics blueprint and take massive action by 2013, we would become a permanent working class in the United States. Both he and his wife were holding to that position, while slightly holding out hope for some sort of major shift in ideology and the practice of efficacious principles.
In essence, we spend far too much time evaluating and debating the lives of those who have no bearing on the outcome of our race. Again, we spend too much energy blaming a system that is simply exploiting orifices and weaknesses that are the result of our fractured existence as a collective. I reiterate, I am not suggesting that people should not be talking about the news associated with celebrities, but the gravity that is applied to those discussions should be in proportion to the impact that any specific news has on our plight.
There are much greater issues that demand our attention, such as the mis-education of Black youth in America, socioeconomic impotency, the lack of a universal agenda, the destruction of the Black family nucleus, gentrification and other forms of serial forced displacement, and much more.
While strategies and blueprints exist, we are too busy locked in power struggles amongst ourselves for power that does not even exist. We own nothing of any major significance — meaning that we have no capacity to hire our own. We do not support small Black-owned businesses for every reason imaginable, while patronizing white and Asian businesses that underserve and mistreat us.
While I have an opinion about both, Aaron Hernandez and Serena Williams, I understand that my opinion carries little to no gravity in the outcome of their lives, and it does nothing to render the desired results as it pertains to the things that I am passionate about — specifically, the plight of my people. There are more sensitive issues up for discussion, such as CSA (including incest, child molestation and rape), not to mention intimate partner homicide, which is also on the rise. I could literally go on for another several pages just hashing out psycho -pathological behavior that has been embraced by the Black community as culture.
It is time for us to stop blaming the system, and instead, start engaging the issues for the purpose creating solutions. It is time that we own our mess — time to stop living vicariously through others and to start living with a passion connected to our own well-being and success.
We are a people who have mastered majoring in the minor. If we are to turn the tides of our suffering — much of it self-inflicted — we must abandon trivial pursuits for the sake of undertaking mammoth responsibilities. ~ Rick Wallace, Ph.D., Psy.D.