As this is still January, we are technically still in the season of renewal; that time of year where we either make resolutions or pledges to do certain things, take up new activities, leave various negative behaviors behind, etc.
Rarely, though, do we as a people make a New Year’s group pledge or resolution. Well, let the five things listed below serve as our first – things we commit to doing individually and things for which we will hold each other accountable. Hey, a brotha can dream.
VOTE FOR US
I’m not gonna start preaching here. I will say a couple of things, though. A social scientist who studies racial voting patterns said what the numbers reveal about Blackfolk right now, is that though we’re still voting majority Democrat (by a large margin), more and more Black men are defecting to the GOP. The researcher, a sister, said Black men who now align themselves with the racist-ass Republican Party do so because they say, 1) both parties are racist and thus the same (though they are not), and 2) since they are “the same,” brothers cast their votes with the party they think will benefit them the most as an individual. The social scientist said Black women take a radically different approach – one that reflects all of our ancient African values about community and connection. Black women, regardless of their opinions of the two main political parties almost always vote for candidates who they think will best help Blackfolk as a collective.
Though I’ve said it before, folk way smarter than me have made the same case, that there are very distinct differences in the two main parties – one too often takes us for granted, yet still fights for most of the things we want, while the other party literally wants us dead or re-enslaved.
Let’s roll with the sisters’ strategy and cast our vote for “us,” the collective, and not just “you” the individual. Quiet as it’s kept, even voting for your own personal best interests would still have you cast a vote for what’s best for the group: “I am because we are;” “We can do more together than we can apart;” “I need you, you need me, we need each other.”
SELF-EDUCATE
You may or may not have heard of Sirus Radio’s Karen Hunter, a legendary Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who is unashamedly for the Blacks, and Dr. Greg Carr, a Howard University professor who is a modern-day giant went it comes to educating our people. Along with their own jobs, projects and initiatives, they team up to offer a program called “In Class with Carr.” To get the full experience, you can sign up to join Knubia, a virtual, global community of folk who have “jail-broke” the university system to bring serious knowledge and learning to whatever part of the masses show up. They also make “In Class with Carr” available on YouTube.
The point is this – they are taking the Detroit Red / Malcolm X / El Hajj Malik el Shabazz model of education to the masses, and making it a collective enterprise. Though both Hunter and Carr teach courses at universities (Carr at Howard and Hunter at Hunter College), they are all about making the pursuit of knowledge and deeper understanding a very public project that requires no walls, degrees, pomp, or circumstance.
Whether you join/follow this oh-so-dynamic duo or not (though I highly recommend that you do) we have to make self-education the rule and not the exception. With all the talk about racist-ass racists taking Black history out of the schools, it seems we’ve forgotten there wasn’t much of our story in most K-college classes to begin with. Those anti-CRT zealots are on a mission to whitewash an already hyper-whitewashed version of history. But we knew this even before they picked up steam.
If we are ever gonna get back in touch with our right mind, we’re gonna do so by taking control of what goes in our minds, bodies, and spirits.
CONTROL OUR CHILDREN’S EDUCATION
To that point, whether we’re winning or losing the battle to control the K-12 curriculums being slapped upon our children’s heads, we still have the power and authority and ability to control our children’s education. Even if you don’t homeschool your children you can still control their education. You can expose them to “Our Story” in all its gore and glory. Or you can place your children in settings that allow them to learn Pan-African history and the many histories of other peoples. You can position your children to gain a global perspective on topics; a perspective that is light years more advanced, more compassionate, more inclusive, more objective, more accurate, and more on point than the “America is the best at everything” approach that trains our children to look down on folk who don’t speak English as their first language, even though they probably know two-to-five languages. Cuba, for example, is one of those “foreign nations” the American-centric educational approach has always demonized… even though Cuba has a higher literacy rate than the US.
Regardless of what’s going in in HISD or any other ISD, we have the power to create global power brokers if we resolve to control our children’s education. If we don’t, we set them up to become American fodder.
PRACTICE A GROWN-UP FAITH
You can read more about a grown-up faith here. But suffice it to say, an infantile faith sits back waiting for some outside force to do for you what God gave you the power and ability to do for yourself.
CELEBRATE
It seems almost nonsensical to have to tell Blackfolk to celebrate. Please. We’ll roll out the grill and get the party started at a moment’s notice, and for literally anything. What I’m saying is, in 2024, let’s be more intentional in our celebrations. Let’s celebrate those things, events, accomplishments, and individuals who exhibit the values that will do us the most to move us toward a self-determining reality. Hell, that’s what holidays do – they serve as annual reminders of the values a particular group sees as important and want emulated by others. Holidays celebrate values that move a people in the direction they want to go. The fact that Blackfolk barely have any of “our own” holidays is an issue we need to address. One way to get started is identifying those values we believe to be most uplifting and empowering. Oh, wait a minute. That work has already been done. Kwanzaa’s Seven Principles (unity, self-determination, collective work & responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity, and faith) are an excellent start. We can always add more. But if we simply began genuinely celebrating when our children, community members, congregants, line brothers, sorors, employees, students, etc. exhibited these values, they would become baked into our consciousness regarding what we expect from ourselves and each other.
