Our ancestors fought for us to have the right to go to school. Now someone has to fight us to get us to go to school. They fought for us to have the right to vote. Now people have to fight us to get us to vote. The same thing happened on the bus. Rosa Parks was thrown in jail for refusing to give up her seat in the front. Now that’s the first place we run to—the back.
When will we ever stop bringing shame to the names of Dr. King, Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman and so many others? When are we going to take advantage of integration? How long will it be before justice isn’t something we seek but something we create? What will it take to get our young black men to pull their pants up, straighten up, and wake up? No more selling dope to each other or killing each other over the dope we shouldn’t be poisoning our communities with in the first place. I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the end result our Civil Rights leaders had in mind. Dr. King could still be alive today, you know?
Why must our young black boys and black girls grow up without fathers? Division is one of the hardest concepts to master—even in mathematics. Our kids need both parents at home, not just a single mother. Black families were strong before someone told us we were free. We broke bread together, worked together, and we definitely prayed together. Today, everyone eats a different meal, in a different room, and at a different time. Some of us are working and some of us are working the system. Happy to be barely getting by was never a principle we lived by. Prayer has left our homes and the churches we pay tithes to. The television and the internet have consumed our minds and left our hearts without the God who brought us out of bondage.
It appears to me that we only wanted rights when we didn’t have any. We were very humble, hardworking people before the U.S. Constitution was amended. Education is available to all of us at all levels but we’d rather be illiterate.
What we fail to understand, though, is that our works of iniquity aren’t just detrimental to us, they are killing the struggles of those who came before us and killing the futures of those who will come after us.
If you enjoyed this post, you might also like my book, Tired of Being Black.
Rodney Jordan
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