Talking About My Peeps

Mes Deux Cents had a post on her blog that talked about her observation that some of our people have abandoned our core values.

As I said in a response on her blog, I believe and know for the most part we African-Americans still value hard work, education, faith, family and fairness. You not only wouldn't know that listening to right-wing talk radio, the definitions of those terms have been skewed to reflect a narrow political viewpoint.

To me, one problem I see is that I believe that our generation failed to pass on the lessons of our tortured history in America to our kids and we African-Americans are paying dearly for it.

In the 60's we achieved the easy goals of the end of Jim Crow desegregation. The powers that be could live with that.

The economic empowerment one is tougher. Those that have the power and the cash aren't gonna give it up without a fight. While we were happy that 'we'd overcome' and were 'moving on up' and out to the 'burbs, the Forces of Intolerance were plotting and planning to reverse those gains.

If our peeps had read the history of the post Civil War Reconstruction period we should have been even more forceful and vigilant about protecting our hard won gains during the 70's. Instead, our failure to learn from our history resulted in us eerily repeating in the 80's and 90's what happened during that First Reconstruction.

The rise of the conservative movement was a reaction to our civil rights successes. They also learned important lessons from their mistakes in the 60's in terms of having the churches on our side and the importance of control of the media messaging. The progressive side is belatedly waking up to that truth, albeit late in the game. Our side is just now getting the critical mass they need to counter it.

The Forces of Intolerance are also using the African-American community's historic tendency to gravitate to church-centered leadership as a cynical divide-and-conquer tactic. Its major goal is to split our community and alter the Black church's ongoing historic mission of speaking truth to power and advocating for the least of us.

We should know from our history that the more conservatives hate on a Black leader (or ANY progressive leader) the more we should pay attention to them. Rev. Al Sharpton and Rev. Jesse Jackson are on the right track. While I don't agree with everything they say or do, I know they share my concerns about uplifting our entire community.

I can't say that about the megachurch ministers. They are out of step with the mainstream Black community. I get tired of people attacking 'the Revs' for actually doing what the Black megachurch minsters SHOULD be doing instead of building arena-sized churches and doing their Uncle Thomas impressions at conservative events.

Yeah, we have some problems we need to address as soon as possible. We have accomplished major things over the last century through our community unity and I submit that we African-Americans aren't as divided as some people pessimistically think we are. But we have major work to do in terms of cleaning up some in house problems and healing superficial rifts that are causing fissures in our community cohesiveness.