Black History Month: What We Need To Hear
Posted on 06. Oct, 2009 by Darkman in Education, Inspiration, Politics, World
Black History Month a time promote knowledge of black history, culture and heritage, a time to remember the struggles and positive contributions various people have made in the past to give us our freedom, but I also think it is a time to reflect. Its is so easy to reel off name like Malcolm X, Rosa Parks & Martin Luther King Jr when we think about historical black figures which have made an impact to our race but do we really stop and think what they stood for & where they came from?
Martin Luther King Jr learnt everything he knew from his parents. His father was a preacher, helpful in having Blacks get jobs with the police department and helping black teachers get the same pay as white teachers. Martin Luther King Sr’s refusal to sit at the back of the shoe store because he was black was one of the first experiences which Martin Luther King Jr recalls. His mother was a teacher and she taught him to read before he started school. She also tried to explain prejudice and the Jim Crow laws that separated Whites and Blacks. She explained the Civil War and how it ended slavery.
Without these two people in his life the speech which Martin Luther King Jr gave in 1963 which still resonates till today will never have happened. He would never have become the man he ever was and he is just an example I chose to use. Throughout our history the prominent 
voices have come from solid homes where parents have devoted their time to their children to develop them and give them the necessary tools for the future. What has happened to us as a people, nation & a race?
The evidence for slavery predates written records. Our forefathers went through daily torture, poverty and indescribable lawlessness. So many were sold, raped and executed for entertainment. Yet through all of this we overcame, through all the injustice and hard times & tribulations we were never defeated. Two things which over the last hundred years which lie at the heart of our race are family and song.
In those days we viewed everyone as family, we stuck together as one people under God. We looked out for one another. Nothing was more important than family. The idea of freedom for future generations has been given as motivation in different history books on slavery as what gave slaves hope. That hope was what was passed on from generation to generation & never dwindled till we won our freedom.
Through song, spirits were lifted while working in the beating sun for the “Massa“. Through songs like “Wade In the Water” which was in fact a coded message which pointed the way to freedom and Follow the Drinking Gourd’ which not only gave hidden advice but also contained a complete coded map with full details of how to escape to Canada; we planned, we evaded and we conquered. Even to the late sixties and 70’s 
through music like “A Change Is Gonna Come” which became a song of hope for the Civil Rights Movement music was our news, it was our way of expressing ourselves and keeping it real.
Yet when I look back now all I can do is hang my head in shame. Shame at how everything our fathers and forefathers stood for has gone down the drain. The sense of family has been lost, we live in a world where as a race we do not stick together, we do not support each other. Fathers are dwindling and being replaced by sperm donors, the youth are forgetting where they came from and only look out for themselves.
As a race we are lost, when I look at the Asian community who are also an ethnic minority, they stick together. They support their own, they buy from they own people and pump money into their community. Black people on the other hand we buy rims, we show off our affluence through material possesions which announce to the whole world we have arrived.
Our music has also followed suit, either boasting about wealth, gangs, drugs, women or the hood. We live in a world where to be “urban” is cool, where we are CEO of our own companies, we are lawyers, accountants and presidential candidates. We have so many opportunities but rather than use then for good we rather make a quick buck. I wonder if the people who get involved with scam’s actually put their minds to do something positive how legally rich they would as the schemes they come up with are genius.
Our past heroes risked their life so we could be where we are today but we repay them back not with love but with insult to their memories. The chances and opportunities available in this day and age are everywhere yet we rather steal. We rather carry a knife for reputation sake, it always makes me laugh when kids are interviewed on TV and when asked why do you carry a knife they either stutter or they say “because”.
Maybe what they mean is because my daddy was never home, because I never had a role model I could look up and when the streets came calling I listened because they made me feel part of something. Maybe its because mum was never there as she was always working, or maybe I had to bring up my brother and sister alone and to survive I did whatever I had to do. Maybe it was because I never had anyone to talk to, to listen to me or advice me and by the time that person came along it was to late.
We need to assess ourselves. How many of our so called friends do we really know? Do we really know the struggles people around us are going 
through? Why do we walk around with our head in the sand when people around us are crying our for help?
Rather than spend a month dedicated to the past heroes, why don’t we spend the month trying to respect their memories. Trying to do them proud by being better. Let us go back to the message they conveyed to us, together and only together can we make it. Individuals fall as there is no one to prop them up however in a group there is security.
As Obama said..
“So let me remind you tonight that change will not be easy. Change will take time. There will be setbacks and false starts and sometimes we’ll make mistakes. But as hard as it may seem, we cannot lose hope, because there are people all across this great nation who are counting on us,There are those who will continue to tell us that we can’t do this, that we can’t have what we’re looking for, that we can’t have what we want, that we’re peddling false hopes. When I hear the cynical talk that blacks and whites and Latinos can’t join together and work together, I’m reminded of the Latino brothers and sisters I organized with and stood with and fought with side by side for jobs and justice on the streets of Chicago. So don’t tell us change can’t happen. Yes, we can change. Yes, we can heal this nation. Yes, we can seize our future.And where we are met with cynicism and doubt and fear and those who tell us that we can’t, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of the black people in three simple words: Yes. We. Can.”
