BLACK! - Issue #19 - Wishlist For The Black Community (What Would You Want To Happen?)

It's Black History Month... every year, African-Americans like to remember the greats from back in the day and remind ourselves of how righteous they were; of how righteous we ALL were actually. I'm not going to do that. Not really. Yes, it's important to recognize "the greats" but if we don't APPRECIATE what they stood for with the same passion, the same fervor and apply it to "the here and the now", then what's the point of Black History Month...

--Stroking our broken egos? Please.

The social atmosphere of the Jim Crow era wasn't too kind on us, African-Americans. But somehow, through that (and OVERWHELMINGLY MORE) madness, we stuck together like a shut combination lock. Black men. Black women. Black children. We made it a POINT to remind each other of how strong and beautiful we were, in a society devoted to maintaining a status quo of European standards of beauty and value. This was our community's strength really, and it still is. Our power comes from each other.

The Black community today, you ask? Well, it's changed from the way it was. That's because society has also changed. Thanks to the generations that came before us, we can enjoy freedoms in this country now that they never had the luxury to before. Now, the Black community is not as solid as it used to be.

In fact, depending on who you ask, our community isn't pretty solid at all. I disagree. There are still PLENTY of redeeming qualities to our beautiful community, but it's obvious that we have a lot of work to do.


1) We have to get more younger Black women and girls to realize how much power they have when it comes sex, and to realize that no man can consentually get their cookies WITHOUT their say so.

2) We have to get more younger Black men to understand the importance of marriage in THIS society. Now, sure... this is up for debate. But America does reward married couples with a bunch of incentives. I'll touch up on this on my "Black Marriage" post later on.

3) Wow! We need to get younger Black men to go to college. See, I get it and we've been going about it all wrong. The key isn't to make college something to "strive for" with these guys, but to make it a normal occurance. We need to get the idea across that college isn't this BIG STEP towards the rest of your life, but rather... college is just the NEXT STEP after high school.

4) We need to teach SEXUAL EDUCATION to our kids. Okay, so our Black churches are big on abstinence... but that message isn't working. You know why? Kids like sex and we probably can't do much to stop them. Hormones are a powerful thing at that age. So, we have to educate them. This way we can significantly LOWER teenage pregnancy rates and LOWER the rates of STD's in our communities!


I want our community to be a safe haven for everybody who lives here, for everybody that even COMES THROUGH here. I want this to be the "base" in the game of "Tag" known as life. I want Black women to FEEL SAFE AND SECURE when she comes across a group of Black men... instead of just running across the street. I want more of the younger Black men to really understand and appreciate the value of life, so that they don't take it away from another Black man like it's ...nothing at all.

I can see this happening too. We can DEFINITELY achieve this, but we need to evoke the passion of the generations before us. We need to get active, right?

This is just the TIP of the iceberg, I'm sure. In order to get better, we have to know what "better" looks like. Which brings me to this point...

What would you like to see out of our community today?


*02/02/10 - I'm intelligent for my age and not the least bit sorry for it.