A better life is available to you. If you want it, and will work for it, you can have it.
I will recite that often on The William Tell Show. It’s the sort of thing one hears from Barack Obama.
Link: Obama’s focus is responsibility in NAACP speech Link: Read President Obama’s Commencement Address at Morehouse College
It is diametric from what one hears from the antagonists who are the only black voices the mainstream media allow to speak: Ta-Nehisi Coats, Michael Eric Dyson, Susan K. Smith, Shaun King, D. L. Hughley, Brittney Cooper, Stacey Patton, Goldie Taylor, Cornel West, and so forth.
So, on the one hand, black thought is not monolithic, no matter political correctness’s insistence that it is.
On the other hand, for many years it has appeared to me that the fortunes of black America will never change absent a revolution in black consciousness that seemed never likely to occur, given (1) the prevalence of the bullies’ orthodoxy and (2) the temptations to self-destruction inherent in any disadvantaged people.
A choice between grief and hope
Several weeks ago, I made a decision. To ascend to the realms of harmony and light set forth in Edgar Cayce’s dream, it is necessary that I choose that, seek that, create that, turning my attention away from the discord and darkness below. Accordingly, it was necessary for me to change the way I considered black America, giving up grief over the brokenness that is, and instead embracing hope for the wholeness that can be.
Many black folk may not have strong, positive relationships now — but they can form them.
The social fabric of the ‘hood may be worn and tattered now, but it can be whole.
Then I recalled another hopeful recent event.
Over a period of several years in the not-too-distant past, American public opinion about gay marriage shifted completely. There remains a significant minority who oppose it, but the opinion of the large majority definitely changed. Even Barack Obama changed his mind. All this happened without any visible or audible campaign, without any blocking of highways or shutting-down of malls. Folks’ views just changed.
A similar change of heart may, then, be possible, on the part and to the benefit of black America also.
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