Why are we still acting like slaves?
By Joyuan Michele Brown
Guest columnist
As I listened to Nightline recently and heard well-known African Americans debate the plight of blacks in America, I wondered if we as a people are really in touch with ourselves.
Publicly, we discuss and even argue amongst ourselves about the number of blacks in prison, the parents who are not there for their children, how we spend money on things we don’t need, health care or the lack thereof, sexual responsibility n the list goes on.
What is not discussed is how we very much still emulate the teaching of our former slave masters.
As slaves, we were stripped of all dignity and heritage. Now, those few of us who wield the power of the media continue to tear our people down. Every time blacks in the media put down other blacks who have different political or religious views or simply make skin color jokes, they are saying it’s OK to tear down our community.
We don’t have time for jokes, we’re losing as a people and we need all the positive role models we can get.
My particular pet peeve is when our “married role models” make babies outside of their marriages and their indiscretions are made public. Where are the leaders who will stand up and denounce this behavior?
Do we realize how many of our men make babies and walk away from the home? Yes, they may pay child support, and some may even keep their every-other-weekend visits, but let’s take a look at our past history for a minute.
Remember, the slave masters used slaves like cattle, to work and procreate. It was never important to the white slave masters that we created families from our sexual unions. We were just making more slaves for them, and an unfortunate truth is that males were “mated” with many females to bring about more slaves and families were separated.
Why in the year 2005 are we still behaving like slaves? And, what’s worse, why is it still acceptable in our community?
It’s alright to talk about poor black kids who walk around wearing tennis shoes they really can’t afford, but let those of us who consider ourselves educated n leaders, media and role models n look at this a little deeper before we go public. Let’s get really real when we talk about responsibility in our community.
Those of us who call ourselves Christians need to read the Bible, really read it and study it, because it is rich with our African history, and we can’t call ourselves Christians if we don’t know Christ’s history. We need to find ways to help men return home to the family like our Bible talks about. We need to help poor people be able to provide for their families and be available to their children so that children are not raising themselves while parents work many jobs to survive.
Every opportunity we have to reach our people, teach our people and break the slave chains, we need to do just that. We have many issues in our community that need discussion, but our problem starts with the basic family value. We need to stop lying to ourselves. We’re free now!