By Willie Johnson
Guest Commentator
Black people, guess what — we are still as Black today as we were yesterday. Same story, different page — sleepy, dumb, tired and broke, just hoping for any kind of help. It’s the middle of the month and I’m broke with my head in my hands.
Listening to the nightly news makes you think the whole world is crazy. I feel sorry for the foreigners, but Black America has its own problems. There hasn’t been a policy to help Blacks in America in over 30 years. Ask the Establishment and they don’t understand what it is like being Black and broke in America, living paycheck to paycheck.
It’s not wrong to cry out if someone is standing on your toe. That’s how Blacks feel in this American culture, White people standing on their toe. We asked for them to get off and they call us crybabies.
In the world, we need someone to come to our rescue. Please call 911 and 411, because we need help and information in our Black neighborhoods. If we don’t put a pep in our step, we won’t need a crystal ball to foretell our future. Culturally, we are going down the drain fast, yet there’s no sense of urgency as our Black society crumbles around us.
Mother Watts, a Black elderly woman who turned 90, is a Black historian and patriot of the Black race. She told me the problem she sees with Black people today is that they don’t pay attention. There is a cry out from our culture in need of attention.
Ghetto Moneytality is very real to Black people who are living from paycheck to paycheck, a beggar, a vagabond in one of the richest countries in the world.
In case you haven’t noticed or felt the effect, it’s been raining on Black Americans’ parade for centuries now without an umbrella, to stop the onslaught of dilemmas. What has being Miss Goody Two-Shoes really gotten us as Black Americans? The system has never allowed us to excel to the next level. We have never been shown a way out.
Are we willing as Black Americans to do what it takes to win in a high-stakes game of community? To be honest, being with these White people the last 238 years, we have been jinxed. We have never been able to accomplish anything under the White majority rule that has amounted to anything in our community.
Not only do we suffer from a love deficit, but we also have a surplus of cruel intentions and moral degradation. Jim Crow and the Civil Rights Movement wasted and threw away a generation of opportunity for Blacks. We were trained and conditioned to buy America’s gumbo.
Our politicians’ conversations and promises don’t hold water anymore, day in and day out, lies, lies and lies. Can justice get some action in Black communities? Can we too share in a democracy where our creeds and deeds mean something?
The four-headed snake that hurts and bites Black Americans are economic despair, lack of communication, mental sloth, and lack of respect regardless of ethnicity. The status quo isn’t for Black Americans; that’s a false dream we got sold instead of the American dream.
Over 200 years Black Americans have struggled to succeed, to build a life of high standards and hope. So that all Black people in America can truly raise their right hands and say, “I pledge allegiance to the flag.”
Willie Johnson lives in Minneapolis
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Very insightful article. Excellent commentary that should cause or people to examine thier values and priorities