Letter to the Editor: A call for 21st century Black consciousness

First of all, our greatest gift to America is our humble humanity. Black people, we are in deep trouble with our Afro-American ideology. The responsibility of a community concerns everybody living in that community, whether you are rich or poor.

We have fewer tomorrows than we had yesterdays. From slavery to today the White majorities haven’t allowed us to accumulate too many positive economic attributes. They are in fear of the fact we might actually grow up as a people and become a community. The roots of our strengths have always been the family traditions, which run deep in our soul. Black men and women have failed the children. We have become victims of fabrications and lies of the White majorities’ policies, which was designed to break our back in spirits and deed.

The 21^st century is wide open for family and economic opportunity. We are going to have to have a bonfire to burn off the 20^th century strategies. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s doctrine of peace has taken us to this point in the 21^st century. We can’t continue to ride Dr. King’s coattail. The Black agenda is now totally different than it was 40 years ago when Dr. King was marching.

Are we super simpletons or can we be super people again? We must stop misusing thought and start playing chess instead of checkers with our future, because the White majority talks at us and not to us about our own future.

We are being fed a diet of be patient. Hell, it’s already been over 200 years and the White majority are the ones who have gotten fat off the United States’ prosperity. Our diet of political crumbs has devastated the Black communities across America. The sweet cookie of our salvation has crumbled.

We must renew the Black renaissance of Black America. I call for a shout out to all our Black intellectuals, dumb and smart, to help our Black neighborhoods to reinvent ourselves in this 21^st century. The White majority vision of being civilized isn’t working for Black Americans.

Let’s be honest here, White people don’t stand up for their Bible anymore. They put political correctness before God and the Ten Commandments. As we are a Black people, their philosophy is killing us. As a conquered people, there is too much at stake for us to fall asleep at the wheel. We can’t afford to continue to be cowards to our Black identities.

The White majority has changed the rules for Black Americans. We are being replaced by new immigrants, and the American Dream for Blacks seems like a bygone era. We are just commodities being used for the judicial and prison system.

It’s essential that we refuel the Black imagination and feed our soul a diet of love, morals, family traditions, neighborhood respect for the whole person regardless of ethnicity. We are being played like a fiddle by the White majority.

Our number-one problem in Black America is economic disparity. This alone should force us to the table of compromise, to come up with a winning strategy in the 21^st century for ourselves and our children.

It’s in our hands if we live or die, Black people. Let’s tap into God’s great power of reasoning and shun this smoke-and-mirror magician trick of the White majority, because I’m tired of being at the end of a bad joke.

The word compromise comes up a lot in today’s politics. But there never seems to be any compromise to Black people’s economic plight. There is no such thing as aiming too high for families, friends and neighborhoods.

It’s going to take Black pride and lots of aspirations to fix this broken home called America. Let us pinch ourselves to see and feel if we are alive.

As a Black people in America, we have crossed oceans, valleys, rivers and mountains. It’s time to bridge together our intellectual unity and sing the Black National Anthem by Sister Sledge, “We Are Family.”

Willie Johnson lives in Minneapolis.