Faking The Funk Part II

As far as personal responsibility is concerned, I am definitely one who believes in taking responsibility for one's own actions. However I find it hypocritical that Americans of European descent do not take responsibility for the genocide, enslavement and forced social and religious assimilation of the cultures of color throughout the world during the last 1700 years. The fact that they now want to blame us for surviving in the madness that their ancestors created and their peers continue to perpetuate is a testament to the arrogance one would associate with a bigot. One cannot expect a people to rise and transform when one's foot is firmly entrenched upon their collective necks.

What is more amazing (or maybe not) is that we now have what I believe to be misguided African Americans supporting and lending their voices to the alabaster hued chorus of “They need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps like I did.” That is akin to a parent allowing a male child to wear nothing but female clothes and then when that child becomes an adult, the parent complains about him acting like a woman.

It is difficult to see or understand the digestive process when one exists inside the belly of the beast. The beast in this case is Urban America and the belly is a system that enthusiastically perpetuates poverty and ignorance. Poverty is perpetuated by a system that has failed to embrace urban development initiatives in the form of adequate housing and viable business platforms. It is a system that has failed to create any significant educational initiatives.

From an environmental perspective urban communities have traditionally existed in areas where chemicals, heavy metals, and other toxic substances pollute the air, water, and land in higher concentrations than other areas; some of the effects of which are higher infant death rates, a higher concentration of children with learning disabilities, and other social and health related issues. Combine the above with the aggressive stance of the criminal and judicial system in urban areas and we now have a recipe for social chaos. One can argue that the above system is a type of slavery wrapped neatly within a de facto socio-economic apartheid created to bring harm to those that are either dependent upon and/or are trapped inside of it.

One of the greatest symbols of freedom in America is the Statue of Liberty. Inscribed on the plaque at the bottom of her are these words compose by the nineteenth century poet Emma Lazarus; “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore, Send these, the homeless, the tempest tossed, to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door.” For the African American urban masses, that promise has been found wanting and payment is way overdue.