For the past two postings, I've talked about problems within respective African American communities in our churches and in our schools. However, I don't like to talk about a problem without offering a solution or even multiple solutions. One major solution to a myriad of problems in respective African American communities is to simply care about things that go beyond our surface vision.
As a minority group in a very wealthy country, I most certainly understand why African Americans would be attracted to seemingly unending material wealth of white Americans. I can most certainly understand how all of the legal and extralegal attempts to deny African Americans access to that material wealth would endow it with something like holy characteristics. I can understand how typically poor people, as a group, would think something like, "If I could just get out of this ghetto and go over to the suburbs in the nice homes where white people with all of their money live, I'll be somebody." I can understand how we would think something like, "I have a college education, a nice home in the suburbs, and two cars. I'm equal standing with white folk. That means I'm somebody now." I understand that.
And so, like most immigrants to the country, Black people have been sold on the American Dream –lock, stock, and barrel. Ever since the earliest slave narrative accounts, we have been trying to gain the material wealth that our free slave labor helped to create. We've struggled. We've strived. We've marched. We've protested. We've demonstrated. We've moved. We've spend. We've killed, and we've died. We've applied a pound of topical ointment to a gaping wound when just a gram of caution would have prevented that in the first place. In short, like most Americans, we've become surface dwelling creatures. We hope for material things and quick, visible improvements while failing to study and strategize for longer, often unseen, real change for the better.
Even African American faith, which is supposed to be the strongest in the world, is fastly becoming based on what we can see. For example, every day I see little girls wearing clothes that are much too mature, carefully manicured nails, shoes with little hills on them, bangles, and hairstyles complete with weave. These little tweenies easily best me, and I'm in my early 30s. Yet, I hear parents continue to tell little girls that they cannot wear red because red is the spirit of Jezebel. So, it's okay for them to wear those revealing clothes, sometimes as early as elementary school, and show the world their half-naked asses as long as those skimpy clothes are not red…..Our girls are walking around looking like little video vixens, but they're not wearing red! And I don't even want to talk about the people who tell me to dress up for church so that I can show how the Lord has blessed me. Oh! My! God! I told this one lady that I spend less money on clothes so that I can give more of my money to charity. That's how I show how the Lord "done blessed me." That's also what God commanded Moses to do. God said He would bless Moses so that he could be a blessing to others: not to go out and buy an Armani suit.
Many efforts to establish much-needed ministries in churches never get off the ground. As adults, we become embroiled in battles over who's going to get what credit for any positive improvements a ministry may produce. In many African American communities, there are churches on every corner. Yet, the churches cannot work together for the good of the community because pastors scramble over the spotlight and possible new additions to their congregations. There is no ministry without some sort of personal motivation for surface credit and added dollars to the collection plate.
Even in our schools, we dwell at the surface. First, we need to learn about the licensing systems of the schools in our communities. Most poor school districts, whether they are urban or rural, license teachers in a way that saves the district money. This is not the best thing for our students. And then, when our schools fail, we want to see improvements. Next, as parents, we rely on standardized test scores to tell us how well our teachers are teaching like most Americans. We look at the child's report cards, and according to what it says, figure everything is okay. We never visit the schools to check out the quality of instruction or even the conditions of the school grounds. We only show up when our children are in trouble, and even then, in some places, it's hard to get parents to take time off their jobs to come check things out. Many schools offer open houses, and maybe one or two parents may show at the last minute.
African Americans can do better than this. We used to do better than this. My mother has told me many stories about how the older people who populated the world of her childhood could not even read, but if the children stumbled over a word when reading aloud, the older people would "lick" them with a switch. Even if the teachers abused their powers, these illiterate and semi-literate people still went "over to the school to see 'bout they children."
I've heard over and over again about how the churches would get together and have competitions, church outings, and youth activities. One of the funniest stories I ever heard was about an usher board competition, and how the ministers swelled with pride as their usher boards showed their discipline and skill. I've heard how some of the deacons would get together and talk to a wayward husband about his lack of compassion for his wife and family. I was told that it was always up to that young man to straighten up, but if he didn't it wasn't because he didn't know how.
Am I saying that everything in the past was a utopia or some kind of paradise? No. What I am saying is that our lives today are comparably less morally and spiritually rewarding, but more materially comfortable than yesteryear because somewhere along the way, we ceased to look beyond the surface of material gain and care.
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