Monday, May 14, 2012

African Americans Must Learn to Learn

Okay. So the past few postings that I have done have been focused on articulating problems. However, I never like to articulate problems without offering a plausible solution. Since I am a teacher, my solutions usually revolve around teaching. This time, though, it’s different. Today, I believe our solution is to learn and to learn from others. Americans believe in American exceptionalism…that we are somehow special and unique and therefore suitable to teach others. Africans Americans are Americans, and we, too, hold on and cherish our exceptionalism. Americans, African Americans included, do not always take kindly to being led. We are leaders and not followers. We are the teachers and not the pupils. But, as a formerly enslaved population within exceptional America, that attitude of exceptionalism does not always work for us. First, we have been kept horribly ignorant of who we are. Second, America presented itself as a land of plenty to all while denying African Americans and other minorities very little of its abundance. Racism and discrimination created islands of poverty in an ocean of material wealth. Ghettos and Indian reservation that looked like underdeveloped nations existed alongside the suburbs and millionaire’s rows. In creating those conditions, America created peoples who also longed for wealth and material comfort. And nothing is more evident of that than the behavior of African Americans in Detroit before the car industry crashed (that’s a whole other posting). Now, African Americans face many challenges in a global economy that seems to be shrinking. Part of the problem for our crises is that somehow, along the way to material success, we forgot to teach. Nothing is more telling than the food desserts that exist in larger cities where African Americans reside. Most of the people in Detroit are from the South. You mean to tell me that not one person up there knows how to stick a tomato plant or tree collard plant in the ground? There is simply no excuse for this. However, part of our problems can be solved not only by teaching, but by learning to learn from others. Not only can we learn noncriminal survival skills from older African Americans, but we could also stand to learn from other Black and minority populations. For instance, I saw some Fulani women do something amazing. They simply wrapped the baby on their backs in a large piece of cloth and kept on braiding hair. That sure beats the $25 I spent on a baby carrier that hurt my neck because my large baby was pulling me forward. I would like to learn this technique for the next baby I have. I learned to breast feed from an older white woman who proudly told me that she was poor but raised healthy babies. She taught me what herbal supplements to take to make more milk come for my son. From Mexican Americans, I “discovered” that cooking with fresh herbs like cilantro and parsley diminish the need for salt to season food. So, even if we can only afford to buy chicken, we can still prepare it in a healthy manner. From Jamaicans, I learned how to blacken fish, a healthier alternative to frying. African Americans are to begin to solve any of the problems that ail us, not only must we teach, we must humble ourselves and learn from others. We must open ourselves up to fresh ideas to find solutions. We can’t fix new problems with old ways, and cliquing up and excluding others is not the answer, either. When we exclude others, we exclude ideas. And when we exclude ideas, we miss out on enrichment for our own lives.

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