Our Time PressThe Local Paper with the Global View

By David Mark Greaves

More money was invested in slaves than all stock-in-trade, including bank stock, incorporated funds and more.  This is indicative of the value placed on an unpaid labor pool and with good reason.  The land was virgin territory which is useless in a money-based  value system.   The land had to be worked and built upon.  It was the slave workforce that released the value of the land and made it income-producing. 
According to the U.S. Bureau of the Census, the first estimate of national wealth of the United States is found in Economica; A Statistical Manual for the United States of America, 1806 edition by Samuel Blodget, Jr.1 (See Table 1)  Of the $ 2,505 million  dollars (2.5 billion) of national wealth, $1,661 million was in land stolen from the indigenous people, and $200 million was the value assigned to the slaves.
Blodget writes, “Slaves are rated too high till they are better managed, everything else is below the mark.”   The Historical Statistics of the United States2 notes that, “No statement is made by Blodget as to the source material underlying his tabulations.” 
And Mr. Blodget, by going out of his way to degrade the worth of the slaves, is telling us he may have something to hide, so we checked his figures.   Taking the census of 1800 and averaging it with the 1810 census (not available to Mr. Blodget), we find him pretty accurate, and arrive at a slightly higher figure of 1,042,732 slaves.  Mr. Blodget may himself have extrapolated from the 1800 census.   In any event, knowing how much difficulty the Census Bureau had counting the descendants of the slave population in 1990, we can guess that these census figures are “below the mark.” 
Secondly, we turn to American Negro Slavery: A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor ss Determined by the Plantation Regime by Ulrich Bonnell Phillips (1966, p. 370) and find this: “The accompanying chart  (see below) will show the fluctuations of the average prices of prime field hands (unskilled young men) in Virginia, at Charleston, in middle Georgia and at New Orleans, as well as the contemporary range of average prices for cotton of middling grade in the chief American market, that of New York.  The range for prime slaves, it will be seen, rose from about $300 and $400 a head in the upper and lower South, respectively, in 1795 to a range of from $400 to $600 in 1803…”   By using these figures we find that the minimum amount of money invested in slaves was $521,366,000 in 1805.   Therefore, the total national wealth could be more accurately calculated as  2.8 billion dollars ($ 2,826,366,000) adding an additional 300 million to Blodget’s figure.   This means that 77% of the total national wealth of the United States of 1805 ($2,182,366,000) was based on holding African-Americans as property to work the stolen land.
By 1856, there were 3,580,023 slaves, according to an average of the 1850 and 1860 census counts.   Bear in mind here that in 1813, Congress laid a direct tax on property, including “houses, lands and slaves.”  This meant that there was now an economic motivation to under-count this part of the owner’s property –  the fewer slaves reported, the less taxes paid;   slaves were easier to hide than houses or land.  This is coupled with the natural inclination of the census to undercount the Black population.   The evidence is clear in the General Population Statistics, 1790-1990.  By 1860, the “percentage increase in Black population over preceding census” averaged 28.8% since 1790.  In the 1870 census, the percentage growth was only 9.9 %.   So what happened to the other 18.9% of the expected population?  They disappeared in 1865 with the Emancipation Proclamation.  No longer having a value attached to them, these 859,000 African-Americans were lost.  It’s been 120 years, and judging from the low-count controversy of the 1990 census, the bureau hasn’t found them yet.    We can safely regard these census counts as the way-down-low end of an actual population estimate. 
Before a final figure can be determined of the debt due on this slavery phase of the African Holocaust, some account should be taken of the working conditions.   You can get an impression by looking no further than the evidence found in the African Burial Ground in Manhattan, New York. Here, recent analysis of the remains held at Howard University shows that children as young as 7 years old were worked so hard that their bodies were misshapened and their spines driven into the brain from carrying heavy loads.  Ulrich Phillips, in American Negro Slavery, says of  J.B. Say, an economist working around the turn of the 18th century, “Common sense must tell us, said he, that a slaves’s maintenance must be less that of  a free workman, since the master will impose a more drastic frugality than a freeman will adopt unless a dearth of earnings requires it.  The slave’s work, further more is more constant, for the master will not permit so much leisure and relaxation as a freeman customarily enjoys.”   This is why we include the entire slave population as laborers, and we leave it to others to dare argue why we should not.   By 1856 the advertised prices for European-owned African-Americans on one document of that time ranged from a high of $2,700 for Anderson, a “No.1 bricklayer and mason,” and $1,900 for George, a “No. 1 Blacksmith,” to $750 for Reuben, even though he was labeled “unsound.”  (See document on Page 10.) “Credit sale of a choice gang of 41 slaves.   The average cost for this lot of people was  $1,488.   As a second reference for this number, we can look at the chart for the cost of Prime Field Hands, and find that it is pretty accurate.   By multiplying the census count of slaves by the average advertised price, we arrive at a value of $5.3 billion ($5,327,079,968).    This may not look like a lot of money now, but compare it to other figures of the day.  The National Wealth Estimate for the entire nation in 1856 was $12.3 billion ($12,396,000,000).  [Note:  All figures, come from Tables in the cited U.S. Bureau of the Census publication]  Total Bank Savings Deposits in 1856 was $95.6 million.  Manhattan Island, Land and Buildings, was worth only $900 million dollars, less than one-fifth of the value invested in African-Americans.  The 1855 total capital and property investment in railroads was only $763.6 million dollars.   Why the $5 billion dollar investment in slaves?   In 1859, the total private production income was $4,098,000,000 ($4 billion).  Of this total, labor-intensive industries like “agriculture” and “transportation and communication,” accounted for $1,958 million (1.9 billion),   Almost one-half the total private income.  This explains why “a good field hand and laborer”  would run you $1,550 for Big Fred aged 24 and $ 1,900 for George, a “No. 1 blacksmith”.  Men like these gave such a good return on the dollar, that their owners would, and did, kill freely to keep the system in place. 
The money earned from this investment found its way into a variety of banking institutions, which increased from 506 in 1834 to 1,643 in 1865.  Many of the names remain familiar to this day:  The Bank of New York Company, Inc. – founded 1784,3 Fleet National Bank – 1791, Chase Manhattan Corporation – 1799, Citicorp/Citibank N.A. -1812 , The Dime Savings Bank – 1859.    As banks in King Cottons’ “chief American market, that of New York,” it is inconceivable that these institutions, and through them the nation, did not benefit from the profits made on a slaves’ wages.   Their business then, as it is now, was to be a source of funds to build empires in a variety of industries, across the continent, to make land purchases, upgrade equipment, save to send children to college, etc.   Railroads could be built using a combination of slave labor and loans taken at banks that held money on deposit from the cotton/slave industry.   Money was also paid to a variety of people who, while not slave-owners themselves, were “in the loop” of payments for goods and services.  Thus were assets being used to develop the country for the benefit of  Europeans and their heirs.  The nation as a whole benefitted, and that’s why the nation as a whole should pay. 
When we take that figure of $5,327,079,968 and compound it annually at 5% interest for 142 (1856-1998) years, we arrive at  $ 5,437,129,590,059 or 5.4 trillion dollars.   The 5% interest rate is actually a modest one.  We would much rather have employed the interest paid on Railroad Bonds in 1857, with  yields of 6.577 (low) to 8.23 (high),  but the computer calculator ran out of room and  the lower rate had to be used.  
Recently, the Jewish community has begun demanding that Swiss banks which received deposits of money and valuables confiscated from Jews by the Germans, repay the principal of those deposits with interest.  They have received Congressional support, had a respectful hearing, and are seeing the Swiss banks begin to comply and total accounts.  The Jewish Holocaust ended in 1945 with the surrender of Germany.   The Slavery period of the African Holocaust, ended only 80 years earlier in 1865 with the surrender of the southern states.  It was at that time that the right to own African-Americans outright, was given up throughout the United States.  
In recognition of the wrong done, Congressman John Conyers has sponsored a reparations bill, H.R.40: “A bill to acknowledge the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery in the United States and the 13 American colonies between 1619 and 1865 and to establish a commission to examine the institution of slavery, subsequent de jure and de facto racial and economic discrimination against African Americans, and the impact of these forces on living African Americans, to make recommendations to the Congress on appropriate remedies, and for other purposes.”
Twenty-five years ago, Queen Mother Moore was at the First Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana.   There she stood in a hotel lobby wearing African clothes, handing out literature and accepting hugs, while shouting,  “Reparations.  Reparations honey, come get your reparations.  They got to pay you.”   The Queen Mother was right.  It is in the context of reparations that the nation should be discussing affirmative action; as part of the mix of options a moral nation would consider to pay a long due debt.  Thirty percent of the nations’ airwaves could be an option.   Funding of African-American banks could be another. Government contracts should be the easiest, with a mandated percentage for each line item going to African-American businesses on a sliding scale well into the next century. 
Five trillion dollars may seem like a lot of money, but if Congress can seriously consider a trillion dollar weapons system now working its way through the appropriations pipeline, then a 5.4 trillion dollar reparations bill is doable over time.  This number  is only for the slavery phase of the African Holocaust.  It does not include the theft of property rights inventions and patents.  It does not include damages for pain and suffering.  It does not return lost lives.  It is an attempt to be another voice in the reparations process.
Until this debt is acknowledged and paid, America will forever be paying in blood, tears, and the devil’s wages.  
Next Issue: More on the economic impact of Slavery

HELPING LOW-INCOME PEOPLE GET “INSIDE” ACCESS TO JOBS IN NEW YORK CITY’S THRIVING FILM INDUSTRY
BROOKLYN, N.Y., December 18, 2006 – Brooklyn Young Filmmakers Center announces the INSIDE MAN Conference: How to Get Started in Careers in Film. This special event will introduce low-income adults and teens to the diverse career paths available to them in New York City’s extensive film and television industry. Co-sponsored by the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) Resident Employment Services and the Workforce Development Center at NYC College of Technology, the conference will be held on January 13, 2007, on the Brooklyn campus of Long Island University.
The conference will begin with a special screening of the film INSIDE MAN, directed by Spike Lee, and an analysis of what makes it a great film. Following will be an introductory talk on Production Assistant work, the definitive entry-level job in the industry. Separate workshops will then be offered on the various career paths available in film and TV, including Editing, Screenwriting, Set Construction/Scenic Arts, Grip/Gaffer Departments, Hair/Makeup, and Wardrobe.  Led by local industry professionals, these workshops are designed to provide insight into the day-to-day requirements of these positions. For the final conference panel, various media and filmmaker organizations, including the Tribeca Film Institute, Brooklyn Workforce Initiatives (which runs the ‘MADE IN NY’ PA program), Entertainment Technology Department at City Tech, LIU Media Arts Department, Brooklyn Arts Council, Brooklyn Community Access Television, Steiner Studios, and the Banneker High School Media Program, will discuss the resources available for those seeking to break into the industry and what new avenues are needed.   In conjunction with our Martin Luther King Day tribute, Fort Greene’s hometown production company, 40 Acres & a Mule Filmworks, Inc., will be honored throughout the day by film professionals who began and had their careers advanced by working with 40 Acres. Refreshments will be provided at the conference, along with ample time for participants and presenters to socialize and network.
The timeliness of BYFC’s ‘INSIDE MAN’ Conference, and it’s ongoing community education work, is underlined by the fact that the Mayor’s Office has seen the need recently to create the Task Force on Diversity in Film, Television and Commercial Production, which is studying how to increase the number of minorities and women in the workforce.  Also pointing to the need to find new ways to increase diversity is Cornell University’s ‘New York Big Picture’ Study, which includes the most comprehensive breakdown to-date of the make-up of the New York City Film Industry workforce.

For over six years, Brooklyn Young Filmmakers Center (BYFC) has been at the forefront of the drive for greater diversity in New York City’s film and television industry. With this first annual conference, INSIDE MAN: How to Get Started in Careers in Film, BYFC furthers its mission to provide a curriculum that not only educates low-income and minority people about local job opportunities, but also promotes film literacy. BYFC’s Intro to PA and Intro to Screenwriting classes, along with its Getting Started in Careers in Film Spring salon series, are designed to be effective, low-cost alternatives to provide entr‚e into the film industry in addition to traditional film school pathways.    Beyond the conference Brooklyn Young Filmmakers is currently working to establish a Career Guidance & Networking Center for adults and teens. Located within the Whitman Community Center in Fort Greene Public Housing, and collaborating with the NYCHA Resident Employment Services and the Workforce Development Center at NYC College of Technology, BYFC is an accessible resource for the community that needs it most.
There will be a special tribute to 40 Acres & A Mule.  The closing conference panel of representatives from NYC filmmaker and media organizations will give an overview of existing training resources and discuss what new services need to be created to help increase diversity in the film industry’s workforce.   Brooklyn Young Filmmakers will talk about its campaign to open a Career Guidance & Networking Center for working class adults and teens.
         Registration starts at 9:30am / Screening of ‘INSIDE MAN’ 10:00am – 12:30pm /
 Conference starts at 1:00pm
COMING ATTRACTIONS:
Spring 2007 BYFC ‘Careers In Film’ Salon Series at LIU 
  April 5th, May 3rd, June 7TH   (1ST Thursdays)

ONGOING MONTHLY BYFC CLASSES:
‘Intro to Scriptwriting: Blueprint for Making a Film’
‘Intro to Production Assistant’
Visit www.wearebyfc.org for more on BYFC

Ed Bradley, 65, a suave and streetwise reporter considered one of the best interviewers on television and the winner of 19 Emmy Awards for his work on 60 Minutes and CBS Reports, died of leukemia Nov. 9 at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. He lived in New York.
Bradley, the first African-American at CBS to be a White House correspondent and a Sunday night anchor, covered a broad array of stories with insight and aplomb during his 39-year career, from war to politics to sensitive portraits of artists. He won virtually every broadcast news award – some of them more than once.
Patricia Sullivan, Washington Post Friday, November 10, 2006

 
Author Bebe Moore Campbell died of complications from brain cancer at her home in Los Angeles November 27. She was 56.
Bebe Moore Campbell was the author of several best-selling books that explored issues of race from several vantage points, including Brothers and Sisters, Singing in the Comeback Choir and Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine.

Octavia Butler, 1947-2006: Sci-fi writer and a gifted pioneer in this white, male domain.
Her father was a shoeshine man who died when she was a child, her mother was a maid who brought her along on jobs yet Octavia Butler rose from these humble beginnings to become one of the country’s leading writers – a female African-American pioneer in the white male domain of science fiction.
Butler, 58, died after falling and striking her head Friday on a walkway outside her home in Lake Forest Park. The reclusive writer who moved to Seattle in 1999 from her native Southern California, was a giant in stature (she was 6 feet tall by age 15) and in accomplishment.
She remains the only science fiction writer to receive one of the vaunted “genius grants” from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, a hard-earned $295,000 windfall in 1995 that followed years of poverty and personal struggles with shyness and self-doubt.
“People may call these ‘genius grants,’  ” Butler said in a 2004 interview with the Seattle P-I, “but nobody made me take an IQ test before I got mine. I knew I’m no genius.”
By John Marshall, P-I Book Critic

Benny Andrews, noted painter and visual storyteller, passed away on November 10. Born into a family of sharecroppers, Andrews grew up working in the cotton fields of Georgia and was the first in his family to graduate from high school in 1948. He spent his life painting works that addressed social issues such as the United States Civil Rights Movement, the Holocaust, and the forced relocation of American Indians. Andrews was also a longtime teacher, having taught art at Queens College in New York City for thirty years and establishing an art program in New York State’s prison system.

Coretta Scott King, known first as the wife of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., then as his widow, then as an avid proselytizer for his vision of racial peace and nonviolent social change, died early today, January 31, 2006, at Santa Monica Hospital in Baja, California, Mexico, near San Diego. She was 78. Mrs. King was admitted to the hospital last Thursday, said her sister, Edythe Scott Bagley. She died about 1 a.m., said Lorena Blanco, a spokeswoman for the United States consulate in Tijuana. Andrew Young, the former United Nations Ambassador and longtime family friend, said at a news conference this morning that Mrs. King died in her sleep.
“She was a woman born to struggle,” Mr. Young said, “and she has struggled and she has overcome.”
Mrs. King rose from rural poverty in Heiberger, Ala. to become an international symbol of the civil rights revolution of the 1960’s and a tireless advocate for social and political issues ranging from women’s rights to the struggle against apartheid in South Africa that followed in its wake.
She was studying music at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston in 1952 when she met a young graduate student in philosophy, who on their first date told her: “The four things that I look for in a wife are character, personality, intelligence and beauty. And you have them all.” A year later, she and Dr. King, then a young minister from a prominent Atlanta family, were married, beginning a remarkable partnership that ended with his assassination in Memphis on April 4, 1968.

Mrs. King did not hesitate to pick up his mantle, marching, even before her husband was buried, at the head of the striking garbage workers that he had gone to Memphis to champion. She then went on to lead the effort for a national holiday in his honor and to found the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta, dedicated both to scholarship and to activism, where Dr. King is buried.  The New York Times

Edna Lewis, the granddaughter of a former slave whose cookbooks revived the nearly forgotten genre of refined Southern cooking while offering a glimpse into African-American farm life in the early 20th century,  passed away on February 13, 2006,she was 89.
Miss Lewis, as she was always called, died in her sleep in her home in Decatur, Ga.,  taking care of herself as she grew frail.
Despite a quiet demeanor, Miss Lewis had a reach that extended from her family farm in Virginia to left-wing politics in Manhattan to the birthplace of California cuisine.
Edna Lewis was born in a small settlement called Freetown in 1916, one of eight children. The farm had been granted to her grandfather, a freed slave. Growing, gathering and preparing food was more than just sustenance for the family, it was a form of entertainment. Without fancy cooking equipment, the family improvised, measuring baking powder on coins and cooking everything over wood.

She took a bus to New York when she was in her early 30’s, eager for work but restricted by the racial attitudes of the times.
In New York, she married Steve Kingston, a retired merchant seaman and a Communist.
In the mid-1970’s, while sidelined by a broken leg, Miss Lewis began writing a cookbook. With encouragement from Judith Jones, the cookbook editor at Knopf who also edited Julia Child, Miss Lewis turned her handwritten pages into The Taste of Country Cooking. In 1979, Craig Claiborne of the Times said the book “may well be the most entertaining regional cookbook in America.”
In a 1989 interview with the Times, Miss Lewis said: “As a child in Virginia, I thought all food tasted delicious. After growing up, I didn’t think food tasted the same, so it has been my lifelong effort to try and recapture those good flavors of the past.”  
Miss Lewis will be particularly remembered in Brooklyn for her 5-year tenure as chef at the former Brooklyn landmark restaurant, Gage & Tollner’s.

Carl Brashear was the U.S. Navy’s first Black deep-sea diver.  Years later, he achieved the status of Navy Master Diver, a rank reached by only a handful of the best divers in U.S. Naval diving history.  But what makes Brashear’s accomplishment so unique is that he did it with only a 7th-grade education while having to surmount institutional racism in the Navy and the loss of a leg incurred while saving the life of another sailor.
The inspiring story of this true legend was told in the hit movie Men of Honor which starred Oscar winners Cuba Gooding, Jr.
By CDR (Ret.) Gregory Black, Black Military World (BMW) Founder

 Gordon Parks, Sr., a versatile and prolific artist, warrants his status as a cultural icon. Parks passed away on March 7, 2006 at the age of 93. The poet, novelist, film director, and preeminent documentary and fashion photographer was born on November 30, 1912, in Fort Scott, Kansas, the youngest of fifteen children. Parks saw no reason to stay in Kansas after the death of his mother and moved to St. Paul, Minnesota at age sixteen to live with his sister. After a disagreement with his brother-in-law, Parks soon found himself homeless, supporting himself by playing piano and basketball and working as a busboy.
While working on a train as a waiter, Parks noticed a magazine with photographs from the Farm Security Administration (FSA). The photos by such documentary photographers as Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee and Arthur Rothstein led him to Richard Wright’s 12 Million Black Voices, other photo essays about poverty and racism, and the social and artistic voice he had been seeking. Parks bought a used camera in 1938, deciding on a career in photography. In 1941, Parks received a fellowship from the Julius Rosenwald Foundation to work with Roy Stryker at the photography section of the FSA. In Washington, D.C., he trained as a photojournalist. He would work with Stryker for the next few years, producing work and honing the modernist and individualistic style he became known for by photographing small towns and industrial centers throughout America.
By the end of the 1940s, Parks was working with Life and Vogue and in that capacity, did some of his most famous work. Traveling the globe and covering issues as varied as the fashion industry, poverty in Brazil, the Nation of Islam and gang violence, and eventually celebrity portraitures, Parks continued to develop and create new ways to convey meaning through his work.
Branching out from his photography in 1963, Parks directed his first film, The Learning Tree, based on his autobiographical novel of the same name. His filmmaking career launched, Parks went on to direct many films, including Shaft in 1971. In addition to film, Parks has composed music and written several books including: A Choice

 of Weapons (1966), To Smile in Autumn (1979), Voices in the Mirror (1990), Arias of Silence (1994), and a retrospective of his life and work titled Half Past Autumn (1997), which was recently made into an HBO special. The History Makers

Katherine Dunham was well-known for bringing African and Caribbean influences into the European-dominated dance world. Born in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, she was a success in dance recitals at school in Joliet, Illinois, where her father ran a dry cleaning establishment. She never thought about a career in dance, instead, she followed her family’s wishes that she become a teacher. As an anthropology student at the University of Chicago in 1935, she took her first trip to Haiti on a fellowship to study Caribbean culture and dance. The experience encouraged her, who was paying for college by giving dance lessons, to go into dance full-time. During her career, she choreographed Aida in 1963 becoming the first African American to choreograph for the Metropolitan Opera. She also did choreography work for such musicals as Cabin in the Sky. She appeared in several films including Stormy Weather in 1943 with Lena Horne and Bill Robinson and Carnival of Rhythm. She was also influential to such entertainers as Harry Belafonte and Eartha Kitt. A passionate civil rights activist, she refused to perform at segregated theaters. Katherine Dunham was honored numerous times during her career, with such distinguishable awards as The Presidential Medal of the Arts at the Kennedy Center Honors, The Albert Schweitzer Prize at New York’s Carnegie Hall on January 15, 1979, as well as awards from Brazil and Haiti. She passed away at a Manhattan, New York City, New York assisted-living facility.ÿ(bio by: C.S.)

James Brown passed on Monday, December 25, 2006, and he was more than “the Godfather of Soul.”
If there is a lingering popular image of who James Brown was, it is of that exotic, possessed entertainer. But that image is a clich‚. Brown was a great showman, but he was no cartoon. That he was demonized by legal troubles didn’t help. But he was no circus act.
The “Godfather of Soul,” who died in Atlanta at age 73, was one of the most important leaders of America’s Civil Rights movement during the second half of the 20th century.

He communed with presidents and elected officials of all political stripes, recorded groundbreaking Black-pride anthems, and may have saved Boston from being burned by rioters in the days following the assassination of Martin Luther King.
From 1965 onward, Brown often cancelled his shows to perform benefit concerts for Black political organizations like the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).
In 1966, the song “Don’t Be a Drop-Out”, urged Black children not to neglect their education.
In 1968, he initiated “Operation Black Pride,” and, dressing as Santa Claus, presented 3,000 certificates for free Christmas dinners in the poor Black neighborhoods of New York City.
His funky 1968 anthem, “Say it Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud” preached economic self-reliance and taught generations of hard-working Blacks it was time to “get our share.”
“We’d rather die on our feet than be livin’ on our knees,” he sang.
From the same era, Brown issued

another manifesto, this time on male-female relationships: “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World.” Though it’s commonly mistaken for a chauvinist rant, the song is actually a plea for companionship, a lament about how all the power in the world “wouldn’t mean nuthin’ … nuthin’ … without a woman or a girl.”
“People already know his history, but I would like for them to know he was a man who preached love from the stage,” said friend Charles Bobbit, who was with Brown at the hospital. “His thing was ‘I never saw a person that I didn’t love.’ He was a true humanitarian who loved his country.”
Compiled from Chicago Tribune, Reuters, PBS, Forbes by blackmaleappreciation.blogspot.com

The “First Generation” passing away.
Jane Bolin was the first African American woman to graduate from Yale Law School; Carl Brashear was the US Navy’s first African-American master diver, Victorine Louistall Monroe was the first African-American fulltime professor at West Virginia University, and the list goes on.
A look back over the year reveals that the “First Generation” is passing away. The first African-American graduate.the first African-American city council member, the first African-American winner. every place you look, the generation that had achieved the “Firsts,” that had set the milestones, are leaving. As this generation passes away, these children of segregation, grandchildren of Reconstruction and slavery, they take with them an understanding of racial struggle and what it means to achieve in spite of in-your-face opposition and the obstacles littering their path.
Taking with them lessons learned at their parent’s and grandparent’s knee. The lesson that being average is just not good enough. The standing rule for achievers in Black families was, “You have to be better than everyone else.” You had to be the hardest-working student in the dorm. The hardest-studying student in the library. The hardest-working intern, trainee, clerk, manager, you had to be the hardest worker if you wanted to succeed in what was known to be a cold, hard world where forces are arrayed against you.
They grew up in a world before words like “multiculturalism, diversity and affirmative action” were used to hide the racism that continues to permeate the nation and all of its institutions. This cultural camouflage has left the next generation confused and misunderstanding the nature of the world as it is. A laxity of spirit and notions of entitlement have crept into the place where once there was willpower of steel tempered by adversity. Now, looking at smiling faces and words of “equal opportunity”, there is craving and desire, and an incoherent understanding that the tools are not at hand to achieve.
The doors that the “Firsts” had passed through did not have automatic openers. They were kicked in by excellence, hard work, agitation and persistence, and only those things can hold them open. There are no silver platters and white linen waiting for your presence. And putting gold teeth in the mouth is not the same as having a silver spoon between the lips.
What has been nurtured by mass media and marketing is a lack for appreciation of effort and a lack of respect for hard work. There is a loss of personal dignity. I’ve seen mothers in cars with young people listening to lyrics that are indescribable in civil society and heard mothers using language toward their children that would earn them a street fight if used toward an adult.
Now we’re moving into 2007 and facing an enemy that the First Generation never knew. Negative imagery and energy encircles us and permeates the home. There is no more time to stop and think. Television, computer games, cell phones and music devices now occupy the minds that were once focused on primers for reading, writing and arithmetic. Children and their parents are being scientifically distracted from understanding what is happening around them. And there is no magic bullet, no one solution. We are surrounded by battlefronts with cries for more ammo and more reinforcements. In the schools, African-Americans are at the mercy of rich white men who say, “Trust us, we know what’s best for you,” and that has to change. Recommendations and action points of the Black Brooklyn Development Conference have to become a part of the ongoing dialogue. The criminal industrial complex, a self-perpetuating structure for social control of African- Americans, has to have profit incentives taken out and become rehabilitation and learning centers rather than graduate schools for criminal training. Televisions have to be turned off, computer usage monitored, the Web that can empower can also ensnare untrained minds in distractions and a superficial facility where eye – hand coordination is mistaken for computer literacy.
The changes that are needed are internal and external. There is so much that has to be done and there is plenty of work to go around. Happy New Year and see you on the front lines.