IF YOU AREN'T TAUGHT HOW - You Probably Won't Know How...
Updated: Aug 21, 2022
For years I’ve said nothing publicly about this, but now I feel it needs to be said. It's part of a Facebook discussion. This was the gist of the other person’s comment, in defense of a new Negro Revolution:
“We had Black Wall Street ... Burned to the ground .. There will always be standouts in our community because we have to be twice as good at everything just to play the game .. My question to you is this... Civil Rights Legislation was passed over 50 years ago …what has really changed .. ?? There is Oprah but no WINFREYS.. There is Michael .. But no Jordans... There are The Trumps The Kennedys The Rockefellers and it goes on and on …built on the backs of slave laborers.. Its time for America to look at some hard truths and this generation …they want change …real change... By any means necessary”
..My Answer:... It isn't white peoples' fault that we don't have wealth and family dynasties.
It's OUR OWN fault.
For the same reasons that we aren't ANYWHERE where the money is.
WE DON'T KNOW HOW.
Do YOU know how to be rich?
We aren't taught that. And it's well documented that we don't know how/haven't been taught, to aspire.
Even Michelle O. will tell you how she was brutalized by black children in school because she was intelligent and aspirational.
I was antagonized in school because I had great diction, and did not butcher the English language the way the other kids did.
They used to wait for me outside of class, until my teachers started to have to drive me home.
Can you imagine. My own people trying to intimidate me into mediocrity.
We weren't taught the fundamentals of being a successful human.
DO YOU THINK THE KENNEDY CHILDREN OR THE ROCKEFELLER CHILDREN WERE RAISED THE SAME WAY THAT THE CHILDREN ARE RAISED IN BLACK CULTURE TODAY?
How can we be expected to achieve when we aren't given the tools, by the people that are expected to be our parents and guardians.
They don't have the tools either.
It's not part of our culture to know anything.
I was raised back in the 1950’s, almost every day of my life, not to sass white people.
That’s it! That’s the legacy my family gave me.
To this day I panic just a little, when I have to have a conversation with someone.
My grandparents were deathly afraid of being hung from a tree.
It wouldn't have mattered if there wasn't one single tree in Queens.
We don't have a legacy of anything but fear and separation.
Did you ever equate the whole baby mama baby daddy culture, to slavery?
Cuz that’s where it comes from.
People don't think much about what happened in your family, and how it repeats down the line.
I was not taught one other thing about who to be, or how to get there.
But I DO know how to fold clothing properly and clean an iron.
We have every opportunity to become Oprah or Michael or any of the others.
But we don't have the skills, and rather than work hard to develop the kind of people that built black wall street, we sink and fade.
We become our human selves, and by that I mean we blame other people for our problems. We demand reparations.
Successful people today are giving us every chance.
They pick up our quirky speech patterns, they love our music, they've given us BILLIONS in social welfare, and I guarantee they are anxious to accept us as equals.
