If you have not noticed, it is Black History Month. I find it quite telling that the usual suspects of the media establishment highlight the same ol’ folks. I wonder why they do not highlight individuals such as Crispus Attucks, Robert Smalls, Henry O. Flipper, Frederick Douglass (oops, leftist mob tore down his statue in Rochester NY), Charles Young, General Benjamin O. Davis (Sr. and Jr.), Booker T. Washington, Madame CJ Walker, General Frank Peterson, General Daniel “Chappie” James, Clarence Thomas, Condoleeza Rice, Thomas Sowell, or Walter Williams? Well, I think we all know the answer to that question. However, we did have to watch the performance of a song during the Super Bowl, “Lift Ev’ry Voice.” Now, understand, I know this song backwards and forwards. We sang this song at the end of every church service at my childhood church, Fort Street United Methodist, in Atlanta. For me, it is a very important spiritual song, but certainly not a national anthem to be celebrated with our National Anthem.
However, what we witnessed at the Super Bowl is just the continuation of the delusional pandering panacea of singing a song. Just like this month, we will have countless renditions of “We Shall Overcome.” That is why I wrote the book, “We Can Overcome,” but we have to cast aside the delusion of believing that singing a song will cure the deep seated ills and cancers that affect the Black community in America.
Singing a song will not cure the problem of the broken, no, decimated, traditional nuclear family in the Black community. Funny, BLM wants us to sing a song, and the NFL panders, while BLM is fervently against the traditional nuclear family. Once upon a time, heck, 63 years ago this month, I was born in a Blacks-only hospital. At that time the two parent household in the Black community was in the mid 70 percent range. Today that number is below 25 percent.
Now, singing a song is not going to correct the purposeful policies of President Lyndon B. Johnson who promoted male irresponsibility by replacing working Black men in the home. As well, since 1973 Roe v. Wade decision more than 20 million Black babies have been dismembered in the womb. Most heinous was the case of one Dr. Kermit Gosnell. It was the racist, white supremacist Margaret Sanger who targeted the Black community as unfit, “undesirables,” and “human weeds,” for racial extermination. Her founded organization, Planned Parenthood, is located primarily, to the tune of 70 percent, in Black communities.
Funny, we don’t hear about that in Black History Month, while we are busy singing songs.
Another of the detrimental tiered effects of destroying the Black family is the rise of Black-on-Black crime. For whatever reason, there is a reticence and recalcitrance in the Black community to address this . . . but Black elected officials sure can sing pandering panacea songs. It is more of a preferred political tactic to blame violence in the black community on white police officers. The whole George Floyd case comes to mind. I would recommend more people watch Liz Collin’s documentary, “The Fall of Minneapolis” to get a clear insight into what happened. George Floyd was not the kinda man that my dad, a World War II veteran, would have elevated as a “role model.” Yet, we witnessed neighborhoods being burned down, often by agitators that did not live in those communities.
I grew up in the inner city of Atlanta. My older brother, a US Marine Corps Vietnam War veteran, was an Atlanta police officer. I was taught by my dad and older brother to respect authority and to do what was right. When positive role models are missing in families, then we sing songs, but watch the problems exacerbate.
There will be lots of people singing the pandering panacea songs this month. Sadly, there are young Black boys and girls who struggle to read those written words. We all know that in the inner city those kids are failing in meeting reading and math grade level standards. I am sure the teachers unions want us to sing more pandering panacea songs, but what are we doing to rectify the situation of a failing educational system that is more focused on indoctrination? Our Black kids are taught everything about racism and the false god of equity, meaning an equality of outcomes. That is a lacking replacement for the equality of opportunity which is attained by way of a quality education.
Once upon a time songs were sung to enable our kids got equal access to a quality education. Today, the same songs are being sung, but not to enable educational freedom and parental choice to free our kids from these failing schools.
“Lift Ev’ry Voice” is an iconic song in the Black community, but it is not some panacea for that which afflicts the community. These monthly celebrations of Black History have to be more than a reflection upon politically correct chosen figures. It should be a month of reflection on how the 21st century economic plantation that has become our inner cities must be changed. Now, of course our dear friends of the progressive socialist leftist persuasion, and their Black overseers of this economic plantation, will only disparage me, the writer, as the Black face of white supremacy. How absurd.
What my wife, Dr. Angela Graham-West, and I represent is what the man from my neighborhood, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed of: achievement due to one’s character and education, not self-victimization because of one’s skin color. At the end of this Black History Month, what will have changed in the Black community? Chances are, nothing, but we will have spent another month singing pandering panacea songs that make some feel good, and next year we will still sing “We Shall Overcome” and “Lift Ev’ry Voice.”
Einstein once quipped that the pure definition of insanity is to continue to do the same thing and expect different results. Let’s sing less and take action to restore the Black family, protect black lives, born and unborn, reinvigorate higher standards of education in our inner cities, create more economic opportunities, and stop electing the same old tired singing voices.
Steadfast and Loyal.
