Racism,
Or our values:
Which is hurting us more? ©2017



Few African Americans will be criticized if they blame racism for most of our problems. When Remember when Jesse Williams spoke about racism at the BET Awards show? He received a standing ovation. He also was elevated to near sainthood status. Even noted black writers wrote poems praising him.

But here’s the thing. Talking about racism to a mostly black audience is easy stuff, and it will always get a favorable response.




What will not get a standing overation, however, is any discussion about what we keep doing to each other 24/7/365. When this subject is broached, no standing ovations will be forthcoming. That’s because we’ve been amazenly conditioned and convinced by horrible black leadship to believe we are eternal victims.

But previous generations of black leaders, and ordinary Blacks, didn’t portray us as victims. Dr.King and the Civil Rights Movement he led didn’t see themselves as victims. Despite racism, Elijah Muhammad, of the Nation of Islam, encouraged Blacks to do for self. Malcolm X did the same thing and encourage Blacks to set up businesses in our community and to be reluctant to allow others to come in and take over the economy in our neighborhoods.



All of them got their motivation from Marcus Garvey, who got his motivation from Booker T. Washington, his idol. Washington didn’t eschew politics, but he thought the key to real black power was in economics.

Back to the question. “Racism or our values. Which is hurting us more in 2017?”
Allow your basic, common sense dictate the answer. For example, if recent reports are true, that a 15-year-old girl in Chicago was gang raped by teens, and that the incident was streamed live on Facebook, and that no one called the police, is a new low, that’s even lower than the previous low in morality.

If that’s not bad enough, we’re killing each other as if there’s an undeclared civil war in urban America. Yet the only things we tend to get excited about are Donald Trump and police shootings. Any and everything else, we tend to ignore, or act as if it’s just a bad dream.




For their parts, most African Americans are decent, law-abiding citizens. They learned to respect others, respect life, respect the law, and they were taught the value of education and hard work. Yet, a minority of African Americans never got the “values memo” from their parents.



As a result, they are willing to carjack for a living, kill other Blacks over dumb arguments, kill girlfriends who realized they made a mistake by hooking up with a nut job, kill others over with opportunity all around them, that group of Blacks has been conditioned to see themselves as victims. racism is always blamed.




No thanks to this group, bad parenting, and the influence of rap, our culture has become infected and is in trouble. Will we man-up and woman-up? Will we stop the denials, the excuses and deal with our reality?


Our reality is that the places we live have become extremely violent and lawless whether we live in Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, Atlanta, D.C., Houston, Los Angeles, Birmingham, or Flint. We are shooting and killing each other like it’s our sole mission in life, and we can’t blame Trump for this.

Too many parents have been passing off their flawed values on to their children, and that’s the root of the problem.Traditional values, as in the 10 Commandments, used to be taught religiously to children by their parents. Those values meant respect for yourself, your parents and your neighbors. They also meant a belief in God, a good work ethic, honesty, good manners, etc.



Traditional values produced the likes of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Oprah, Rosa Parks, Berry Gordy, Denzel Washington, LeBron James, Bishop T.D. Jakes, Beyonce, Loretta Lynch, Barack and Michelle Obama, and others.


With the breakup of the black family, the teaching of values have not been taught. And yet, it doesn’t take two parents to teach a child values. It would great if there were two parents, but many single parents have raised productive children who excelled in life. Many Africans Americans were raised by single parents who grew up to be decent and successful people.We talk about the neighborhoods, attracting businesses and jobs to those neighborhoods, but few businesses will locate where crime is rampant.

Nearly every influential African American of this century has cited values as a key to our success and advancement.

Maya Angelou: “All vices and virtues begin in the home.”

Malcolm X: “The black man in the ghettoes, for instance, has to start self-correcting his own material, moral, and spiritual defect and evils. The black man needs to start his own program to get rid of drunkenness, drug addictiion, prostitution. The black man in America has to lift up his own sense of values.”


Oprah: “ I grew up like may of you, many of you. No running water and no electricity as a little girl. You can overcome poverty and despair in your life with an education. I am living proof of that.”

“You are responsible for your life,” Winfrey says. “And if you’re sitting around waiting on somebody to save you, to fix you, to even help you, you are wasting your time, because only you have the power to take responsibility to move your life forward.


What matters is now, this moment and your willingness to see this moment for what it is. Accept it. Forgive the past. Take responsibility and move forward.” “I came to realize that all the time I was praying to God, asking for God to do something, God was waiting on me.”




A few examples how our values have declined:

• A boyfriend stabbed to death his 13-month old daughter and her mother over child support issues.
• A parent showed up in a school in New York. She strangled and knocked out the teacher.
• A criminal, upset with a child’s father, gunned down the father’s 2-year old daughter while the father watched. He then shot the father and another person. The criminal showed no remorse during his arraignment. He even smirked throughout the proceeding.
• Too many young people naively believe they would be better off commiting crimes than pursuing an education.
• Two different fathers, on separate occasions, each upset because he had to pay child support, murdered their daughters.
• Black politicians took advantage of the public’s trust and ripped off their own predominantly black cities.
• Carjackings have become common. A mother, with children inside, is carjacked at gunpoint. Video shows the criminal being apprehended by the police. The community shows more sympathy for the criminal than the mother who was carjacked.
• A father left a loaded handgun so accessible, his 11-year-old son found it and fatally shot another child. He is charged with murder. In addition, a police source confirmed the account of neighbors who told investigators that the same boy had pulled a gun on a neighbor during an argument. The County Prosecutor Kym Worthy responded: “I cannot remember a time where we have charged someone so young with taking a life. Very unfortunate and very tragically, the alleged facts in this case demanded it.
• Blacks are killing each other by the thousands. But the only time we get upset is when a white cop kills a black person. It’s as if Blacks killing Blacks doesn’t matter.


We need to start a cultural revolution in black communities. Just like we rejected the word Negro and chose how we would refer to ourselves—Black and African American, just like we stared racism in the face and declared, Black is Beautiful, we now have to start a cultural revolution that reaffirms the value of life.



Let this be our legacy to future generations of African Americans, and remember:


“All vices and virtues begin in the home.”