The Way Forward.

Anyone who paid attention to the 2016 election cycle has realized that things have changed. Politics has moved past the usual Republican/Democratic bickering that has been the status quo for the last 8 years; we are entering into the wilderness and what we shall be when we come out on the other side is not known.  Just as the Hebrews wandered in the desert for 40 years or as Jesus who spent 40 days in the desert - we as people of color are beginning our own period of testing and purification.  And unless we come together, we will not survive.  In my previous post I said that by the year 2050 we will become a minority-majority country.  That means that the sum total of the minority population will outnumber the white population of the United States. Therefore creating the potential to shift the balance of political power from the White majority that has held it for the past 241 years.  But this reality is in jeopardy unless we as people of color wake up!  

The fact is even though America will have a population that will be dominantly people of color - Whites will still outnumber each individual minority group thus continuing their dominance of political power, and make no mistake they are taking steps to keep that dominance, unless we as people of color get our crap together and unite.  We have spent the last 50 years bickering over the crumbs from the table and not realizing that eventually we will be the majority at the table.  It is time to put aside the old prejudices and unite as people of color.  We will not have any real political power until we can get passed the divisions that keep us identifying as Black, Latino, Hispanic, Asian, or indigenous.

It is time that we begin to recognize our family is much bigger than the color or the culture that we have been born to.  African Americans must realize that they have Latino, Asian, Hispanic, Afro-Caribbean and Indigenous brothers and sisters - we are all family.  We must begin to put aside our differences and begin to work together as a united People of Color because make no mistake those in power see us as a united minority that they must continue to keep from gaining true political power.  As the old saying goes - the KKK doesn’t ask what type of nigger you are. So where do we go from here - what is the way forward?

I have several suggestions on how I feel we can begin to craft the strategy to forward.

1. We must make a concerted effort to be inclusive.  It is time to stop fighting amongst ourselves like bickering children competing for attention.   We must view injustice against any person of color as injustice against all people of color.  Latinos, Hispanics, Asians, and indigenous peoples should march when African Americans march in Black Lives  Matter protests.  African Americans, Asians, and Indigenous peoples should march when Latinos and Hispanics march to protest for immigration reform.  And all peoples of color should be marching when the rights of our Indigenous brothers are ignored.  Unless we stand together we will fall divided.
   
2. Get involved in education - for those of you who have children in public schools k-12, be present.  Get involved in the PTA, and the school board .  Know your children’s teachers and make sure that they know you.  For many of us that will be a real sacrifice because most of us either come from 2 income households where both mother and father work to make ends meet or single income households - most times single parent households.  But we must make that sacrifice and get involved - the education of the next generation of people of color is the most important objective we can have if we are to move ahead as a people.  Value education and teach your children to value it.  People of color have always faced obstacles and challenges when it comes to education.  From the slaves having to learn to read in secret to the struggles that many non-English speaking people of color experience when they enter the American school system.  Too many times children are being left behind or in fact throwing away their educational opportunities .  For those of us who do not have children in the public education system we still have a call and responsibility to get involved.  Not only to fight for quality education for everyone but to also be engaged in educating ourselves.  There is the old derogatory saying “If you want to hide something from a black man - put it in between the pages of a book.”    It is time to open up the books and learn everything there is.  Knowledge is power.
   
3. Take control of economic power.  The one thing we have control over is how we spend our money.   Where we choose to shop, invest or save is our choice.  Our economic power as people of color is our own, it is the only thing that can not be taken away from us by political maneuvering.   We must begin to invest and support our community businesses especially those owned by people of color.  
   
   It is time that we make the effort to harness our economic power to create opportunities for self determination and growth.  The bottom line is that if we can not depend on the current political structure to take care of us fairly and justly then it is up to us to create that fairness and justice in our own communities.  You may ask if there is precedence for this in history and my answer would be yes.  History has given us 8 examples of thriving communities of people of color which only ceased to exist because of racial hatred. (https://blackthen.com/8-successful-and-triving-black-communities-destroyed-by-racist-white-neighbors/)  
   
   Now is the time to once again begin to build our own futures in thriving communities of people of color.  Please do not mistake what I say as a call for separation or segregation - I am not  advocating that - what I am advocating is that we invest in ourselves and the communities where we live.  In a future post I will treat this idea in much greater detail.
   
4. Make your desert bloom.  We need to take pride in our communities.  We may not all live on Park avenue but we have the power to make our communities better.  We must take pride in where we live.   We can turn our own communities around; we can clean up the garbage and keep the gangs and the drug dealers out. But it will also take more than just sweeping up the streets or calling the cops when there is trouble.
   It will take a fundamental shift of mindset.  A shift in how we raise our children to respect themselves, their environment, their neighbors and their community.  It will take our communities developing healthy and productive relationships with the law enforcement resources that protect our communities.  Anyone who has grown up in a small town knows how small town life connects you to your neighbors; how everyone looks out for everyone else.  How the community grows and thrives because of the connectedness of its members.  We need that small town mindset in our communities.  That feeling of connectedness to our neighbors so that the communities can thrive and grow.
   
   
   

I truly believe that we must find a way to survive this wilderness that we as a united people of color find ourselves traveling through.  We must continue to hold to our beliefs and fight for what we feel is right, to continue to embody those principles which have brought us forward from a past where people of color were hanged, beaten or raped for their color of their skin.   The road will be long and at many times rocky but we will survive and thrive and come out the other side better than we are today if we heed the call and do what is needed.