Sunday, April 20, 2008

What Happens to a Dream Deferred? A Message to the 2008 Enslaved Negro

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore-- And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over-- like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

This is the question that Dr. King is probably asking right now: What happens? Simple, catastrophy. 40 years after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and we as a people are still stuck in a dream world. A sequence of events once again created by the matrix. What Dr. King and many others before him fought and died for, we continue to take advantage of are subjected to the fantasies of the trap they warned us about. In his last speech Dr. King said "Together we will get to the promise land, I may not get there with you, but we will reach the mountain top." Wow, powerful, touching, yet if only he knew how far we are from the top. Yeah, we have reached high peaks, steep plateaus, bumpy hills even, but the mountain top is still quite a climb. Especially when you are looking up from the bottom.
We have taken advantage of every single opportunity alloted to us and pissed them away. They fought for our right to vote, yet we still walk past the polls as if there is an invisible sign that says, "Whites Only!" They fought for our right to go to school where we pleased, yet so many of us are still not gradutating from high school, let alone college. They spent numerous days and nights in jail, so we would not have to, yet we are the majority of the population in today’s prisons. They fought for our unity, yet we remain divided, they fought for our freedom, and yet we still remain enslaved in our minds. They fought and died through struggles, so we could live in peace, yet we solve our disagreements amongst one another with violence. We live in fear of each other. We lock our doors, roll up our windows, clutch our purses and check our pockets whenever we travel through our own neighborhoods. The same neighborhoods that were a place of santuary when the outside beat us down.
And now we degrade one another, we kill each other, and for what? Respect? Because the "man" is holding us down? Because it’s hard out there? Do we even know what hard is? Are we being beaten down by clubs, attacked by dogs, sprayed with water hoses, lynched, mobbed, spit on, shackled, whipped? YES! Just not in the physical sense. However, they were, but they marched on, they sang on, they fought on. And WE have been spoiled by the fruits of their labor. We are allowing the mental aspect of lynching, shackles, whippings, to tear us down and apart. Why? If we inherited anything from our ancestors it was strength. They tell us that once you take a person’s mind, everything else just falls apart. The body can not survive without the mind. So we have got to learn how to stay strong mentally, and release the shackles that bind us, MENTALLY! Realize that the only "man" holding us down is us. We have so many opportunities but we have gotten so complacent in our old age that we never look past our own neighboorhoods for answers. So we lean on the streets for support, and not each other.
If selling drugs is your way of beating the system, hell, become a pharmacist. We need to teach our children that the images they see on television are not the way of life. And those on television need to realize that although they had a rough life, it is not to be glorified. Many criticize Kanye West for being arrogant, but learn from him. If you aren’t your biggest fan, who else will be? Take what you have been through, turn it into a positive and reflect on it only to teach others what not to do, so their life will be better. Stop glorifying death, drugs and sex. Is that the dream Dr. King spoke about? He dreamed of world where we would not be judged by the color of our skin, but by the content of our character. Either way, today, we are still going to come up short. Our characters are in serious question, and we could not be the witness for our freedom. Right now we would be tried, sentenced, and locked away. Still enslaved, still degraded.
We are all victim to this. If you degrade your brother or sister instead of helping them, you are no better than them. If you sit successful, yet refuse to help others reach your level, you are no better than them. A house negro, a porch monkey, a token, a sell out. And, unfortunately, in some way, we all fall in one of those categories. We shake our heads, point fingers, turn our backs on our own people, commenting on how stupid they are, how ignorant they sound. When in actuality we are all the ignorant ones. They fought for our freedoms, they were granted, but other tactics were invented to continue holding us down. They now do credit checks in order for you to get a good job. Knowing this, what do we do? Get credit cards, cars, furniture, etc, and never pay our debts. Ruining the same credit that will keep you from owning a home, or getting that dream job. Affirmative action is gone, so that adds to the trouble of getting a good job. And since many of us are not receiving college degrees, or obtaining the proper training for such jobs, we remain without. In our efforts to remain different, we are naming our children outrageous things. Wow! Give them more ammo! When they look at your resume and see your name they know from the start if you are black or not, and that opens the door for job discrimination.
Yes! It’s still out there. The fight is not over. Nobody said it would be easy. Nobody said it would be fair. Contrary to what we may believe, we are still far from the mountain top. WAKE UP! We are still fighting for our freedom. It is not a law, or a right, but take a look at the books. It’s an Act! Meaning at anytime it can be taken from us. We need to realize this is not our game, we are merely players, some of us MVPs, but none of us coaches or owners. It’s hard to defeat the inventor of the game, especially when they reserve the right to change the rules. We just have to learn how to adjust with the rule change, become better at the game, and continue to strive. We are no good if we are riding the bench.
They say that history repeats itself. If you stop and take a gander at the world we are living in, how long before we are physically shackled again?
So what happens to a dream deferred? Take a look around you!
Dedicated to the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, Medgar Evers, and all others who fought and died so that I may have the many advantages that I take advantage of.

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