The Black community has been on life support for a very long time now. Black people in America have not been living but merely surviving. To survive is to run from death while to live is to embrace life.
There are many individuals attempting to revitalize the Black community, but it cannot be revitalized until the individual is revitalized.
As Michael Jackson says, world change starts with the person in the mirror.
What does it mean to ‘revitalize’?
‘Re’ is a prefix meaning “again.”
That which is ‘vital’ is ‘important.’
‘-ize’ is a suffix meaning ‘to make or become.’
So to revitalize means to make or to become important again.
Our communities have little to no importance to us. Just look at our actions, as actions speak louder than words. Our streets are littered with garbage. Our houses are torn down or boarded up.
Business, the state of being busy, is a sign of life for a thriving community, but in the Black community, there is very little economic activity. Our schools have become pipelines to prison.
As much as we want to blame another man for the negative trends and statistics, even if he is to blame, he is not the one living, no, surviving, there. If we deem our communities important, then the work is on us to clean them up and make them decent and safe places to live.
It starts with the individual. Our communities are not important because on the subconscious level, we don’t see ourselves as important.
We live in a society that constantly degrades the darker people of the earth so much so that even if we don’t realize it, we internalize the attitudes of the overall society.
Before we make our communities important again, we have to rebuild self-importance, self-worth and self-value. It is only when we value ourselves and our lives that we will value the lives of one another. Once we value the lives of one another, we will value the life of the community that we all share.
In his Holy Day of Atonement 2016 lecture, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan said, “. . .we have to take over our own neighborhoods; we have to take over the education, because we cannot make our community a decent and safe place to live under White Supremacy teachings. You need a new education, an education of self and others. So we’re going to have to prove that we are worthy of self-governance by taking our communities over.”
The work is on us to do.
