Have We Overcome? Think Again!

“How you treat your parents is a template for how life will treat you,” my sister and I discussed recently.  Think about it.  It’s biblical and true.  If you were unkind to your parents, then life has a tendency to pay you back for the snub.

We are facing a dilemma.  Unemployment continues.  Foreclosures on properties are pushing people out of their homes.  College cost is going up, and the latest soothsayers tell us this year’s graduation classes will face fewer job opportunities than any previous class.  As a result many of our grandchildren are being raised by their grandparents because their parents didn’t adequately prepare themselves to pay the piper our parents constantly told us would be coming.  So we are stretched to limit…trying to figure out how we got in this mess, when in actuality, a lot of it resulted from taking too many things for granted.

As I’ve talked with parents, the underpinning of many conversations is that many of our children feel they are entitled to a good job.  Many of our young adults don’t want to work. They want a job, and if the job doesn’t fit their picture of what they should be doing, they refuse it.  How did that happen?  Is it because we told our parents they didn’t know what they were talking about when they tried to tell us how to raise our children?  Is it because we snubbed our parents’ way of looking at things as outdated and outmoded?  Is it because when it finally came to owning up to how we got in this mess, we realize if we had listened and respected our moms and dads more, maybe our kids would have a job, a vocation, or at least an education to fight off the lack of surety as to where the next meal is coming we are facing today?  I don’t know.  I just know that in the process of becoming something we were not intended to be, we have lost sight of what we once believed and we have not overcome.

It could have been either of these as I’ve tried to get many of you to understand that simply because the complexion of the person in the White House has changed; it has done nothing to help you or me in the battle for equality.  Life is still about working hard.  Life is still about getting a good education.  Life is still about proving yourself just as good.  If anything life is harder!

Being equal doesn’t mean the same as equality.  We both might be given the same pair of shoes, but if mine don’t fit and yours do, then my feet are going to hurt.  When we speak of equality, we need to remember it’s more about who’s in charge, than whether or not you have a job.  If we stop striving to be equal, we will falter, and fewer and fewer supervisors will reflect the diversity of our country.  Go into any restaurant, and see how many people of color you see taking your order.  Don’t be blinded by the idea that the bus-boy, cook or bus-girl reduces the ratio, ask yourself, who’s serving you?  Go into the local Home Depot, Lowe’s, Macy’s or whatever, and ask yourself the same question.  Then ask the next question?  Who’s in charge?  Look at the managers.  Is this a reflection of our society?

Being equal doesn’t mean the same as equality.  Look at education.  Teaching is one of the most ennobling professions.  When I went to school, all my teachers were black, and there were about as many males as there were females.  Of course when I went to school, schools were segregated.  Teaching was considered a good job, paid well, and even the principals were black.  My son and many other young males today are fortunate to have even one male of color during their school career.  Is that important?  It’s just as important as having a male in the house, even though 40% of the homes in America don’t.  With an education system that has become overly feminized and shaded to the point that it’s an anomaly to see a black male teacher, I ask—who’s in charge?  How do you overcome this?

Many feel that America should become the poster child for change, having overcome barriers, and being free.  But let me toss this apple into the barrel.  Once you achieve something, people either support you or resent you.  Once you achieve something all the successes that led up to that can be shattered and people will tell you that you don’t need help anymore.  Once you achieve something as a group or culture the subtleties that were hidden will surface with such a magnitude that people will start thinking, “or you think you are just as good?  You think you have made it?  You think I can’t humble you?”  That’s when you have to be careful.  That’s when you have to go back to and remember what your parents taught you, and remember, if you discarded what they told you…you might be worse off than you ever were.   The onus is on us to have a different ‘tea party.’  We need to prove we deserve our jobs.  We cannot have a chip on our shoulder in the job you are in, or in the neighborhood you have worked hard to secure simply because a black man is president.

Ignorance is bliss until it happens to you. I challenge each of you reading this.  I challenge you to teach your children the same things our parents taught us.  Hard work never hurt anyone.  Get a good education; no one can take that away from you.  You have to be twice as good to be looked upon as being equal.  We have not overcome until the fat lady sings.  We must remember, like Susan Boyle, the You-Tube phenomenon if you give a person a chance, you have no idea what they can do.  That’s what men have to do become fathers for this country…take the chance.