DC Talks

When I was growing up, I remember vividly the stories year after year of my grandmother telling my why it was important to be a “good child.”
She talked candidly about good things happening to those who “wait” and how rewards await those who “follow the rules” and “do things right.”
At Christmas, following her advice meant that you could look forward to waking up with at least one thing you wanted all year long. For me, it was a new baseball glove. I played ball with a second hand glove I found at the junk pile at the end of town that I re-laced together and used to play shortstop and centerfield. My old one worked pretty well, but I had that dream of that one “golden glove.”
Well, to make a long story short, I was the “good child.” I “waited” and “followed the rules at church, home and school” and “did things right,” but … for whatever reason, I never got that new baseball glove. When thousands of young Hispanics took to the streets, it reminded me a lot of that new “baseball glove.”
Since coming to this country, many Hispanics have been told by their parents to be “good children”, wait, follow the rules and that good things come when you do things “right” (according to white man school). Well, now Hispanics, like Blacks, are now faced with the hypocritical side of Americana where promises made are not promises kept. Those lies were told to the Indians first before the White man took their land.
Blacks also learned it after being ripped from the African continent and forced to come to America as slaves. The White man stole the male Slave’s will, separated him from his wife, children and heritage and then blackmailed and conditioned him to “obey” and “follow the rules” of the Masser’ in order for things to go right…Well as Paul Harvey says, you know the rest of that story.
Now Hispanics are faced with the same dilemma. Only this time, White America is facing smarter, passionate, techno-savvy, patriotic youth and loyal to racial and family heritages. They are fighting that same lie and have said no to the notion that “every ting’ gonna be alright, cause boss said so” mentality. The youth have spoken loud and clear and said, “Everything is not alright, if you are trying to deport my parents, family members. Everything is not alright, if you are trying to sanitize my heritage. Everything is not alright when you are trying to find “creative and innovate ways” to keep my parents and others in some kind of “low wages” hell.”
The walkouts at schools across Texas and the paralyzing of transportation systems, city police and city halls in Dallas and Fort Worth proves that unity and organization are key elements in the success of any social undertaking. This great awakening should cause a giant wave in the Black community.
It has often been said that one of the greatest weapons of self-destruction that we as a people use on ourselves is the failure to unite, organize and fully and completely follow through on any plan that involves social action or making a difference.
We often stop far short of our goals for social equality and economic justice because a few of us become “lions in the way” that terrorize those trying to make a difference. We suffer from poor leadership in churches and social organizations that pander and procrastinate and send mixed messages. Nowhere is that more true than in African American churches.
One of the main reasons we see Hispanics and not African-Americans in the street of Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, San Antonio and Austin is because as one bold Dallas African-American Commissioner John Wiley Price said, we have too many “Afraid Negroes”.
Afraid to speak out, step out and go against the grain like Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, Fannie Lou Hamer, Harriet Tubman and Rosa Parks and others did during the era of the “Black” Civil Rights Movement.
These “Afraid Negroes are selling the future of the race down the road at the expense of their own children and grandchildren.
These “Scared Negroes” may as well be the new “slave catchers” or go ahead and hand the chains to their children and grandchildren now, because without a bold new action, the road we travel now will lead us into total ruin.
Oh, about that new baseball glove, I use that analogy to drive home the point that it takes more than “being good for goodness sake,” “following the rules,” “waiting” and “doing things right” for true freedom and justice to prevail.
Times like these call for militants to go to the streets and people willing to shout from the housetops their issues and their causes.
Blacks have lost that protest spirit and freedom fervor Hispanics exhibited on immigration reform in favor of a foolish “prosperity gospel message.”
That unbiblical message is foolishly teaching our people that if you are good for goodness sake, follow the rules, wait and do things right, that proverbial “Eternal Christmas” is coming and “Santa” Jesus is gonna bring you something good.
Have you looked around your neighborhood lately? While that propaganda spreads and infects our people, “Black Rome” is experiencing a six-alarm fire.
The Hispanic response of taking a page from the Black Civil Rights Manual makes me wonder what could happen if African Americans all of a sudden were united, organized and passionate over an issue in Austin or Congress that threatens freedoms and civil liberties.
We have bought into a foolish philosophy where the only people really getting fat off it are those same “pan handling” prosperity preachers promoting it…
Black America has serious problems and things won’t get better until we first began to unite, organize, demand better and address those problems head on… and you know what I mean.