Today, I shall ease the pressure off of the nerves of white America a tad and I would like to address black America within this spill.
As I sat in on the Multicultural Student Organization Leadership Council meeting and listened to the talks of progressing forward with the building of a multicultural student center, I contemplated a few issues we need to face as a black community on a larger scale.
As I stated in my previous column, The Miseducation of White America, the time has come where we cut out the watered-down conversations and rhetoric whereas it pertains to race relations. In the same manner that I indicted white America as being a moral monster, unable of being empathetic, I have to indict black America of being quite apathetic when it really comes down to making change.
Although I can see a nation steadily rising out of the brinks of oppression and conformity every day, I have to use this indictment as a call to action. Often I find myself sitting in on conversations of my fellow black brothers and sisters and it seems to me that we already know the basis of the answers to change that we seek.
Our circumstances have not changed in this country since we’ve been here and we’ve seen the blueprints that have made an impact and have radically shook this country by its roots and demanded change. I have to indict us because I don’t see the enthusiasm in wanting to shake the system by its roots like those generations before us lived and died for.
We’ve seen the Black Panthers thrive within the Ten-Point Program. We’ve seen successful black economies from Tulsa’s Black Wall Street before its bombing in 1921 to the thriving black communities of Atlanta, Washington, D.C. and Chicago before the race riots.
We know that everything moves through economics as cash rules in this capitalistic society. Growing up, my elders always preached to me, “If you know better, you’ll do better.” Black America knows, now it is time for us to do. It is time for us to rise up and act.
In the spirit of this column, Sankofa translates to “Go back and get it” in the Twi language of Ghana. This call to action is to shake the spirits of black America to find that fervor to go back to the blueprints our ancestors carved out for us of practicing true black unity, self-educating ourselves on black history and practicing group economics and self-defense to build our black communities and the black nation up.
The system currently in place obviously won’t do it for us, so the time has come for us to act and do for ourselves. Our time is now.
Gary D. Hackett III is the Ebony Theatre president, a Black Student Union member and a senior in marketing and theatre. The Sankofa Column is a bi-weekly guest editorial by the BSU.
