Have you ever wondered how you’ll be remembered years from now after we’re all dead and gone?
How will our lives be documented and better yet, how will people perceive us based on that documentation?
As people look over our history, our past, will they be proud? Will they see strength? How about unity…when people 100 years from now look at the lives of Blacks today, will they see unity?
I’m not so sure.
Perhaps, however if they travel back further – maybe to the civil rights era or the years of slavery they will see unification among Blacks. But as for right now and the lives we live today, I really don’t know.
African Americans are beautiful people – I truly love us, but sometimes we just don’t get it. And the “it” that we sometimes don’t get actually has nothing to do with white people or any other group; IT has to do with us.
Sure there are some people who claim every bad thing that happens to the Black community is caused by something “the man” has done or instituted; thus resulting in our actions or lack thereof; however I feel differently. While I do think that there can be a link to Black-on-Black partiality and the way we’re treated by whites, there are also many instances that have led us to treat one another in a way that is no one’s fault but our own.
Let’s consider the success of a Black person. Not always, but sometimes when someone we know works hard to succeed or climb the corporate ladder, there are 50 other Black people trying to pull them down. Why is that? What’s the whole thought process behind the crab in the barrel mentality?
Simply put, I think it is largely due to envy and a sense of resentment.
I’ve never understood how people can get so angry or envious over the success of someone else. We’ve all either been envious of another person or we’ve witnessed the act of another individual; either way it’s silly and totally unwarranted. As I get older, I try also to be wiser in knowledge. This means taking a situation and examining it from all angles and hopefully obtaining something positive out of it, if nothing else but a lesson learned.
When I see someone achieve great things or accomplish something that I wanted to accomplish, I don’t get jealous – I get motivated. I motivate myself to try harder and to learn from the success (and mistakes) of others. Doing so will eventually make me a better person.
The same can happen for the Black community as a whole. Rather than pull one another down, let’s try to be more supportive of each other. Let’s encourage each other and learn from one another. It’s not about who gets there first, or even at all – it’s about who tried their hardest to get there.
I’ve attended a few funerals where ministers spoke about the dash in a person’s life. The dash they refer to is that small line between a person’s date of birth and their date of death. Time after time, I’ve heard pastors say the date you come into this world isn’t really important and neither is the date you leave this world. What’s important they say is what you do during your lifetime…what you do during your dash.
Every time I hear someone talk about “the dash,” I’m reminded of the profoundness of the message. As African Americans we have to be better about what our dash represents. In the cliché but true words, we have to start standing for something; if not we’ll fall for anything.
Blacks have got to stop blaming other groups for our mistakes – even if it is their fault. The point is, a problem persists and rather than dwell on that fact, we need to work on solving the problem. We need to begin instituting something within ourselves and our community that has substance and longevity to it.
We’ve got to start being accountable to us and ours. We’ve got to start living our dash as fair and truthfully as we can so 100 years from now, people will not only see strength, courage and unity, they’ll also see heart.
