What to do, what to do?

I was Wandering around Sacramento's tree-lined streets with immaculately cared for homes and estates and then the near barren and dead tree, low-income neighborhoods - the neighborhoods that were abandoned by the gentry or is reclaimed farmland.
I sat for a moment to take it in.
More police in these neighborhoods, but why?
Pants sagging, music loud, cussing prevalent.
But that's just the surface.
I've learned there's always something underneath.

So, my twisted psyche went on a journey.

I looked around at America's global wealth and the hard times folks are going through now. And for the nation's Black or African American communities, they just seem as an anachronism.
The nation profited, but they were left behind. The jobs that could be done here are being done by people in foreign countries. The argument is that it's cheaper for business to hire them than hire Americans.
Hmmmm...

Now there's a fine how-d-ya-do.

Then, I thought:
What to do with a leftover workforce?
It occurred to me that about 'Eleven-Million' Africans were brought to these shores as slaves - 11-million - those who chose to survive. Not to mention all those hundreds of thousands who didn't survive the journey across the Atlantic.
I think I can say, "Only 11-Million made it." That's more people than in my beloved New York City. Eleven-Million...

Let that set in.

Those Africans, and several other races, built a nation through the sweat of their brow, bearing children, cooking, cleaning, planting, harvesting, building, inventing, engineering, shoeing and caring for horses, mules, cows, bulls, chickens, pigs, automobiles, trains, planes and eventually fighting in wars.
All the while, experiencing an historically unparalleled level of inhumanity for several hundreds of years. Its remnants and memory still green with many.
But yet, they were teaching many of their captors how to treat each other humanely. How to enjoy life. How to play music.How to dance despite and through adversity. How to respect each other. How to raise children in a 'village.'

Now, fast forward to today.
That labor force is no longer needed.
What to do, what to do?

Most were denied education back then. Death awaited and accepted thousands whose only crime was reading a book.
A man named Lynch, whom a terrible form of hanging death was named after, devised a plan to control those sometimes violently unruly Blacks with methods of horrific terror.
It can be argued that today he might be sought out and prosecuted for crimes against humanity.
Methods so heinous they're not even talked about today.

Now there's a controversy about water boarding? How about intentional, public killings or maiming - of both men and women - some while last-trimester pregnant - rape and imprisonment for the slightest infraction. That's terrorism on the highest scale. And it didn't happen in the Middle East or Asia, but right here in America.

A Frenchman said this country will be forever defined by how it treat the Africans who not only proved themselves as humans but as humane on the highest order: kind, compassionate, loving, communal, vocal, talented, courageous, artistic, craftsmen, gourmets and nurturers of generations of their own children as well as those of their enslavers.

Enslavers who had convinced themselves that the Africans were ignorant animals, or chattel and whose life was not worth much. The same peoples who were able to forgive them, contributing to their causes and way of life.

Some African Americans acclimated, some left while others have assimilated.
But there are pockets who remain. Many uneducated and uninterested in the society they find themselves in. A society that many feel they are not welcomed in.

It seems there is a sickness in the nation and in the ghettos we live in. A sickness of spirit, a sickness of disease, a sickness of hopelessness, a sickness of violence, a sickness of apathy. And I feel it stems back to how we treat each other as a family of man, regardless of color or status.

New Orleans, before the hurricane, was the most violent city in the country. We killed so many of our own, there was no need for outsiders to. We were eliminating ourselves because of societal neglect and lack of self respect. Then God (or man) sent a flood of Biblical proportions.
Is no one watching?

How do we treat a spiritual epidemic?

There are those who got out of their spiritual ghetto and have become successful. Some go back and lend a hand, others divorce themselves from their race's plight and struggle for their lost sense of belonging, their mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers, their communities, tribes and their communal and personal respect; their unity.

Oh, what a proud people we must have been that so many of us here cannot imagine. Oh, what a magnificent people we must have been.
Looking at Africans today only seen on television is not a clear picture. If you believe the media, Africans are starving and AIDS ridden. Not true at all. But, like here in America, the idea of how Black folk are does not measure up to how we really are.
If you treat someone badly long enough, they will have a bad attitude. Can they be blamed?

Now, with computers and automation, some of which those African descendants helped invent, the need for large workforces are no longer needed. Labor intensive work is not an option for many African Americans. The idea of working that hard for someone else for low wages is near genetically repulsive.

So, what to do, what to do?

It still amazes me that drugs are so prevalent in 'the hood.'
How do they get there? When you consider our economic constraints, making it difficult for Black folk to barely cross town much less an ocean, how do they get drugs from Columbia or Afghanistan or Vietnam to Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard?

But the cop shows are rife with African Americans running from 'the law' or being incarcerated for long periods of time.
What bothers me most about that is that many prisons are private companies that some folks built to profit from.
If that's the case, then isn't there a profit incentive for crime?

At this point in history, there are many keys to get back on the right, and healthy track.

The key is education.
The key is being awake.
The key is regaining our spirit.
The key is not believing the hype.
The key is not buying the package.
The key is a change in paradigm.
The key is action.
The key is Love.
Love is the answer.

Someone criticized our successful athletes and celebrities for not giving back to the communities that produced them, but someone else chimed in that it's not completely their fault. Many in their communities pushed them away. Many other of our athletes and celebrities have reached back.
Oprah reached all the way back to Africa.

The communities that produced them have to realize the owners of those Gucci, Coach, Versace, Fendi and Dooney & Bourke accessories have given nothing back to the communities that helped them become wealthy.

If there was a consciousness that kept our economics in our communities, as a people we'd not be in the situation we are in today.

So, the question is not what to do, but rather, what are we going to do about it?