Ok, Phasad, so what do you suggest? What would be your plan?
SC

Ya'll it is so easy to sit back and pick apart someone else's ideas but that does not benefit us either. So what do we think are good ideas?

Come on ya'll (digging out my country dialect).

Thank you Tony for actually putting forth some ideas. So are you saying that we basically need to take an each person approach instead of trying to have some grand movement together?
SC

Sort of.

With no disrespect to a lot of the historic national organizations that have had success (i.e. NAACP, et.al), I think our community "solutions" will be found in local initiatives that emerge from the ground up, rather than in top-down national directives.

If we (be it the Alphas, coalitions of concerned citizens, or whomever) try a program in my community and it's successful, then share it with another community. If that second community's conditions are similar enough, they may be able to benefit as well, or make the needed variations and have success another way. But at least they've benefitted from the shared information.

Either way, the tools of our success rest in our own hands.

...now Imma go hit my CNN webpage and wait to read about Summerchild settin' Chicago on fiyah with her bold, new local initiative. :p

Bringing masses of black people into the educational fold and out of the prisons is one thing. Changing the image of ourselves that is projected to our kids day in and day out displaying a few people's idea of what is to be strived for in life is another. There is a lot that we have physical control over that we just need to buckle down and do

For starters. This was actually what I said in my initial post.

I know! You know that I have to try to bring something new to set it off right in Chicago! Shoot a sister is tired of tutoring kids and talking during career day. We need something bold and new! I really like the rites of passage programs. Has anyone ever put one together? What's involved?

SC

Oh my fault Phasad, I didn't catch your initial post. When you say educational fold, is that the same as increasing the numbers that are educated? I would love to change the image of ourselves projected to kids. Of course we can all do this by being role models ourselves. Do you have another approach?

Without re-envisioning and re-invention of ourselves as to what it means to be of African descent without the influence of oppression, we will never move beyond what we are witnessing now...

And without struggle, there is no progress...

So how far are we willing to go to prove we need our own stuff and prove a point to folks?

The minute something in the 'hood works, "they" will find it illegal, steal it from us, or some other crazy stuff... Been there, done that and gotten a T-shirt that says please screw me over again and again...

"They" don't want US educated--causes to many problems with freedoms they are ready for us to have...

In the meantime, what can we do about it while you and I are living?

Don't hate the playa, hate the game... I'm justa squirrel trying to getta nut--tryin' to make a dolla outta 15 cents...

I dunno? :confused: Why does this kinna thing ALWAYS happen when Republicans are in office? I think there are other folks that are getting disenfranchised too who actually are died in the wool red staters that voted for Dubya this go-round...

But whatever it is, the last time they had the MMM, some white dudes started hounding me as to why black men had to be together and hook up?

I coulda said, "Why not?" then have gotten into an argument...

I coulda said, "I don't agree with it", but I would have felt like a sell out...

But what I said stopped them in their tracks:

"What's wrong with a million men!!!"

And the white girl who I worked with had the perfect timing who said, "All in ONE place!!!"

Needless to say, they didn't harass me after that... :cool:

Yes, but in addition, I also mean developing a culture that values education and the rewards of being leaders in the academic arena and not just artistic, musical and entertainment arenas. I know that there are plenty of Black people who love, value and live for their educational goals and pursuits, but that isn't much of the culture that is being touted to the youngsters. I think this goes hand in hand with the deterioration of Hip Hop and Black music that we talk about now and again on here. There needs to be more of a balance of what the kids are being mentally fed. In the thread that dealt with "The Whisper Song', I said that I think one answer would be to listen to what Sharpton is trying to say when he says the FCC needs to deal with the state of the radio and what is put out over the air waves just as they pounded Janet Jackson for her superbowl fiasco. He is concerned about the heavy flux of gangster life, sex, drugs, crime and misbehavior that is spat out all day long on the radio infiltrating the innocent minds of the children. We need to replace that influx of being musically and sports talented with promises and positive rewards of being academically talented. With the kids I work with, most of what I see is school being a pass-time and something that they just have to do. They pay no attention to the broader picture of their future paths being mapped out through the hard work that they should be doing and the learning that they need to do. I hate it. An entire generation of young black youth is, yet again, being swepped by the wayside and if this continues to happen, many of the gaps that exist now won't close. It's not as simple as saying, ok, you're complaining, so what do you propose we do about it, because these issues are very complex. If the answer was one that could be articulated over greekchat, I think the problem would have been solved a long time ago. I do think, however, that somewhere in all of this that I have said, a suggestion or two can be found.

What do these changes have to do with racism?

On your initial post you blamed da man and racism for the problems, but your solutions to the problem are changes from within.

I will only slightly dignify your dumb behind with a response, then I want you to go somewhere and sit down.

OBVIOUSLY the root of many of the circumstances socially that drive and influence behavior and beliefs of black americans has to do with racism and the psat of this country. That is just the truth. What I am saying here is DESPITE that truth, in order for us to get to where WE want to be and not where someone else thinks we should be, the things I mentioned above need to happen. That part of the concept is simple...maybe still not simple enough for you though. :(

If I were blaming "da man" for the problems of my community and that was it, then that is all I would have said.

I wholeheartedly agree. With national initiatives it might take years of planning, fundraising and publicity before the help trickles down to those who need help the most. Local initiatives usually deal with immediate community issues more quickly and because local community organizations (be it sororities and fraternities, local NAACP chapters or churches) live or work in these communities, they have a better sense of what the community needs and know how to get resident/participant input to make a project a success.

Much of the Civil Rights Movement's gains occurred through direct, immediate grassroots organizing. I always felt that the MMM was more inspirational rather than concrete. It was as if people went home and waited for Farrakhan to tell them what to do next b/c with the ascension of dynamic leaders like King and Malcolm X, black folks became dependent on "great" leaders as if one person was responsible for the movement. We have to stop looking outside ourselves for the answers. All we have to do is look right outside our windows and there are so many problems we can tackle right in our own backyards. I firmly believe that the age of the great Black leader is a thing of the past b/c even with someone as dynamic as say, Barack Obama, we have so many people who will take issue with that leader b/c of religious or class differences that we will never get pass first base in tackling real community problems.

PhDiva

That is the most important goal IMO

TonyB06 and RBL, I agree.

However, I am annoyed at us/AAs not taking individual responsibility for our selfish actions....As a matter of fact, we have NOT even arrived psychologically to take responsibility for our actions. For example, just our attitudes towards one another on college campuses and/or in the work place. We continue to cut each other down because we are afraid of someone else getting ahead!

Until this is done (which I strongly doubt this will ever come to past), then we can begin to tackle other problems.

Forget a march, we need to pray and work on ourselves...:(

Soror, forgive me for messing up this quote for I am not a new testament scholar but isn't prayer w/out works dead (or something like that LOL)?
It seems to me that we as AAs use prayer as a cop out (not saying that you are using it as a copout soror, referring to AA generally) sometimes b/c it is easier to say, let's pray about it than to get up on saturday morning at 8am and kick off a program in our community. for that reason, i think that it's dangerous to say that we need to pray about it. some of us just take that and run with it and then basically do nothing. how many churches are collecting thousands each sunday and don't have a single ongoing, regularly-occurring community food or homeless shelter program. yet, the pastor is "sitting on dubs."

sc