MLK In His Own Words

If any of you are around when I have to meet my day, I don’t want a long funeral. And if you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk too long. (Yes) And every now and then I wonder what I want them to say. Tell them not to mention that I have a Nobel Peace Prize—that isn’t important. Tell them not to mention that I have three or four hundred other awards—that’s not important. Tell them not to mention where I went to school. I’d like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to give his life serving others.

I’d like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to love somebody. I want you to say that day that I tried to be right on the war question. I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry. And I want you to be able to say that day that I did try in my life to clothe those who were naked. I want you to say on that day that I did try in my life to visit those who were in prison. I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity.

-Martin Luther King Jr, February 1968

Drum Major Instinct

The landmark Brown v Board of Education 1954 Supreme Court ruling had far-reaching implication beyond outlawing legal segregation in public schools, opening a new era of education for blacks. Yet, the Promise of Brown never materialized, leaving a legacy of uneducated and unprepared black children. Read more: http://afro-americanstudies.com/blog/2011/03/the-promise-and-problematic-of-brown-v-board-of-education-part-one/

“I plead for industrial education and development for the Negro not because I want to cramp him, but because I want to free him. I want to see him enter the all-powerful business and commercial world.”

-Booker T Washington

History and study has absolved Booker T Washington of the slanderous attack of being an “Uncle Tom” or “sell-out Negro.” Yet, this undeserved characterization and label of Washington has made him less attractive for study and questionable as a model for emulation.

Washington’s politics, which largely accounts for the degradation of him, must be viewed in the context of terrorism and violence which was imposed on blacks as a way of maintaining white supremacy and keeping them oppressed or put another way subordinate in every aspect of life to whites. Given this, Washington developed his economic philosophy around the premise that black economic power would drive and determine political rights and full citizenship. “It has been necessary,” he asserted, for [blacks] to learn that all races that have got upon their feet have done so largely by laying an economic foundation, and, in general by beginning in a proper cultivation and ownership of the soil.”

Washington’s Economic Philosophy

Washington was keenly aware of the psychological damage of slavery on blacks with respect to dignity and work. Hence, he argued for the necessity of black people “learning the difference between being worked and working- to learn that being worked meant degradation, while working means civilization; that all forms of labor are honorable, and all forms of idleness disgraceful.”  Washington’s economic philosophy was ground the following principles:

• the dignity of all labor
• the primacy of the cultivation and ownership of land
• the primary of industrial education and development
• creation of wealth through work, ownership, and saving
• cultivation and continued development of the black’s technical and scientific and technical know-how
• building an industrial foundation as the material basis for the black economic development

Given the association of physical labor with slavery, this was an important principle. Washington observed more and more blacks retreating from the very work and trades which advantaged them in a post-slavery economy, noting, “Some years ago, when we decided to make tailoring a part of our training at the Tuskegee Institute, I was amazed to find that it was almost impossible to find in the whole country an educated colored man who could teach the making of clothing. We could find numbers of them who could teach astronomy, theology, Latin or grammar, but none who could instruct in the making of clothing, something that has to be used by every one of us every day in the year.”

Washington astutely noted that the slave plantation was an industrial training school for blacks. Though not apologizing for slavery, he nevertheless observed that the “industrial training on the plantation, left the Negro at the close of the [Civil War] in possession of nearly all the common and skilled labor in the South.” He goes on to state:

For two-hundred  and fifty years, I believe the way for the redemption of the Negro was being prepared through industrial development…In most cases if a Southern white man wanted a house built he consulted a Negro mechanic about the plan and about the actual building of the structure. If he wanted a suit of clothes made he went to a Negro tailor, and for shoes he went to a shoemaker of the same race. In a certain way every plantation in the South was an industrial school. On these plantations young colored men and women were constantly being trained not only s farmers bur as carpenters, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, brick masons, engineers, cooks, laundresses, sewing woman and housekeepers.

Inasmuch as black were the most skilled in the professional trades which were the foundation for the industrial revolution and post-Civil War economy, Washington argued for an industrial plan of education and development as the cornerstone of black economic development and as the best and most probable way for blacks to “enter the all-powerful business and commercial world.” This was the gateway to “higher education” and the development of the race.

Moreover, Washington contended that after the Civil War, blacks “began to development at the wrong end,” emphasizing a “liberal education” over industrial education and development. Industrial development he maintained would “create the wealth from which alone [would] come leisure and the opportunity for higher education.” Frederick Douglass concurred with Washington’s economic philosophy and plan observing:

Every blow of the sledge hammer wielded by a stable arm is a powerful blow in support of our cause. Every color mechanic is by virtue of circumstances and elevator of his race. Every house built by a black man is a strong tower against the allied host a prejudice. It is impossible for us to attach too much important to this aspect of the subject. Without industrial development there can be no wealth; without wealth there can be no leisure; without leisure no opportunity for thoughtful reflection and the cultivation of the higher arts.

To be sure, Washington was a results-oriented leader. His theory and plan of black economic development was empirically based. We must,” Washington stated “re-enforce argument with results. One farm bought, one house built…one man who is the largest tax payer or has the largest bank account, one school or church maintained, one factory running successfully…one patient cured by a Negro doctor- these will tell more in our favor that all the abstract eloquence that can be summoned to plead our cause.”

Booker T Washington was a leader and thinker of the first order. His philosophy of black economic development and education has been overshadowed by W.E.B. DuBois’ argument for a Talented Tenth- “developing the Best of [the] race that they may guide the Mass away from the contamination and death of the Worst.” Yet, the trajectory of his plan for black economic development leads to today’s Silicon Valley- the technological vanguard of the hi-tech industry. Surely, with blacks possessing hi-tech skills on the order of Silicon Valley (note George Washington Carver and others); Washington envisioned the development of high-tech black economic centers located in the South. We salute his vision and model of black economic development.

Root and Branch: Charles Hamilton Houston, Thurgood Marshall, and the Struggle to End Segregation

Author: Rawn James

The Supreme Court 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education is widely considered one of the milestones of the civil rights movement. James Rawn explores the two men,  Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall, and the institutions they built- Howard University School of Law and NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, as well as the legal strategies they developed, to overturn Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). This is a must and inspirational read. You will have a deeper appreciation for the dedication, commitment, and intellectual and legal brilliance of Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall.

Motown In Love: Lyrics From the Golden Era

Author: Herb Jordan

Detroit in the 1960s was an unlikely stage for a production that featured some of the most inspirational love songs ever written. It may seem equally unlikely, given today’s portrayal of black men that most of those songs were written by young black men. Default notions of romance are an awkward overlay to the reality of today’s popular music with its devaluation and degradation of women and love.

Herb Jordan catalogues the love songs of Motown which were the soundtrack of a generation and America’s Great Songbook. In this songbook, black men unashamedly declare their love for their women with a delicacy of surgeon.  Poet laureate, Smokey Robinson, wrote of love for a woman as “a rosebud blooming in the warmth of the summer sun.” Besides the delight of the Motown love lyrics, Jordan reminds of soft and sensitive side of black men who found meaning in love (not guns and gangs) and identity in their relationships with their women- their other half.

The Sea is Wide and My Boat is so Small: Charting the Course for the Next Generation

Author: Marian Wright Edelman

Written in the form of letters, Marian Wright Edelman reflects on the state of children in America and what must be done to provide a caring and nurturing context for their growth and well-being. This meditative manifesto is a discourse on building the “village” we often talk about in raising children. On a Prayer For Twenty-First-Century Children, Edelman juxtaposes what is required with what is desired and embraced: “God help us to raise a new generation of children/With highly developed computer skills but poorly developed consciences…With a gigantic commitment to the big “I” but little sense of responsibility to the bigger “we”. She leaves no stone unturned in the service of building a better and more caring society for children. This should be required reading for adults.

The Warmth of Other Suns

Author: Isabel Wilkerson

The Warmth of Other Suns is Wilkerson’s first book. (Its title is borrowed from the celebrated black writer Richard Wright, who fled Jim Crow Mississippi in the 1920s to feel the warmth of those other suns.) Based on more than a thousand interviews, written in broad imaginative strokes, this book, at 622 pages, is an epic narrative of one of the great migrations witnessed in America. The migration of black from the South to the North is often presented as a failed “social experiment.” These blacks are too frequently demeaned in literature as the wretched of the earth: thrown together in dead-end Northern slums, cast as poor illiterates who imported out-of-wedlock births, joblessness and welfare dependency wherever they went.

Yet, Wilkerson in The Warmth of Other Suns tells another story. Today, these black migrants are viewed as a modern version of the Europeans who flooded America’s shores in the late 1800s and early 1900s. What linked them together, Wilkerson writes, was their heroic determination to roll the dice for a better future. This is a delightful read and a departure from negative narrative of black life which is so often presented as the quintessential fact of black in America.

The Making of African America: The Four Great Migrations

Author: Ira Berlin

The Four Great Migrations frame the history of people of African descent in America, setting the paths by which Africans and then African Americans made and remade black and American life between the seventeenth and twenty-first centuries. These four massive upheavals form the foundation of Ira Berlin’s sweeping new interpretation of the African American experience.

This book is certainly a companion read to The Warmth of Other Suns, and one that will not disappoint. Tracing the transit from Africa to America, Virginia to Alabama, Biloxi to Chicago, and Lagos to the Bronx, Berlin challenges the traditional presentation of a linear, progressive development of black America. The Making of African America speaks of the old giving way to the new, innovation dancing with tradition, change challenging stasis- a two beat theme that has a profound effect on African American communities, families and individual lives, continually remaking all aspects of black culture from language to working patterns, from religion to art.

Die young, die middle age, die old, but remember that the most useful life and most abundant life is the one in which one dreams that which will never completely come true, and chooses ideals that forever beckon buy forever elude. To seek a goal that is worthy, so all-embracing, so all-consuming, and so challenging that one can never completely attain it, is the life magnificent; it is the only life worth living.

-Benjamin E. Mays

Before there was the March on Washington which moved the conscience of America, before there was the Selma to Montgomery marches which produced the Voting Rights Act, before the sit-in demonstrations which led to the desegregation of lunch counters and other public places , before Kwame Toure could advocate  black power,  before Martin Luther King could deliver the “Dream Speech”, before Marian Wright Edelman would establish the Children Defense Fund, Benjamin Mays, preacher-educator, assumed the awesome responsibility of preparing leaders of the civil rights and 1960s movement.

Mays anticipated the civil rights movement and understood above all else that the mental revolution had to precede the social revolution. He saw education as the mechanism to help overturn the state of inferiority and fear that the majority of blacks, including student held. Although he taught no classes, his philosophy permeated the method of instruction at Morehouse.  Martin Luther King Jr., said of his experience at Morehouse: “There was a freer atmosphere at Morehouse and it was there that I had my first frank discussion of race. The [professors] encouraged us in a positive quest for solutions to radial ills and for the first time in my life, I realized that nobody was afraid.”

Consistent with King’s experience and observation, Mays saw the black school as well as the black church as the two centers of resistance. Thus, he infused and integrated the spiritual and ethical teaching of Christianity into the Morehouse educational philosophy, addressing the fundamental issue of the black condition-oppression and manhood. Mays did not he said to “make lawyers or doctors or teachers but men.”

Against the traditional view of college and education, Mays introduced and advocated a conception of education which mirrored WEB Dubois’s view of education.

The problem of education… among the Negro must first of all deal wit the Talented Tenth; it is the problem of developing the Best of this race that they may guide the Mass away from the contamination and death of the Worst, in their own and other races. Now the training of men is a difficult and intricate task. Its technique is a matter of educational experts, but its object is for the vision of seers. If we make money the object of man-training, we shall develop money-makers, but not necessity men; if we make technical skill the object of education, we may possess artisans but not, in nature, men. Men we shall have only as we make manhood the object of the work of schools.

Benjamin Mays understood Dubois’s educational philosophy, seeing education as instrument of liberation if it was grounded in producing a new black man (and woman) who would use his (her) education to better society and in the process improve the condition of black people. To be sure, Mays wanted to invent new souls. He wanted to root out the weakness and inferiority that heritage of three hundred years of mental and social oppression imposed on blacks and their way of seeing themselves and the world. He used his weekly Tuesday morning chapel lecture to encourage and teach a new way of thinking and doing.

May’s educational philosophy had a threefold purpose: 1) to train the mind to think clearly, logically and constructively, 2) to train the heart to understand and empathize with the aspirations, conditions, suffering and injustice of humankind, beginning with black people, and ) to strengthen the will to act in the interest of the common good. In the context of this framework, Mays exhorted the student at Morehouse to “Do whatever you do so well that no man living and no man yet unborn could do it better.” And, for him the “greatest crime was to give up”; and the “greatest sin was to aim low”

Marian Wright Edelman writes, Morehouse chapel, like Spelman’s was rich not only in music but in eloquence and in wisdom. Its president, Dr. Benjamin Mays, Martin Luther King, Jr, mentor, and other inspirational speakers shared with us what they believed, had experience and thought we needed to know to make it in the world and to make the world a better place by not becoming the… They taught us to be neither victims or victimizers They preached that service to community was a higher value than service to self, that conscience to precedent over career, that respect for life—our own and others- was inviolate.”

Thus, Mays demand that strength and a sense of mission from Morehouse students. “No person” he said, “deserves to be congratulated unless he has done the best he could with the mental equipment he has under he existing circumstances.” He sought to create a new student, a new man who saw himself capable of meeting the demands and conditions of black life. He often told his student body, “If Morehouse is not good enough for anybody, it not good enough for Negroes.
A witness for freedom and a creator of the future, Mays created a climate and context at Morehouse and beyond that bore fruit. A partial listing of the men and women, who were, mentored, influenced or by Mays reads like a who’s who of the civil and women’s rights movements: Martin Luther King Jr., Julian Bond (led sit-in protest in Atlanta and first , Maynard Jackson, Mayor of Atlanta), Michael Lomax (first black elected Chairman of Fulton County Commission), Leroy Johnson (first member of Georgia Senate since Reconstruction), Marian Wright Edelman ( Children Defense Fund), Lerone Bennett (social historian and editorial staff of Ebony for over 50 years), Horace Ward (Federal Judge), Howard Thurman (influential American author, philosopher, theologian, educator and civil rights leader) Charlayne Hunter-Gault (American journalist and foreign correspondent, first black graduate of University of Georgia), (founded the Morehouse School of Medicine and Secretary of the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services), and Samuel D Cook (President, Dillard university).

We salute Benjamin Mays, educator extraordinaire and schoolmaster of the civil rights movement.

Come home from the movies black girls and boys

the picture be over and the screen/ be cold as our neighborhood

come home from the show/ don’t be the show

come home from the movies/ black girls and boys

show our fathers how to walk like men/ they already know how do dance

-Lucille Clifton

Few would refute the dismal state of black male/female relationships. The soon to be release movie “For Colored Girls,” will further highlight the plight and problems of black women in society who are viewed as the antithesis of the standard of womanhood and beauty. Added to this is the estranged state of black men and women relationships. Sociologist Orland Patterson has been “listening to black men and women for nearly four decades. He has sifted through census data. And he’s closely followed the work of other researchers who study with new urgency what Patterson calls the current “crisis” in African American gender relations.”

Never, Patterson says, have the voices of black women and men been angrier or sadder. Never have many of the statistics been bleaker or more alarming. And never have these issues been more relevant to all Americans, Patterson and other researchers say. As marriage rates among blacks plummet, Patterson says he’s hearing increased numbers of educated, middle-class black women speak in tones of resignation or desperation about the scarcity of similarly accomplished black men.

As marriage rates among blacks plummet, Patterson says he’s hearing increased numbers of educated, middle-class black women speak in tones of resignation or desperation about the scarcity of similarly accomplished black men. As the black divorce rate has soared, he’s asked black husbands and wives to talk about their marriages – and has been increasingly dismayed by how many say they’re disappointed, dissatisfied or already straying.

Popular music, in particular rap songs have contributed to the estrangement of black male/female relationships, reducing them to recreational sex. . “Hateful,” Patterson described them, flatly rejecting the claim that these lyrics are harmless posturing. “How far can you go with those lyrics and claim what you’re hearing is not what you’re hearing?” he asked.

Speaking of the current state of black male/female relationships, M. Belinda Tucker, a UCLA professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral science says, “It is a crisis,” Her book, “The Decline in Marriage Among African Americans,” highlighted the research of 22 leading psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists, historians and economists. “But it is a crisis; she goes on to say, set in the context of a larger crisis: the continuing vulnerability of the black male in this society.”

Nor are these problems unique to African American men and women. Tucker and Patterson say there’s evidence that suggests gender relations among white men and women may become increasingly strained for some of the same reasons.

“In many ways, what has happened to blacks is a precursor to what will happen to whites,” Patterson said. “Some of the trends are clearly in the same direction. Whether they have the same disastrous effects remains to be seen.”

Census figures document many of these trends. In 1910, the government reported that a majority of black women worked outside the home; white women passed that milestone only in the past 20 years, census statistics show. With work inevitably comes increased tensions at home as men and women – white and black – struggle to adjust to new roles and responsibilities, Tucker said.

Census figures also reveal that the number of unmarried black women who gave birth fell by 5 percent between 1990 and 1994, while the percentage of out-of-wedlock births to white women increased by 23 percent during the same period. And there are almost twice as many single white mothers as single black mothers, although the proportion of black families headed by women is much larger.

These statistics suggest that more children – white and black, poor and non-poor – must struggle to learn how to grow into men and women without a father in the home. Even as this problem continues to plague the black community disproportionately, economists have documented an expanding white “underclass” in which grinding poverty complicates the establishment of healthy gender relations, Patterson said.

In the past four decades, a social and economic revolution has transformed traditional patterns of marriage and family among both whites and blacks. Still, Tucker said, the changes are far more dramatic among African Americans, among whom the percentage of households headed by single women remains much higher than among whites. In 1950, 64 percent of black men age 14 or older were married, census data show. (The census selected 14 as an early but arbitrary benchmark.) But by 1995, that proportion had plummeted to 43 percent. (The percentage of currently married white males in the same age category also dropped, but not nearly as much, from 68 percent in 1950 to 61 percent in 1995.

Married black women are even rarer. Between 1950 and 1995, the percentage of black women 14 or older who were married fell from 62 percent to under 38 percent. Currently, 59 percent of all white women are married, down from 66 percent in 1950. Data collected by census researchers also suggest that fewer than 75 percent of black women can expect to marry sometime in their lives, compared with 90 percent of white women.

This crisis among black men and women portends a greater crisis which is devastating the black family. There, the urgency of this matter demands a total solution.

Answers in Kwanzaa: Black men and Women in Love and Togetherness Part II

Michelle and I send warm wishes to all those celebrating Kwanzaa this holiday season. This is a joyous time of year when African Americans and all Americans come together to celebrate our blessings and the richness of our cultural traditions. This is also a time of reflection and renewal as we come to the end of one year and the beginning of another. The Kwanzaa message tells us that we should recall the lessons of the past even as we seize the promise of tomorrow.

-Statement on Kwanzaa by the President and First Lady

The Kwanzaa holiday was created in 1966 to introduce seven guiding principles which were seen as essential to improving the living conditions and life chances of African Americans. Unquestionably, since 1966, the lives of many professional and middle class African American have improved. In fact, some blacks rank among the highest paid professionals, and enjoy enormous social prestige. Yet, for the vast majority of African Americans, in particular those living in areas of concentrated poverty have witness their financial earning decline and their social conditions worsen.

Ironically, in the Age of Obama, the condition of African Americans has worsen: African Americans have experience a rise in poverty, continued high incarceration of young black men, many who are most likely victims of homicide; a decline in education performance, almost of African American students do not graduate; a steady increase of in HIV cases, in 2008 African Americans made up an estimated 50% of new diagnosed HIV cases, and they have experienced an unbelievable increase in children born out of wedlock-almost 70 percent of black children are born out of wedlock, and in 1963 when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech, more than 70 percent of all Black families were headed by married couples; that number is now 48 percent. To be fair, it should be noted that the deteriorating of blacks dates back to the 1980s with the policies of Reagan.

Answers in Progress: Kwanzaa

The seven principles of Kwanzaa – Unity, Self Determination, Collective Work and Responsibility, Cooperative Economics, Purpose, Creativity, and Faith – express the values that have inspired us as individuals and families; communities and country. These same principles have sustained us as a nation during our darkest hours and provided hope for better days to come. Michelle and I know the challenges facing many African American families and families in all communities at this time, but we also know the spirit of perseverance and hope that is ever present in the community. It is in this spirit that our family extends our prayers and best wishes during this season and for the New Year to come.

-Statement on Kwanzaa by the President and First Lady

It has become abundantly clear that the conditions which necessitated the creation of Kwanzaa are still present today and demand our attention. The steady deterioration of the black family, self-destructive and irresponsible behavior of too many young and older black men, supported culture values and a culture orientation which discourages family stability, marriage, and academic achievement. Given these conditions, how can Kwanzaa reverse this trend?

Family-Centered Holiday

Kwanzaa is a family-centered holiday, stressing a mode of communication and behavior which serves to strengthening the ties that bind family members together, and reinforces their identity as family. Family is important and essential to child and adolescent socialization. The values and social orientation of dating, marriage, education, and morality, respect for human life, and community-building are introduced and taught in the family. Children and youth learn how to be mothers and fathers and providers and keepers of the culture in the family. To be sure, the family is smallest example of the community-its strength and illnesses, possibilities and vulnerabilities. The Kwanzaa principle Unity instructs parents to work in harmony with each other to create the conditions which nurture caring relationships and mutuality that define the essence of family. Put another way, Kwanzaa places a priority and premium on daily activities which reinforce the value of family togetherness.

Male/Female Relationships

It is now common place to hear men debase and degrade women, especially in popular music: Jay-Z, “If you’re havin’ girl problems I feel bad for you son/ I got 99 problems but a bitch ain’t one.” VH1’s reality show, Flavor of Love, presents women, in particular black women, as sexual objects, waiting to be used. Little wonder then that only 48 percent of black families are headed by married couples, and 70 percent of black children are born out of wedlock. Kwanzaa is the antidote to destructive narrative of male female relationships portrayed in popular lyrics and on reality TV shows. The principle unity instructs men and women to seek harmony and stability as expressed in poem, “Answer: This Magic Moment.”

Now that you have young love

Insist upon the dawn’

Its mornings bright with sun and rain

That summon up continuity

Now that your love is bounded and

Culturally confirmed, do not forget:

First meetings, great and early laughter

Preparation for first dates, delicate touches and

Kisses that quicken heartbeats, love notes and

Phone calls into the midnights’ dawns

Do not forget promises; there area always pure promises of, “forever yours”

-Haki Madhubuti

Kwanzaa thus serves to reinforce relationships between men and women, instructing them to be respectful of each other’s humanity, and to seek to develop each other in love and togetherness. Each Kwanzaa, those who are in relationships assess their relationships and their commitments to their partner, striving to build stronger bonds of love.

Black Men: In Love and In Trouble

In recent years, terms such as crisis, at-risk, marginal and endangered, are used with increasing regularity to describe the plight and condition of young Black males. The reason such stark and ominous terms are used with reference to Black males is quite clear: a broad array of social and economic indicators point with alarming consistency to the undeniable fact that large numbers of individuals who fall within these two social categories, Black and male, are in deep trouble. Whether the indicators relate to employment or education, health or crime, Black males are consistently clustered toward the end of the spectrum generally regarded as least desirable, and most vulnerable. For example:

• 29.4% of African American males born in 1991 (the year my son was born) will spend some time in their lifetime incarcerated (Department of Justice).
• The number one cause of death for 15-24 year old black males is homicide (2004 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
• Black men in the United States have the shortest life expectancy (69.5 years) of all other racial and ethnic groups – averaging over six years less than white men who live 75.7 years (2005 National Center for Health Statistics)
• Unemployment among black males is higher than any other population at 14.1% (Bureau of Labor, January 2009).
• Over seventy percent of black children in America are raised by in parent households where no father is present (National Center for Health Statistics, 2007).

“More strikingly than patterns of military enlistment, marriage or college graduation, prison time differentiates the young adulthood of black men from the life course of white males. Imprisonment is now a common life event for an entire demographic group,” said Becky Pettit, one of the study’s authors and a University of Washington assistant professor of sociology.

Enough said. The situation with black males, in particular, young black men, is no longer a problem but self-perpetuating conditions that is heart of the disintegration of the black family. Kwanzaa offers a cultural framework for black male regeneration, beginning with the Seven Principles of Kwanzaa: Unity- between black men and black women; Self-determination, redefining young black male identity from “gangstas,” “pimps and players,” to fathers and brothers; Collective Work & Responsibility, being “my brother’s and sister’s keeper,; Cooperative Economics, the practice  of African Americans working together to develop self-reliant, locally-based and community controlled economy and profiting from them together; Purpose,  building safe and thriving communities through service and sacrifice; Creativity, an ethic and practice of continuous improvement; and Faith, believing in capacity of black people to make progress (beginning with oneself).

Building Healthy and Thriving Communities

It is self-evident that children live in families and families live in neighborhoods. Today, many African American neighborhoods are not aligned with the aspirations of the families in those neighborhoods. Gangs, drug trafficking, gun violence, school dropout, and teenage prostitution have come to characterize too many neighborhoods of color. Black neighborhood youth find identity with street gangs, and meaning in gang violence. Even youth who are not members of gangs adopt the gang lifestyle- “keeping it gansta,” or referring to friends as “homies” or “homeboy.”

Kwanzaa seeks to align African American neighborhoods with shared values (7 guiding principles of Kwanzaa) of the families which inhabit those neighborhoods. The share values of Kwanzaa provide youth and adults with a shared identity, common purpose and collective destiny. Rather than the individualist orientation “looking out for number one” or in its worse state-“all against all,” Kwanzaa provides for culture framework which advocates that every member of the family and community is constituted by a web of interpersonal relationships which sees itself as collectively responsible for the success and failure of the neighborhood- its children and youth, the quality of education they receive, and the safety and well-being its neighbors.

Culture Orientation

Culture is a people’s brain or intelligence, dictating how they see themselves and the world and how they respond to their social condition. The popular culture of African Americans, in particular black youth is now informed by the worse of its “street” element. Historian and cultural sociologist Orlando Patterson Popular culture has an intoxicating pull on youth people, especially those with weak family and culture ties. Orlando Patterson argues that sociologist need to pay more attention to what has been called the “cool pose” culture which for many young black men is “almost like a drug, hanging out on the street after school, shopping, and dressing sharply, sexual conquest, party drugs, hip-hop, music and culture.”

Whatever the nomenclature, “cool pose” or “keeping it real” or something else entirely, this peculiar aspect of the contemporary black experience Thomas Chatter, Washington Post editorial writers, argues – the inverted-pyramid hierarchy of values stemming from the glorification of lower-class reality in the hip-hop era- has quietly taken the place of white racism as the most formidable obstacle to success and equality in the black middle classes. Contrary to the “cool pose” culture, Kwanzaa grounds young people in cultural values and historical models- Martin Luther King’s “service ethic”, Anna Julia Cooper male/female model of Complementarity, the youth example of struggle by SNCC, and Motown’s songbook. In brief, the key crisis in black life remains the culture crisis-the crisis in view and values.

Enhancing Education

More people of color are taking the SAT, but test scores for black students remain lowest among racial and ethnic groups, according to data released this week by the College Board. Black students scored at least 72 points behind the overall average in critical reading, mathematics and writing. A major contributing factor to the decline in academic excellence by young blacks is the “cool pose” cultural orientation, which equates learning and academic achievement with “acting white, negating black historical intellectual accomplishment-W.E.B. DuBois, Anna Julia Cooper, George Washington Caver, Mary McLeod Bethune, Barack and Michelle Obama.

The African American holiday Kwanzaa with its emphasis on continuous learning (Creativity principle) and high achievement can be an effective intervention for families and schools. Kwanzaa provides incentives for children and youth to read and excel in school. Books are one of the seven Kwanzaa symbols, and are a mandatory part of Kwanzaa gift giving. No matter what is given during Kwanzaa, a book must be given. The book is to remind both parents and the child of the importance and priority of learning and education. In addition, the Kwanzaa symbols are instructive for reinforcing academic learning.  Take for example the symbol of the African American flag. The color black is symbolic of black people (black youth); the color red is symbolic of effort and work; and the color green is symbolic of the future and hope that comes from the effort and work. In the context of school, the lesson is that students who appreciate learning, respect each other and who, put forth an earnest effort at studying will excel academically and achieve in life.

Revisiting the Purpose of Kwanzaa

Given the scope of the crisis facing blacks in America, the spread and celebration of Kwanzaa, with emphasis on the practice of the seven guiding principles as a way of living for African Americans, is central and essential to eradicating the conditions which have given rise to the cultural malaise and social pathology which has arrested the development of African American. As is the practice of Kwanzaa, in 2010, families, neighborhoods and networks or black organizations must take assessment of what each has accomplished in relationship to the seven guiding principles of Kwanzaa. Beginning with the family and then expanding outward to the local and national African American community, the time has come for blacks to practice daily: Unity, Self Determination, Collective Work and Responsibility, Cooperative Economics, Purpose, Creativity, and Faith.