... we’ve arrived, but where to?
-- Margaret Hodges‑Rush

We have overcome several times. Little black children and little white children walk hand‑in‑hand, read from the same textbooks, and live side-by-side in suburbia. We all drink from the same water fountains, use the same public restrooms, and if there are still any true lunch counters left, not only do African Americans work them, many of us own them. Integration is the standard of life, a given, rather than the special status. Yes, we have arrived.

But where did we really come to, and what did we actually get when we got where we thought we wanted to be?

Did we come to a place where we’ve wholeheartedly and hands-down accepted that to be successful we have to look, think, and be like the power-hungry, greedy, competitive architects of a consumeristic society? Did we have to give up what was rich and unique about our black selves in order to make a niche that could sustain our living? Have we enthusiastically joined the American think tank that regularly ignores simplicity, integrity and morality, commonsensical public policy, environmental and financial stewardship, and cooperation among all peoples? Carter G. Woodson said, “If you can control a man’s thinking, you don’t have to worry about his actions.” Have we so bought and assimilated into the capitalist way of thinking that our voice has twisted into the common voice of America, and when we try to engage America about its ills against us, it sounds more like mere complaint or glorified and self-serving speech-making from the masses than real protest from disillusioned and traumatized people?

Did we come to the place where it’s blasé to spend millions of dollars on Prada, Dolce & Gabbana, Sean Jean, and Apple Bottoms, instead of successfully and intelligently educating black children and creating lucrative employment for black people? According to Target Market, a company that tracks African-American marketing, media and consumer behavior, in 2004, black people spent approximately $22 billion on apparel and only $6 billion on education. Moreover, we spent 53 billion in food. Did any of that come from the seeds we harvested and planted in our own backyards growing vegetables and fruits then selling and trading them with our neighbors? Or, when we got where we thought we wanted to be, did we forget all about cooperative gardening, farming, and learning how to fish for ourselves?

When we got where we thought we wanted to be, was it the place that was okay to create music and lyrics that perpetually denigrates women, disrespects love and relationships, and lionizes violence, self-indulgence, and sexual extravagance?

When we got where we thought we wanted to be, was it the place that made us forget about our personal and moral responsibility to lift ourselves AND each and every member of the African American community? Has our arrival in a motorcade of tinted-windowed, 20” chrome-rimmed, spoiler on the back Mercedes’ made it easy to ride past public housing sites and dilapidated neighborhoods, see our cousins idly sitting on the porches, and turn up our noses, chiding that they will never get anywhere? How did we arrive comfortably at “every man for himself,” when prior to 1960 we were our “brother’s keepers” and lauded interdependence and communalism as the only ways to move forward?

Did we get to a level playing field, a real piece of the pie? Or did we simply forget who we were before we arrived?

Maybe we should take a hard look at where we arrived and redesign the directions for the new/next take off. Maybe we should get off at the next exit.

Sadiqqa © 2007