The genius of our foremothers and forefathers was ... to equip black folk with cultural armor to beat back the demons of hopelessness, meaninglessness, and lovelessness.
-- Cornel West

It was the sincerest prayer of your great, great grandmother that you would never have to see the days that she did and you’d be free of the suffering she endured. She prayed that you would never be stripped of your identity or dignity. She called on God that you’d never be ripped from your home and family, and that your children would remain by your side giving you the privilege of knowing and loving on your grandchildren and their children. Your greatest grandmothers stood all the pain, insult, rape, violence, exploitation, disrespect, and disregard they could so that you would have and know better.

The appeals of your great, great grandfather were very similar and he also implored God to help you learn a trade, own a piece of land, and be able to take whatever was thrown at you, be that chains and whips, Black codes, burning crosses, ropes strung across large Southern Magnolia trees, Jim Crow laws, water hoses and German Shepherds, Bull Conners, public housing, Ronald Reagans, racial profiling, and the national and international media. Your greatest granddads held their breath, held their fire, and held tightly to hope so that you would have a chance to live your best life.

Your task – your only job – is to wear the armor they painstakingly made for you, made to protect you from the way things may have changed but the way things are still the same. The armor is made for defending yourself against the way the world tries to define you and place you in its restrictive box. You must wear the specially-made protective covering that keeps you safe from physical, mental, and sexual abuse, the armor of information and transparency that shields your children from the same violence and its pain and confusion.

You must put on the steelplate that helps to combat complacency, apathy, and mediocrity – none of which mean us any good. Use your armor to guard against working any old job just to make ends meet; Great, Great Mama and Great, Great Daddy worked hard so that we would have and could exercise viable choices. There’s no need to work on somebody else’s land. You’re covered and protected to work your own. And though there’s a housing crisis in America made just for us, get you some land and a house. You’re suited up to keep them!

Big Mama and Big Daddy didn’t make no chumps in cheap clothing!

Your tailor-made armor was made of love and hope. It was made pliable so you’d have growing room, discriminatingly porous so the good stuff could penetrate the steel, and the pattern is simple enough so you can duplicate it for your children. Though the armor may have remnants of hopelessness unconsciously soldered into its steel and that despair somehow, on any given day, seeps into your blood, know your foreparents did the best they could. Pray it off, get some therapy, and move on. To do less is to give in and assert weakness, and that’s not who we are!

Sadiqqa © 2008