Being an African American is like being on a perpetual rollercoaster where you are not sure about the brakes. We are at a point in history where change is inevitable, yet the forces against change will not go quietly into the night.
We can use this as an excuse to embrace our worst fears or realize that the sounds we here is the groan of a rusty moral universe being patiently but forcibly bent toward justice.
You have heard the sayings that it’s always the darkest before the dawn and that most people stop two steps away from success because the last two steps are the toughest. Every time I get discouraged about Trayvon Martin’s shooting death or maniacs gunning black men down in Tulsa, Okla., I remind myself that this is not my great-grandfathers’ America after slavery ended, nor is it my grandfathers’ America in the 1880s. It’s better than my father’s America, in the early part of the last century. That is why I disagree so strongly with those who say that nothing has changed.
Holding fast to fears
A lot has changed, but African Americans as a people have changed the least. When you hold fast to the fears of the past, you hold fast to your reaction to those fears. We stop because we think others want us to stop and not because anyone has physically stopped us.
We let the echoes of the past be the only barriers to our future. The sound of a child’s whip brings back memories still too close to the surface. At those moments, it’s difficult to remember that change always come as a result of what the oppressed do because the oppressor has no need to change anything.
Our actions — not our fears — will determine our fate in America, and our fate is intricately tied to the fate of African people all over the planet.
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said that the moral universe is long, but it always bends toward justice. He also reminded us that it does not just bend on its own: It bends because of the collective weight of those of us who refuse to give up on justice.
Change is not a spectator sport, it takes every ounce of energy you have and you often need to go all in, leaving nothing on the table but your sweat.
The election coming up is a good example of what is at stake.
When President Barack Obama was first elected, many of us did not believe he could ever win, so we either didn’t register to vote or did not vote. More than 98 percent of those of us who voted did vote for Obama, but we left a lot of votes on the table because less than 60 percent of eligible black voters voted.
My challenge to anyone who did not believe before: It’s time to believe and act this time. Get registered if you’re not, and get ready to cast your vote within the first week you receive it in the mail. Leaving that ballot lying around the house is the worst thing any of us can do because it will get buried under this week’s crisis and you may never find it.
Don’t talk to me about what is not changing if you are not a change agent at the polls. We can’t let the past control our actions today and tomorrow. We can’t let our grandfathers’ story become our story, no matter how powerful the narrative or how real he made it.
‘Our story’
My America is still a racial minefield that I walk carefully through, but my missteps are not as fatal as they once were, and I can embrace my hopes and dreams more than my fears. It’s still not totally “my America” yet, because African Americans have not fully diagnosed what we want “our America” to look like.
But it’s no longer the America of the enemies of racial justice either, and that is important to remember as we do something my father would never have believed: reelect an African-American president in 2012.
Believe me, “Mr. Willie” James, would not have recognized this America if he would have been here for his 102nd birthday. I can hear the former sharecropper say, as he looked out the window to make sure no white sheets were walking around, “Boy, you don’t know your rear end from a hole in the wall with that nonsense.”
Let’s get busy: We have a new America to build, and this fall’s election is crucial in deciding what it will or will not look like.
CHARLIE JAMES has been an African-American-community activist/writer for more than 35 years.
[[In-content Ad]]