We live in a society where the worst news rules the airways and good news is rarely pulled out, if it’s not a comfortable racial story where — more often than not — a good-hearted, white person does something for some distressed, black person.
We continue to play to the narrative that African Americans are hapless and need a guide to help us see the way; I disagree. America has created something unique in a nation that is drenched with the blood of Native Americans, European Americans and African Americans. One of the most unique groups is the descendants of the ex-slaves, because in us holds the true promise of what America can be.
A race of people representing at least 100 tribal groups were brought from one side of the world and enslaved on the other side. They then won their freedom and are trying to make a life for themselves in the land of their enslavement while in an ongoing battle with the descendants and supporters of the slave masters.
It’s a story that sits in the very middle of the narrative about what America was and what America can be. It’s a story full of heroes and heroines, and it’s a story that has plenty of room for new ones.
A hero complex
I have a hero complex. I am wired to work with the downtrodden, the least and left-out, and it is because I inherited it from my mother, Leoma James.
She was the godmother of the all-black village I grew up in, called Hatcherville, in the woods of southwestern Michigan, at the end of the Underground Railroad. If there was a problem, sooner or later, it would end up at the kitchen table of Ms. Leoma, and that is where it ended.
Because I was the reader among my 11 brothers and sisters and would read on my bed, she would forget I was in the house. I had the opportunity to hear her handle a lot of business that was not intended for my ears. She did not tolerate black people stealing from or abusing each other. Her sense of right and wrong is at the foundation of mine.
How a black community should work together as a unit to benefit and protect itself became as important to me as football or basketball, and by age 12, I was consumed with trying to discover the answer. I still am consumed with the same issue, and I suspect that it is the root of my hero complex.
As an African-American man, I don’t need to go looking for issues to champion, problems to solve nor lives to save. All I need to do is walk out my door and down the street of my community, and the opportunity to be a hero is all around me.
But I do understand the big picture here because my ultimate goal must be to organize African Americans so well that there is no longer need for heroes — just competent leaders. But we are not there yet, and we still need heroes and heroines.
Wrapped around that picture is an even larger picture of what America can be if I am successful. I see my mission as the most important mission in America because, if we find the answer to the economic and social plight of the descendants of slavery, we have transformed America into something special.
No more need for heroes?
We have six years until 2019, when we will mark the 400th anniversary of when the first known slaves arrived at Jamestown, Va. I would like that anniversary to be more about what we have become than who we were, and I see that year as the one I take off my cape for the last time. Hopefully, there will be no need for heroes.
So when you look at where I have been and what is possible, it’s obvious that, for someone with a hero complex, I wake up in the morning absolutely giddy about being an African-American man. I can help take the most powerful nation the world has ever seen and make it even better, and my success should mean that Africans all over the world have food, shelter and decent health care.
For a man with a hero complex, it doesn’t get any better than this. I love being an African American.
CHARLIE JAMES has been an African-American-community activist for more than 35 years. He is co-founder of the Martin Luther King Jr. County Institute (mlkci.org). To comment on this column, write to QAMagNews@nwlink.com.
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