In 1919 when Claude McKay wrote those now ever famous words, “If We Must Die,” one can not help but wonder if some eighty odd years later, we would still be dying. Only now, the difference being instead of us dying at the hands or racist whites, we would be dying at the hands of our own people. No longer is racism the biggest threat to the black community, the black community is the biggest threat to the black community.What happened to that Dream Deferred? At the conclusion to his poem “Harlem: A Dream Deferred” poet Langston Hughes pondered would that dream “explode?” The answer quite frankly is no, the dream did not explode. The dream imploded.
One’s first inclement is to address the statistics, well, according to the U. S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics: Blacks were six times more likely than whites to be murdered in 2002; Blacks were seven times more likely than whites to commit homicide in 2002; from 1976-2002 94% of black victims were killed by blacks. While these statistics are quite alarming, societal influences play a very large role in the condition of the black community today.
While the burden of responsibility does fall on the shoulders of our generation, let it be known the burden is the size of an entire culture, and our only support system is our fragmented community. Older generations have alienated and distanced themselves from the youth today, most frequently writing us off as selfish and ungrateful, making little or no attempt to look past the over-saturated, oversexed, representation that appears daily in media outlets.
While that movement has the loudest voice, it is not the only one. The flip-side coincides with Mos Def, The Roots, Talib Kweli, De La Soul, and the purveyors of “Lets Get Free,” Dead Prez. The mistake here is equating the direction of our culture with notoriety and fame.
Before us lies nothing but space and opportunity, the circumstances are ripe for a change within the black community. The path leads back to the core foundation of those who tread that very path, a sense of community, moral values, and spirituality, in addition to a re-evaluation of success, not measured in earthly possessions, but the progression of an entire “nation, within a nation.”
Instead of a “throwback and a fitted,” why not throw back to Marcus Garvey, W. E. B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington, Martin and Malcolm and all the others, and fit their pieces of the legacy with ours and complete the puzzle, reach the mountain top, and scream with a resounding fury, no longer is the Dream Deferred, we are living it.
Charles McCall
Grad Student