THE BRIDGE: The Problem of the Paradigm
By
Darryl James
African
Americans are in need of a paradigm shift.
We are without a compass, without a consistent methodology and without
our own center.
We appear to be rebelling against the dark and the light, the cold
and the hot, against motion and inactivity. We are rebelling against
the revolution and revolting against nothing, yet many of us claim
to be revolutionaries.
We focus on trying to be Malcolm or Martin or Huey Newton as though
there is nothing else. The true leaders of our communities are so
few and far between that we can¹t even coalesce around any real
movement.
We feel that we are entitled to be lead, but we will not allow anyone
to lead. One or a group of us can not show up and make things better,
because our divisive language will tear down the effort. We attack
them and burn them out, yet still expect them to serve us AND serve
us the way we want them to. "Don¹t do it that way,"
"That¹s not what I would do," and "Don¹t
write about THAT!"
We rail against differing groups of us and fail to find common ground
even when we are standing in the same pit of snakes.
We have so little faith and trust in each other that we are not only
unable to do business with each other, we are having difficulty establishing
and maintaining relationships and we are even having difficulty having
conversations.
Other people have a theological center, a cultural center and something
from which discipline and world view are constructed, which in turn
enables them to create a future by laying down a blue print.
Our problem is that we have none of that, but we pretend that we do.
Individuals pretend to be "warriors," "kings,"
"queens," and "revolutionaries," but do nothing
warlike, revolutionary, royal, noble or worthy of being followed.
We refer to what once was, yet pay little respect to what it took
to exist that way.
We once cheered to see one of our own move ahead into new territory.
We cheered because we knew that it meant more opportunity for others
of us. Now, we cheer, but the opportunities are for individuals who
open no doors, fail to look back, and make every attempt to shut down
the opportunities for others, in favor of being the new, the few and/or
the only. Yet, we still cheer.
Kwame Toure, formerly known as Stokely Carmichael said "Capitalism
will come to confuse us, causing us to concentrate on the form and
so miss the essence."
Black Americans are focusing on what it looks like: Blacks in the
Bush administration, laughing Negroes on television, and Oprah and
Bob Johnson with billions. We are so focused on what we look like
that we have missed what we could be. We talk about "us"
making more money, but "we" do very little by way of long
term empowerment for "us."
We are proud to see the building of mega churches even though they
still employ mini solutions for the communities they suck dry.
There is no infrastructure and no nucleus to our community. We are
like dandelions after you blow the tendrils away, blowing through
the wind without being connected to anything.
That which we claim as our culture is a bastardization with the most
diseased aspects of our mis-socialization substituting for culture.
The waste product of our heritage has become the new legacy.
We have no cultural center. Our stereotypes are negative and damaging,
but we perpetuate them and many of us become angry at the suggestion
that we should dignify ourselves. To see this clearly, tell people
you dislike Black comedy or rappers who call each other "Nigger."
We have no political center, typically following the Democratic party
without intrinsically challenging or exploring the Republican party.
Our foray into exploring the Republican party is to twist to the opposite
of what we are. Our embrace of that party is typically for personal
economic pursuit or personal political gain, tacitly ignoring the
heavy racist hand with which the party is run. We are severely emotionally
and illogically divided along party lines.
You can¹t even have collective intelligence if you don¹t
have a base from which to move forward.
The Asian paradigm is excelling at technology. There is a default
setting to excel in math and science.
Jews are about making money and being thrifty with the dollar. You¹ve
heard the expression: "¹Jew¹ him down to a better deal."
A stereotype, but a paradigm that keeps that community in the Black
(pun intended).
We talk about how few Native Americans are still around. Their numbers
are fewer than our own, yet they have land that they can call their
own, and protected commerce on that same land.
What do we have aside from our own holiday and month of history? We
are owed nothing, unless we write the check and force the bank to
negotiate it. We demand reparations and can not even have an agreed
upon methodology by the majority of us.
We have actually everything we need to be self-sufficient. But we
can¹t come together and leverage what we have, because of our
skewed worldview of others and ourselves. No one speaks of how difficult
it is to do business with us more than us. Yet, we take all the trashing
and abuse other cultures dish out when giving us the "privilege"
of buying their wares. And making them rich.
Integration was a good idea, but the result was not. After the Civil
Rights Movement, the immediate beneficiaries got theirs, moved away
and dropped the ball. For them, it became an individual pursuit of
the American dream. They, like white America, wanted to segregate
from "those people," who were simply left behind with very
little services or representation and no voice.
Instead of building schools, we send our children to other schools.
Instead of building our own wealth, we participate in the wealth building
of others, for small personal gain or for nothing. Instead of spending
time rebuilding our communities, we chase after whites who move back
into the communities we abandoned.
Yet, some thirty years after integration, we still find difficulties
fitting in as a group. We can not assimilate, even though others can.
More importantly, no one wants us to assimilate because we have nothing
to offer when we show up.
We control no industry, even when we serve as the product or create
the product. We don¹t even understand or control our actual collective
wealth and power. We come to the table with confusion and divisive
language and behavior among our poor and the wealthy alike.
We have given up everything desirable about us, sharing with others,
while denying it to ourselves. We fail to cherish our own music, our
own hairstyles, and even our own skin color, yet watch and fawn as
others take pieces of us and claim them as their own.
We have no collective conscience. We are not building towards anything
or striving to make things better for the next generation. We are
just here making a spectacle out of ourselves and having a sense of
entitlement.
A people are only as good as their weakest link. So how can we be
strong when we watch our weakest fall with no or little action? Instead
of creating programs to uplift our weakest, we curse them for being
weak and reject any reason for their weakness.
We can excel and take our place among the world economy, but we need
a new paradigm.
Now that I have raged against the machine of self-destruction, I will
outline recommended paradigms in my next column. Stay tuned.
