Topic: Rebuilding Black Families and Communities Entry 1 Part 3

Title: Do we see the Black Family as it Exists or do we Take it for Granted as an Institution? Part 2

Video Inspired By: Why are Black Families Weaker Today than 150 Years Ago (Episode #017)(LINK) https://youtu.be/_IezV8a2vO4

I finished the last entry off with a question, what is the most pressing challenge facing the black family presently; I could give many answers to this question but I will use it as a launch spring for this entry – you see, I believe the most pressing challenge facing the black family is that we don’t see the Black Family structure for what it is, a topic I covered in the first part to this series. This pressing challenge is only slightly more pressing then the second challenge, the fact that we take the Black Family structure for granted. How can I make such a statement, easy – we have taken few steps to protect its structure (I think I just heard 70 million Afrikan Diasporant heads in the United States turn towards me – hear me out). I am well aware of the Black Church’s role in trying to protect the Black Family, I am also well aware of the emphasis placed on studying the Black Family during the Civil Rights, Black Power and Black School Movements, I am even aware of a couple Black Family Institutes that still carry out such studies; but we do not have an organ that synchronizes the information within those institutions with information gleamed from tribal cultural studies happening in Afrika, an organ which then distills that information down into practical manuals for training those involved in grassroots social work inside our community in order to influence healthy intrafamily and intercommunal relations. The reason we don’t have this organ is not entirely our fault, but it is partially our fault.

Obviously anti-black Eurocentric forces within this country and abroad have worked tirelessly to prevent collaboration between our Diaspora’s Motherland inhabitants and the Diaspora here in the United States. We, though, have not as a people decided to respond to this tireless anti-diasporic labor as we have in the past – with steeled resolve and unyielding dedication to reattaching ourselves to the place where we were stolen from. Why has our collective response been so poor during these post-Black Power movement years? My simplistic answer to this question; class solidarity has resulted in those who made it out the hood or climbed from segregated jobs to integrated jobs; psychically detaching from their caste responsibilities. Frankly I don’t necessary believe this is entirely correct, but I do believe it holds some truth in it. See at the answers heart is the idea of community; remember what I said previously about the Black Family structure being tribal. This was my way of saying it is extensive, including and encompassing parts in other people’s families, members in other families and friends who are closer then kin. These descriptions fit the hoods we come from, hence the old saying homeboy and homegirl which became homie in later years. They also fit the black societies that were absorbed by white societies after segregation gave way to integration. Unfortunately due to the dual consciousness developed as a response to the trauma gained by our traversing and surviving the Maafa; both the hood and those Black societies did not prevent us from being imprinted by the alien culture surrounding us. TV and radio and later the internet, brought to us a world we could only dream of; one where whiteness was tolerable, funny, charitable, justice seeking and always wiser than any other color. This misrepresentation informed the previous two generations, encouraging different ways to respond to indignities then generations past. I don’t want to get going on our media diet because I’ve been thinking on that quite a bit lately and will go off on a long tantrum on how TV is ruining our community, so let me reconnect this to the statement kicking off this paragraph.

Whereas pre-Civil Rights and pre-Black Power Movement were shaped primarily by mouth to ear stories, firmly grounding our perception of our present, to the past where the stories originated in memory from a place where the Maafa was cured or had never happened thus enabling the old Afrikan lines to continue forward unmolested. In that unaltered existence, these Afrikan lines were whole and unbroken, meaning if Afrikans traveled to the North American continent, communication between those Ancestors living here and those Ancestors on the continent would remain strong and unbroken. Family would be family, no matter the continent. This sentiment is what’s lacking today. So many Afrikan Diasporants in the United States, do not see themselves nor the other skin-tone look alikes surrounding them as Afrikan in anyway. In fact this view is not new, Dr. Clarke was warning against its pervasiveness in the early 1990s. The anti-diasporic countermovements known as the American Descendants of Slavery and Foundational Black Americans (ADOS & FBA) seek to institutionalize this mentacidal trauma response. I personally enjoy the acronyms ADOS and FBA, but I see them differently; for me ADOS stands for Afrikan Descendants of Sankofa and FBA stands for Fundamentally Black Afrikan. To truly turn these cultural weapons into useful tools for our collective liberation, we will have to alter them to communicate a greater truth than is being propagandized by their originators. But I digress.

With this sentiment lacking, the idea that Family is Family no matter the continent it exists on, our essential selves become tainted, tattered and shredded by anti-Afrikan and anti-Black forces who use our unrooted exposure to chip away at our self-confidence and self-esteem; both reliant on how we see those who came before us and what we learned from how they accomplished their goals. Plugging into this sentiment will cause our inner strength to expand, by keeping Afrika close to us, learning where our family came from and adopting a name from your families origin region – you will find a power within that you never knew existed. Everything around you will be seen anew and family will take on an entirely new meaning.

Today’s Questions: What is the second most pressing challenge facing the black family presently, why?