(FinalCall.com) - On the heels of the execution of Troy Davis who many believed to be innocent, and the larger backdrop of the dismal state of Black manhood in the United States, all roads leads to Philadelphia from October 7-9 for the sixteenth anniversary of the historic Million Man March and Holy Day of Atonement.
The weekend commemorates the 1995 mass call from the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan for Black men to commit to atonement, reconciliation and responsibility in the way of God, self, family and community. The invitation drew two million men to Washington, D.C., and is a spiritual and positive historical milestone for the Black male experience in America.
However since the great gathering and what many described as a “glimpse of heaven,” active opposition to Black men being whole, free and justified compounds a myriad of problems that plague the group. And there is also the continued need for Black men to address and counter persistent negative conditions imposed from without and negative reactions to these conditions and problems from within.
“We stand in violation of the pledge that we made in D.C. that day. That pledge represents a code of conduct and because it was violated on every point, our communities continue to suffer. Our failure to stand by our pledge has allowed disunity to creep into our communities, making them worse off than they were in 1995,” said Rodney Muhammad, student minister over the Nation of Islam's Delaware Valley Region and Philadelphia's Muhammad Mosque No. 12 in a Sept. 14 press conference.
Rodney Muhammad is working with other organizers of the anniversary activities hoping to reignite and reenergize the spirit of the Million Man March and fulfill the pledge for improvement men took on Monday, October 16, 1995 in Washington D.C.
Black men suffer the highest rates for homicide, incarceration, poor health, educational failure and joblessness.
According to the National Urban League “State of Black America: Portrait of the Black Male” report: Black men are more than twice as likely to be unemployed as White males, and those who work in comparable jobs earn only 75 percent of what White men earn. 2004 statistics revealed 50 percent of Black men in their 20s were jobless, an increase from 46 percent in 2000. They are nearly seven times more likely to be incarcerated with average jail sentences about 10 months longer than those of White males. Black men lead in rates of hypertension, heart disease, prostate cancer and from age 15 to 34 are nearly eight times as likely to suffer from AIDS as their White counterparts.
The report “Yes We Can: The Schott 50 State Report on Public Education and Black Males” found only 47 percent of Black males graduate from high school.
On the streets of America young Black males, ages 15-19, die from homicide 46 times the rate of White males their age. However thinkers across the leadership spectrum agree that socially the Black male has been mentally and spiritually emasculated and purposefully destroyed and voided of his natural self and purpose.
“It indicates that systemic disparities evident by race, social class, or zip code are influenced more by the social policies and practices that we put in place to distribute educational opportunities and resources and less by the abilities of Black males,” said Dr. John H. Jackson, president and CEO of the Scott Foundation for Public Education.
According to experts like Dr. Umar Abdullah Johnson, a nationally certified school psychologist, in the years following the Million Man March negative conditions were reinforced by systematic racism, discrimination and a hatred of self that begins in the formative years of young Black males.
“In order to understand where we are in terms of the crises that's facing Black males, we have to have a firm understanding of the psycho-academic war against Black boys,” Dr. Abdullah Johnson told The Final Call in a telephone interview.
The psycho-academic war is a “five stage process that the American social order created to engineer the premature extermination” of the Black male, Dr. Johnson said. The stages are mis-education, psychiatric medication, incarceration, isolation and then extermination, he said.
The Philadelphia-based specialist said whenever you study extermination campaigns in history, from the Jewish extermination campaign by the Nazi's to the Black American extermination campaign presently in motion by the American social order or the genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia, the common denominator is always the “assassination of the victim's image in the public eye” preceding the physical extermination of the victim.
“There must be a public lynching of the character of the victim before there's a physical taking of the victim's life,” Dr. Johnson said.
“When the public has been led to believe that a certain population are nothing but drug dealers, murderers, baby makers, dependants on the government; when you create that image in the public mind and then the public turns on the television and see police shooting down these victims, no one is going to raise a cry,” explained Dr. Johnson.
“Dear Brothers, I must say it's not an accident this is a conspiracy and we know it from the prophecies of the Qur'an and the Bible …. (Henry) Kissinger years ago talked about culling the population of our planet by over 2 billion people and those 2 billion people are not the well to do, they're us the Black, Hispanic, the weak, the poor,” Minister Farrakhan said in a lecture called “The Conspiracy of Prostate Cancer.”
For months leading to the march, Minister Farrakhan, its convener and visionary, galvanized and addressed the problem and reformation of the Black male in a series of Men Only meetings themed “Let Us Make Man.” Both he and his teacher, the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad diagnosed the problem of the Black man as rooted in the crises of identity—lacking knowledge of self, God and the adversary of God. Mr. Muhammad's teachings stressed the critical need for a new way of thinking as the beginning of a new way of living for the Black man.
“One of the attributes of Allah, The All-Wise God, Who is the Supreme Being, is knowledge. Knowledge is the result of learning and is a force or energy that makes its bearer accomplish or overcome obstacles, barriers and resistance. In fact, God means possessor or power and force,” Mr. Muhammad wrote in “Message to the Blackman.” “The education my people need is that knowledge, the attribute of God, which creates power to accomplish and make progress in the good things or the righteous things,” he continued.
Minister Farrakhan established the “8 Steps of Atonement” at the Million Man March
“The most profound knowledge is the Knowledge of God and the Knowledge of Self,” said Minister Farrakhan in lecture called “The Origin of Blackness.” The Minister pointed out that thought produces actions, events and circumstances and people are shaped by the events of their time.
Dr. Hill Harper, author, film and television actor, said in the introduction of his book, “Letter to a Young Brother: MANifest Your Destiny,” that young Black males are marketed counter-productive messages about their life options and priorities.
“There is an overwhelming sales pitch targeted at young men that subliminally suggests that material goods are the extent of their birth right and are what make them become real men,” said Dr. Harper.
“I want young men to have knowledge of the things that bring them true empowerment: education, a strong sense of purpose, compassion, confidence, and humility to name a few,” he wrote.
Minister Farrakhan placed the march in its historical perspective and addressed the relevance in light of real time conditions of the Black male today.
“The Million Man March is what it is, was what it was. It's foolish to try to duplicate something that God gave us, at that moment of time that did what it did,” said Minister Farrakhan, reflecting on the event in the book called “Closing the Gap: Inner Views of the Heart, Mind & Soul of the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan.”
“Only unwise people try to duplicate what was, but persons who understand what was can build on what was to create what is needed for the new moment,” he explained.
Organizing the march unified people from different sectors of Black life such as Christians, Muslims, nationalists, integrationists, separatists and every philosophical, religious and political persuasion. In later years the march expanded to the Million Family March and further evolved into the Millions More Movement. The Million Family March produced a comprehensive policy agenda that covered a wide range of issues from economics to foreign policy.
Over the years its influence has sparked national and international marches of “Millions,” like the Million Women March, Million Youth March, Million Mom March and Million Fathers March. There is also the global impact of the march demonstrated in several countries like Libya and Egypt where there were million peoples marches styled after the 1995 event.
Although there were encouraging changes resulting from the march in the immediate after years, 16 years later, the onslaught against Black manhood persists. The Million Man March affected the Black male image, fostered a significant increase in voter registration and participation, lowered crime rates, increased Black adoptions and produced more engagement in neighborhoods and increased entrepreneurship.
According to some observers the success of the march could also be measured by the greater appreciation for spiritual values and increased pride and unity. Other measures of success were family reunions with previously absent fathers and the increase of Black male participation in churches, mosques, and organizations.
An October 22 2010 Final Call article documented that after the 1995 gathering, the National Association of Black Social Workers reported a flood of 13,000 applications to adopt Black children. The article cited that 1.5 million Black men registered to vote in the months following the march which effected outcomes during the 1996 presidential elections, which was credited to the gathering by analyst David Bositis of the Joint Center for Economic Studies.
“In reviewing the sharp increase in the Black male vote, I might find it highly implausible that there was another factor that rivaled the Million Man March in bringing about this change,” Mr. Bostitis remarked at the time.
Furthermore, qualitatively the march represented a tonal shift and counter-narrative to the prevailing media and destructive cultural images that criminalize Black men as menaces to society, thugs, irresponsible and trifling individuals. However since then, even with the political rise of President Obama, who attended the Million Man March, many disagree on how the symbolism of his victory has changed the global view of Black men in America.
“Even though President Obama describes himself as African American many people internationally see him as mixed-race as opposed to Black. Secondly although he has risen to a position of excellence this has been on the back of a rather privileged education and life. Thirdly one man in the White House is not overnight going to change the views, whether private or public, that many people outside of America have about black males,” opined David McQueen in a Grio.com piece from July 2009.
“Currently, the rate at which Black males are being pushed out of school and into the pipeline to prison far exceeds the rate at which they are graduating and reaching high levels of academic achievement. A deliberate, intense focus is needed to disrupt and redirect the current educational trajectory for Black males,” said the Schott Report.
Despite the bleak statistics and challenges, when Min. Farrakhan speaks Oct. 9 at the Philadelphia Convention Center listeners can be assured of hearing a divine message with divine guidance for the progress and survival of Black America. “What is the essence of something? According to the dictionary, the essence of a thing is the ‘intrinsic nature,' or ‘indispensable quality' of that thing; especially something abstract that determines its character. Here's God, now, creating a human—the first human—from a single essence; and created the woman of the same. If God created us from the same essence, then what is that essence that determines our character? The essence of you is God Himself. The essence, that which determines your character, is your connection to The Creator of the heavens and the earth, Who is also your and my Creator,” said Min. Farrakhan in a Sept. 11 message to women that also provided major insight for men.
He explained how Black men and women had been “denatured” by a world bent on their control and destruction. “You have never looked at yourself as ‘belonging to' God; you only see yourself in the light of what The Enemy has made you to see yourself: As ‘ex-slaves' or ‘Black people of no worth or value or purpose in life.' The Enemy never taught you the true knowledge of who you are. And, I don't blame him because he was given power to rule. But his time is up, and your time has come! And now God has come to bring you back to yourself! You must be introduced to your intrinsic nature; the essence that determines your character, which is God Himself.
“The meaning of ‘character' is ‘the mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual (human being).' That's very, very heavy! Because if your moral character and your mental character is of God, then you have to ask yourself: ‘What happened to us as a human being that our morals are not where God wants them to be? That our mental qualities have been curtailed, brought down—or even killed?' ‘What happened to women and men that we are so far down and away from the essence of our own being where we, now, are not even a caricature of what God intended?' ”
Posted By: Siebra Muhammad
Wednesday, October 5th 2011 at 12:44PM
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