The words “black community” is an idea but not a reality. The narrow definition of a community is a group of people centralized with intent, belief, resources, preferences, needs, risks, and other conditions affecting the identity of the participants and their degree of cohesiveness. A small native tribe is a community, the black community is often reviewed as a tribe and I believe that analysis is the issue. The tribe mentality enforces “how a black person should act and do”. If you don’t fit in the model – you are in essence “anti-black”. The circus begins when black groups divide and define ideas, which maybe based on religious, political or even cultural differences.
It’s easy to invoke “tribe mentality” squarely in the center of every aspect of black community; ultimately, that same mentality will frustrate the thinking person. The thinking person will excel individually and abandon the black community, but in reality, he is abandoning the tribe mentality.
In time, the thinking person may self reflect on life and a genuine concern for his people may energize the soul. Perhaps he or she begins to write a book or becomes active in an organization.
He or she will submit perfect solutions for the so called black community. The translation of their solution, will only register with specific targets that speak the same language, essentially falling flat. The black community is diverse, vibrant and wealthy at top percentages, and also impoverish, self-deprecating and idle at lowest percentages. The range of achievement in the black community is no different from any other group in America. The problem for the black community is the tribe mentality, which limits ideology and possibilities. The tribe mentality is what keeps the poor from progressing and what also keeps the wealthy from investing. Both groups afraid of the other and I submit that this circular poison is what crushes the black community from growing outward.
Crush the tribe mentality and free the individual. Freed individuals will dream and implement innovation, which will expand horizons of Black American achievement. We read black history, but don’t comprehend that those named and unnamed black pioneers were visionary juggernauts, who were enslaved at the ankles, but never of the mind, rejecting mental shackles of the world, including the mental shackles of the black community. Today’s black Americans, who enforce rules of the tribe, are more destructive than they know. Don’t mock something different on the basis that is not from the tribe– the black community is not a tribe – the black community is individuals of many shades and ideas, independently weaving into a massive global infrastructure. One by one leaving impoverished communities and losing nothing, but gaining everything. The American black community is not destined to be fenced in 20 blocks around downtown, but destined to become inspiration for impoverished blacks all over the globe. Leave the tribe mentality behind and become aquatinted with the future.
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Saturday, November 28th 2009 at 2:07PM
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