While I’ve never gotten largely wound up around the month of February for several reasons or Black History month, this year I’m doing it different. After being on the road for a majority of the past year I rediscovered something that always seems to blow my mind. The number of black people that I see out exploring places far from home tends to be extremely rare. I’ve met some amazing people in all shapes and colors hands-down, but so few come in the beautiful shades of peanut-butter brown and rich dark black complexions of African ancestry.
What’s up with that? For the longest I’ve wondered if it is due to lack of interest, funds, or opportunities… I still haven’t a sure answer. From visiting various African American museums across the country I started to find that blacks seemed to have traveled more in the past than they do now. Much of that may have been traveling to escape slavery or to seek out equality, but even then travel extended far beyond the physical movement of simply placing one foot in front of the other to get to paradise A or exotic place B. Blacks seemed to have traveled more in thought. They fought. They pushed the envelop for what seemed impossible so that I could sit here today and speak freely about why so many blacks are only striving to push Escalades, dangle expensive handbags around their arms, or sit cozy in the warm embrace of their narrow-minded uncultured ignorance.
I’m not saying go splurge on a trip to Tuvalu because it’s going to make you a better all-knowing type of person. If you live in Georgia perhaps you’d like to consider visiting Omaha to go to the birth site of Malcolm X or even just to see how the regular everyday folks in Omaha – black, white or Latino, do how they do and what they do. Or how about this…Open a book! READ!
Perfect? That I am far from being, but each day this Black History month I plan on learning just a little more than the day before about my beautiful people and culture. And as this month moves on and into the year I hope to inspire someone out there to do something just a little different in their lives.
If you find something you beg to differ with above please share. If you feel me give me a shout too or just give me a shout…
Peace.
on Mar 20th, 2007 at 7:16 pm
my parents generation, now in their sixties, shared a pioneering spirit that continues to inspire me. my mum and dad both arrived by boat from jamaica at their newly adopted home, england, at a time when a lot of rental accomodation bore the welcoming sign “no dogs, no irish, no blacks”. my mother an aspiring nurse was in her early twenties, when she arrived without telephone numbers for friends, or any real knowledge of the streets or people she’d have to understand and negotiate with. When i flick through her photo album of glamouroulsy posed portraits on the streets of switzerland and amsterdam, with exscuisite afros and tailor made matching mini suits – I beam with pride and wonder, how was was she so fiercely defiant brave all that time ago. I think her generation’s pioneering spirit was a sign of the times – they had no internet to research destinations. Things were riskier. The stakes for me and my friends are different and potentially not as high.