The following is Blog number thirty-five and is part of the ongoing Racial Reconciliation in America Series. A number of posts will be made in this segment of the Series as we discuss The Black American Family. This post is entitled: The Black American Family – Complete the Puzzle.

RACIAL RECONCILIATION

THE BLACK AMERICAN FAMILY

COMPLETE THE PUZZLE

The difficulty in this stage of our discovery process on the Black family is our requirement for absolute authenticity. To a large degree the revelation requires focusing on Black disadvantage. It’s a bummer man! Such focus brings negative thought; an energy force thief! There is the urge to just say, “So what” or “What damn difference does it make” going on and on about the historical realities of White folk advantage versus Black folk disadvantage? Some might say that such a commentary as has been put forth here is really just making excuses for Black folks living in poverty and disadvantage.

As one who grew up in poverty and also overcame poverty, frankly we get it when folk say so what! There are times when we too have just said so what. You can just get tired of the discussion; however real, the facts just seem irrelevant, as they really do nothing to advance the cause of change. Then, someone else asks the question is this really true?

Is the cause of change advanced or hindered by revelations of historical White and Black interchange? Is there something to be learned from a race based discovery process? Have we not heard all of this before, meaning Blacks were Slaves and treated badly and Whites were not? So what the Civil War ended 150 years ago, and folk have been talking about that for 150 years!

            Well, therein is the American color line puzzle. We all know about the problems and what have we all done to fix the problems? How does a nation as incredible as America is; abide 150 years of talking about the devastating affects of Slavery on Black people and still allow the affects to exist? Is the answer yet another question of who cares? Perhaps the answer is simply the statement: “Fella you just can’t get there from here!”

How is it that a race based economic system that required the decimation of one people comes to an end; yet after a century and a half we have not been able to restore the progeny of the decimated? Are the progeny also being decimated? Is the economy still a race based one or just a low wage dependent low wage driven economy? Have the Brown people replaced the Black ones? Are these Brown a truly free folk; a folk who are living to work without a true homeland, as they toil daily in fear and social turmoil? Is this still a race based economy?

How is this possible that we have not fixed the Black folk problem in America considering our greatness as a nation? How is this possible? What is behind this conundrum; this racial and truly tiresome Black and White puzzle? Surely we all know it is one puzzle that this nation must complete.

What has not been tried, what puzzle pieces have not been found; if the pieces are known how can we manage to fit them together that we all be complete? When in America do we get to shout collectively: “Eureka we completed the race puzzle that our forefathers could not!” Why did we do what they did not? Well because we wanted to and they didn't! That’s why.