Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us
Lyrics from Lift Every Voice and Sing by James Weldon Johnson
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun
Let us march on till victory is won
The lyrics from Lift Every Voice and Sing resonate in the soul of Black folk and remind us that we are a people of destiny and greatness! Ever since our sun-kissed feet first shuffled off slave ships in 1619 onto what would come to be known as American soil, we have had to overcome horrendous atrocities and cruel systems of inequality and injustice with each passing decade. Our long suffering, arduous journey has spanned over 400 years and counting of evil and inhumanity. Our agonizing cries have traversed the middle passage, enslavement, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, lynching, segregation, redlining, civil rights, and the 21st century knee of discrimination and inequality on our necks. We’ve been yearning to breathe free for an exceedingly long time.
When we think back over all that we have endured, even starting our emancipation with nothing in hand but a broken promise of forty acres and a mule, we know without a doubt that we have overcome and survived insurmountable odds. We kept moving forward despite the travesty that enriched former slave owners with reparations but left us penniless and intentionally disenfranchised after 12 generations of atrocious bondage.
For over four centuries we have been victimized by many heinous, violent, and hateful assaults designed to strip us of our humanity and dignity. These assaults have tried to subjugate, suppress, and oppress our very existence and progress as a people. It is truly a wonder and a miracle that we have survived!
And still we rise
We are a people blessed with extraordinary strength, ingenuity, and creativity. Even when we had to start from scratch, we refused to let hope die, and miraculously made something from nothing. We built towns, crafted inventions, created genres of music, and established churches, colleges, and universities. We also became teachers, preachers, doctors, lawyers, business owners and civic leaders.
Just like the phoenix rising from the ashes, we have risen from dire, hopeless circumstances and tragedy. Our ascension gives testimony to the fact that we have borne the brunt of oppression in this nation unlike no other. We bear the indelible scars from unimaginable physical and psychological pain and suffering over the centuries from a nation that keeps putting its knee on our necks. Half of our story hasn’t even been told. But we keep pressing on, despite the struggle and hardship.
Our oppression has evolved into the modern era of systemic racism and discrimination, police brutality and criminal injustice, domestic terrorism from white nationalism and white supremacy, the disparity and surge of COVID-19 deaths, and the suppression of our vote. We’ve been catching hell on all sides! Former Los Angeles Clippers Coach Doc Rivers summed up our struggle accurately when he spoke out against the police shooting of Jacob Blake this past summer, “It’s amazing why we keep loving this county and this country does not love us back.”
All we’ve ever wanted was equality and opportunity to thrive. African American author Kimberly Jones said it best as she was exclaiming the meaning of the Black Lives Matter protests in numerous cities last year, “They’re lucky Black people are looking for equality and not revenge.” Oh, how revengeful we could be! But knowing that courts are stacked against us, we take to the streets to let our voices and pain be heard!
A change is gonna come
We are fast emerging as a force to be reckoned with. The recent power of our vote has been so potent and earthshaking that it recently ousted a tyrannical, white supremacist U.S. president after one term in office and shifted the balance of power in the U.S. Senate. In this historic election, we got a two-fold victory. We successfully helped Joe Biden win the most votes of any U. S. President and helped Kamala Harris shatter the glass ceiling to become the first U.S. Vice President of African American, Caribbean, and South Asian heritage. Our robust efforts also helped Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff become Georgia’s first African American and Jewish U.S. senators.
The repercussion of it all drew the ire of Donald Trump and white nationalists, propagating false claims of election fraud or “the big lie” to invalidate the votes of African Americans in specific urban areas in swing states. Most disturbing is that these fraudulent claims of a “stolen election” led to a violent, riotous insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6.
Despite the outrage from those trying to obstruct and suppress us, we as a people know to come together to bring about change. We’ve been here before many times over. We are the ones who courageously keep moving mountains to save our democracy over and over again. Each time, we have refused to give in or give up. Instead, we somehow find the determination to rise up and strengthen our resolve to reach higher ground.
In reaching this higher ground, we draw from the strength of our ancestors who brought us this far by faith on a life path paved with their tears, their sacrifices, and their blood. Oh, how the lyrics of Lift Every Voice and Sing ring so true! We are indeed the hope of the slave and no matter what comes our way, we won’t let the clock turn back on our progress. Nor will we just march in place. We are resetting our clocks to spring forward in honor and dignity. Black lives do matter, and we must make sure that they matter to us first.
Thriving Black
This is why we have decided to start our Thriving Black blog. It’s not enough for us to just survive. We must begin to thrive! We must see victory, not shame in our painful history, celebrating our strength and greatness to not just overcome insurmountable odds but to keep flourishing as a people.
Thriving Black is a clarion call platform that’s sounding the alarm for us to do the work to keep moving forward and plant seeds of progress for future generations. Empowerment and self-determination are key factors for helping us achieve this goal. We will need to work urgently against the societal inequities that obstruct us and rebound from the hard-hitting impact of the COVID-19 crisis that greatly exposed economic and health disparities in our community. This means we will need to strengthen our families, which historically have been afflicted by the dismal statistics of single parenthood and fatherlessness. A strong family is the core component of our survival. We’ve got to attain higher education and skill sets to shift from our overdependence on service jobs, where we are employed disproportionately and least likely to be able to work from home.
Building wealth is a crucial goal. A recent Washington Post report shows the “black-white economic divide is as wide as it was in 1968” and “the COVID-19 recession is also hitting black families and business owners far harder than whites.” The report, using data from the historical Survey of Consumer Finances, shockingly shows that “in 2016, the typical middle-class black household had $13,024 in wealth versus $149,703 for the median white household.” That’s a lot of ground to cover and catch up to, but we’ve got to start now by putting strategies in place such as securing better paying jobs and purchasing homes to close this economic gap. Plus, we’ve got to have some wealth to pass onto the next generation.
In addition, the devastating loss of loved ones and jobs, the challenges of social distancing and distance learning, the confinement of working from home, and the restrictions of quarantining and COVID-19 protocols are all taking a mental and physical toll on us. Then, on top of that, underlying medical conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, and asthma make us most at risk for contracting COVID-19, giving us the highest number of hospitalizations and death rates. Add on the stress and trauma of racism and police brutality. Then finish it off with the offensive, threatening image that society has of us or even how we portray ourselves sometimes in these outrageous reality shows. You wind up with a very alarming situation.
Thriving Black wants to help us delve personally and boldly into these topics to shed some light on how these pressing issues are impacting us and what we can do to mitigate them and reposition ourselves to gain some ground. Thriving Black also provides a platform for us to affirm and validate ourselves, celebrating the phenomenal, victorious people that we are. It’s been a long time coming and we don’t have a minute to spare. So, “facing the rising sun, a new day begun,” let’s redeem and reclaim our time by Thriving Black!
