It’s no secret that Black America has gotten very complacent over the years.  Gone are the days when standing up and demanding better for your family and your community was a way of life.  If you’re looking for the objectification of women and the perpetuation of negative stereotypes to become unpopular in TV and media sometime soon, I’d suggest that you stop holding your breath.

I take the unpopular position of pointing the finger at the long-standing “leaders” in our community who may have done a few things in the 60’s and 70’s but haven’t done anything since then, the Old Guard.  The Old Guard has not done their part in cultivating new leaders and passing on the torch

Complacency and the pursuit of a dollar at ANY cost has become our undoing in our communities.  Think about it: …every African-American community has churches and a NAACP branch.  When was the last time you heard about a congregation stepping outside of their sanctuaries and knocking on doors, doing REAL outreach?  As far as the NAACP is concerned, can you name ONE program, event, or MEMBER of your local branch?

Let’s talk about this “worship” of the dollar in our community, especially by our youth.  How many Facebook statuses or Twitter updates have we seen saying “Get Money” or “Getting’ this money”…by people with NO JOBS!! Well, not legal ones, at least.  Even with that, is the chase of an easy dollar worth the deterioration of families and being unable to look our children in the eyes when they ask why you willingly and unapologetically sell DEATH to the community in which they grow up? It’s time for us to WAKE UP, plain and simple.

The truth is this: we, the Black community, have waited and suffered long enough.  Statistics aren’t getting any more hopeful, and disparities aren’t getting any narrower.  How many more of us have to be incarcerated before we decide to re-evaluate how our young boys and girls are being raised?  How many more children have to slip through the cracks of our educational system before we call for action from our local school boards?  How many of our young people with aspirations of excelling in life have to lose hope and go in the wrong direction because they lacked mentors to give them proper guidance?

If change in our community is to occur, and I mean REAL, SUSTAINABLE change, we have to make solid demands and stand by them. What demands? I thought you’d never ask.

1)     WE HAVE TO DEMAND MORE OF OURSELVES. 

Ignorance and lack of interest in current events must be deemed unacceptable from this day forth.  Whenever people become one-dimensional, they lose. Period.  How we go from a one-dimensional people to a dynamic one starts with you.  We can never stop learning or stop improving.  We can’t afford it as individuals, and we certainly can’t afford it as a community.  I will go deeper into this next time.

This also has a moral aspect attached to it.  We must learn to support each other, empathize with each other, and treat each other right. In order to do that, we must do the simplest thing that is seemingly so hard for us to do, which is SPEAK to each other. (MESSAGE!!)

2)     WE HAVE TO DEMAND MORE OF OUR LEADERS.

Just as we can’t afford to stay complacent ourselves, we can’t afford for people in leadership positions to sit and not do the work they were elected to do.  It’s time to tell these people and organizations to SHAPE UP OR SHIP OUT.  We must do away with these “cute” programs and community service projects that don’t have any true impact. 

Look at your long-standing activist organizations, cornerstones of the “Old Guard.”  What made activist organizations such as the NAACP so effective is that they were ACTING, really doing things and havingdiligently creating and sustaining a strong presence in our communities.  Today, some of these branches are more RE-active than anything, and they’re terrible at that, too.  When organizations become stagnant, we have to call the leadership to the floor and demand answers.  If they’re unwilling to get with the program, they must be replaced. B, bottom line.

3)     WE HAVE TO BECOME LEADERS.

All of us have to accept the challenge of turning around our communities.  If for no other reason, we must because we have been part of the problem at one point or another.  We’ve seen our young children model themselves after negative portrayals of Black men and women on television, yet passed on opportunities to address and correct the detrimental words or behaviors.  The reason why we’re in our current predicament to begin with is because we have collectively turned our heads and closed our ears to the things going on as if nothing was ever taking place.  That has to end, on ALL levels.

Furthermore, if we have to uproot stagnant, incompetent leaders, with whom will we replace them?  The[AG1]  We have to be able to recognize who is for the betterment of our community and who is against it, reaping the benefits of the position by doing nothing more than doling out empty promises and cheaply posturing themselves for the media.  We must step up, accept the call for us to do more than the status quo, and do the work that doesn’t just benefit us and our household, but our neighbors and the generation after us.

We can talk about gangs, drugs, economic disparities, and a broken family structure until we’re all blue in face, but what we really need to move forward is a CHANGING OF THE GUARD.  We are in desperate need of new leaders and, new ideas, …revitalizing our neighborhoods, our organizations, and, ultimately, our purpose. 

In the same way, one can’t do the same things and expect different results, the Black community cannot be led by the same people and expect our situation to get better as we move forward.

Stephen Smith is a recent graduate fromt the University of Tennessee-Knoxville with degrees in Political Science and Africana Studies.  He is currently working in Tennessee as a Field Organizer for Organizing for America.  In 2009, he created StephenJSmith.com, a fully -interactive site, featuring the latest world news, blogs, interviews, social commentary, and preferred readings.  He can be contacted at stephen.smith1911@gmail.com.

Throughout this past March up until now, I have been pondering many issues in Black America.  While there are many issues that I could have written about, why not address a topic that is avoided like the plague in the African-American community? 

I read an article the other week that raised the question of whether or not Black History Month has lost its luster.  The article basically said that, based on the importance (or lack thereof) the media placed on Black History Month leading up to and during the month of February, America has "moved on" from its harsh racial past and that the emphasis that Black History Month places on Black Civil Rights and the negative images and memories that it invokes is no longer needed in today's "post-racial" society.

I then proceeded to ask a few of my friends what they thought about Black History Month this year and a lot of them were upset that the month didn't get as much "shine" as it deserved.  When I asked them why they felt this way, they said "because White folks don't wanna know the truth about all that Black people did to get the country to where it is today."

But wait...do WE want to know the truth about Black History Month? How many of us know more about the Black struggle in America than just Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks on the bus? Who has read any of the great literary works of W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Booker T. Washington, or any of the many great minds of our past?

Black people love to talk about Civil Rights as if its a badge of honor we fight to protect daily, when, in reality, we know absolutely nothing about the struggle.  To be up in arms about the perceived lack of recognition and reverence for a month dedicated to the stuggles and achievements made by our predecessors without a single inclination to pick up a book or educate ourselves to gain a deeper understanding of those people or the social climate in which they fought is a complete show of ignorance, disrespect, and disregard for all that they stood for.

One thing about Black people is that we LOVE to meet...LOVE to discuss issues facing US.  In these discussions, gatherings, seminars, and meetings, we LOVE to refer to the past and what our pioneers did during their time.  The sad part is that if we were to go to college campuses and speak with leaders of prominent Black organizations (on my campus, that would be NAACP, BCPC, MAP, NPHC organizations, etc.), it is highly unlikely that most could tell you any more than surface-level information about those pioneers they LOVE to reference.

Take a moment to think about what this means.  Our pioneers' dedication to something greater for the future is the basis of what we do as human beings in today's world, especially as Black leaders in any capacity, on college campuses or in our careers.  Therefore, if we can't gain an understanding of the HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF BLACK LEADERSHIP through the speeches, literary works, movements, demonstrations, and lives of those that laid the foundation for us, how can we TRULY be effective in our roles leading others?

Dr. King hit the nail right on the head with this statement.  How dare we live our lives on the shoulders of these great men and women, yet never think to pay them the respect of educating ourselves about our past?  A widely-known adage states that one should only "speak on what they know."  If this holds true across all aspects of society, when it comes to Black History and the Black struggle for progress in America, a lot of us Black people should KEEP SILENT.

A friend of mine showed me this video, and I had to share it with you all.  While it is quite humorous, it most certainly is relatable in some way to both black men and women.