TRIBE NO MORE

Posted April 24, 2020

Black people no longer act or feel like they are part of a tribe.

I grew up with the feeling that I was black and our strength as a people was that we must stick together as a people to survive. The us against them thing predominated. Minorities, especially blacks, no longer have that feeling. We no longer have the feeling that we must protect each other; must not kill or steal from each other and must give a hand up to each other whenever possible. We had pride as a people that we fostered and promoted called “Black Pride.” We promoted black accomplishments and tried to increase those accomplishments if we could.

I remember not being able to lock our door except with a wooden latch. We were never afraid of a robbery or burglary. We could go on vacation with a free mind that everything would be as we left it There was no Black on Black crime to speak of at that time. Everyone had rifles or shotguns in their homes for hunting and protection. Mass shootings was unheard of in that day.

I was so hurt in 2016 when a young black girl or young woman on national television stated that it was Bernie or bust for her in the election. She was not going to vote if Bernie did not get the nomination. I was sad. She had an attachment to a person. She had no recognition of who she was as a Black female in America. Her statement evidenced little or no critical thinking. She appeared to have no sense of herself in history. She did not understand, recognize or acknowledge her own blackness.

I felt so sad and betrayed when a young Black male told me that he did not care about the sacrifices of his ancestors. He said that he was not going to vote and that he did not care about who was in the United States Supreme Court or White House. “It does not matter,” he said.

I thought back on my college days. We fought for the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, etc. We integrated schools at great risks to ourselves and our careers to pave the way for the new generation. We participated in rallies, marches and sit Ins,etc.

These children do not understand or care about how hard we fought in the old days for equal rights. They are no longer taught the rules of the tribe by their parents as we were as children. They do not know or understand who they are. It hurts me to hear them talk. I feel betrayed. I cannot listen to Kanye West. He is so far lost that I do not know if he will ever find himself. I pray for him and his peers. To him, it seems that all our sacrifices, suffering and deaths of all of our forefathers were in vain. I will not repeat his comments because they are too hurtful.

I remember my mother teaching us the Code of the Black man. She taught us Black Pride when people did not use that concept. “You must have a sense of yourself,” she would say. She learned this from my grandmother. Grandmother used to always say, “Know your value. You are as much pie and any man is crust. You can be pudding, but he will always only be crust.”

I have not recovered from the betrayal and cruelty of Blacks in Houston when they stole my clothes and books. This would have been unheard of in my mother’s day for young Black me to attack and steal from the elderly. The elderly were revered. They were respected and protected. To have Kenneth Prejean, a black man and a neighbor to steal my clothes and books would never have occurred to any Black woman when I grew up. For a man to be so desperate that he would steal a woman’s clothing even her purses and underwear when he is not gay is hurtful. A 95 year old woman was beaten and raped. She died of the complications from the attack. Per the elderly woman, the young man kept hitting her and demanding that she give him the money. She told him that she did not have money. She only received a social security check. He could not accept this. Her age did not matter to him. She should have money. She was raped and beaten because she was poor and did not have money for a mugger. She told him that everything was direct deposited. She only had a debit card.

Blacks no longer live by a code or the rules of the tribe. There are no rules of the tribe because Blacks no longer consider themselves to be a tribe. It hurt me to my core to see a young female on television disparaging her mother and others because she had Black skin. Such self hatred!!! In Sociology class she would be identified as a Black bigot. To me this also meant the tribe was dead to her. Her mother and her parents failed her. We are failing our children. We no longer teach pride, excellence, honesty and the Ten Commandments. It seems to me that we as a people have lost something so precious that we may never get it back. We stopped feeling and teaching the rules of the tribe. We lost our sense and identify of Blackness and Black Pride. Maybe we need to start teaching this again. It was a necessary survival tool when I grew up. Is it too late to start teaching this again?

helen