Before I went to bed the other night, I came into an understanding that I have a huge responsibility as a Young Black American. Specifically, what I was realized was this:

We (those of us born in the 70's & 80's) are the first generation of African American to be born Post Segregation, Post the Jim Crow, Post the Civil Rights Act. Prior to us, our parents drank from segregated fountains, most often had to fight, protest, or pray to vote. My parents went to segregated schools. My mother marched in ..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Memphis with Martin Luther King, before he was assassinated. My Father grew up around the corner from the Detroit Riot, he and his siblings were the first black students in his school.

(Kind of puts a new spin on Black History doesn't it? It's not that far removed. That's my black history because that happened during the lifetime of the people who fixed me breakfast. Seems so long ago and far away, but these are the earliest memories - very real and vivid memories of the people shaped me and are very much a real part of my life today and have been for almost 30 years.)

I say all of that (with pride... and humility) because there's something else I realized.

For many people, the question is: "When will Black people get over it."  I wonder with them about, "When will Blacks as a whole thrive and fully come into our own?" I get agitated at the remarks about how Africans come to America... and Jamaicans come to America... and Asians and Chaldeans and East Indians, and on and on and on... How they come to America with nothing, some not even knowing the language and they manage to acquire in 1 generation or less education, land, businesses, and wealth for their entire families.

With all due respect, for I do have respect and love to learn the stories of their success in the face of struggles in America, however, Blacks in America have a unique history and struggle which has to do with our experience, not our skin color or how long we've been in America. More specifically, we had/have to struggle against something they've never had to. (I'll explain in a sec.)

I make no excuses for any individual's specific situation, as there is no way I could it, yet I offer some valid, real, relevant observations that may point to explanations for the current OVERALL condition of Blacks as a whole.

We, the Blacks you see today and wonder about, are the very children of parents who were institutionally told they had restrictions and limitations; who were taught in their schools that their brains were smaller than those of Whites, more comparable to those of ages and therefore by design were created inferior to Whites. (I did not make that up. This was actually taught to my mom from text books.) We are the children of a generation who was poisoned and institutionally had societal inferiority complexes thrust upon and engrained into them. This was the blatant and subconscious programming received by the people who parented us! Those who were and some who still are suspicious of "the White man;" breeding a culture of hoarding and distrust, which ultimately leads to an attitude of self preservation and a stinginess, destroying a community and resulting in every man for himself.

We were only able to make the advancements we made because of our community and...

Thank God, we are also the children of fighters; children of people with vision; brilliant people who, like the God they served, created everything out of nothing! Our parents were resourceful, trailblazing, unquenchable, and undeterred. They were this because their parents were this. They learned that from their parents and all the parents before them. Today's Black Americans are the children of Survivors.

Unfortunately, no one taught us how to thrive. They taught us how to survive. You'll be hard pressed to find a black person over the age of 25 who didn't have a job in high school or earlier or who didn't learn to sell something. However, our parents (in general) were taught to be practical: to work for others in professions that were needed in the community. Sadly, not enough (there are lots but just not enough) Entrepreneurs were inspired to see past the Black community to making a mark on the entire world, to meeting the needs of the entire world.

Some were told they could thrive, and that's why the do, but as a community on a whole, we need to learn HOW to thrive and teach others. If you look at my parents' generation who are in their 60's, 50's and 40's, they're just now starting to dream or come into the things that they hoped against hope to be when they were kids. If they're just now realizing it, the younger 40-30-20 generation is learning it right along with them. In fact, in light of this, I don't even see us a late bloomers. In some ways, we've come a long way, in that we've begun to get over some of our biggest hurdles - the psychological ones.

I think there is a missing link somewhere... a failure to teach and be taught, because once upon a time in many "Black Bottoms," we thrived. We had our own black resort town in Idlewild, MI! We had "Black Wall Street" soooooo long ago in Oklahoma. We owned our own businesses and serviced our own communities. We saw our own success in front of our faces, which is why we did so well.

Now I'm not saying that everyone who's made it needs to move back to the hood, but what I am saying is that our children will and can only reach the dreams that they reach out for and they can only reach out for the dreams that they know to dream. They need not only to see hope in us, but to see instruction on how to thrive, how to make it.

Maybe that's what's missing from the Public School System - the long vacated community involvement.

For some looks at what the professionals and the studies say, visit these pages:..:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

http://www.atkinson.yorku.ca/~jsteele/files/04082317412924405.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype_threat

(Endnote: Additionally, for me, all of this makes any notion that Affirmative Action is unnecessary absurd and null, considering how that generation of Blacks and Whites are still hiring/applying for jobs and handing out/asking for contracts. Even if the actions have changed, often, the childhood mis-education was never challenged, meaning they potentially can still wield influence given the right/wrong situation or stimulus. i.e. - "Ok, Black people are smart, but, in general, you wouldn't trust them to manage anything, except, maybe Sabrina, because she's not like other black people." Terribly, the "You're not like other black people" phrase (/psudeo-praise) is not uncommon and instead of proving open-mindedness it proves the opposite. Just as Blacks may be crippled by stereotypes, I don't believe these are stereotypes we're merely imagined or imposed upon ourselves. If there are Black children who still suffer from the impact of stereotypes (obviously, not all Black children), then couldn't it be safe to assume there are still White adults who were actually taught those stereotypes that may still be impacted as well?)

One more Endnote: My mother was almost a product of this inferiority teaching. She was in school and couldn't read, until a White teacher intervened with a Black teacher and told my mother that she was smart and that could she could read. From there, my mother excelled. My grandparents had no idea that my mom's teachers were teaching her that she was dumb. My grandfather had been a high school teacher, both of them college educated. They wouldn't have tolerated that had they known... but that was the sneekiness of this institutional racism. By the way, this bad teaching happened AFTER my mother moved to the north and started attending public schools for the first time. This was the public's education.