We need to open our eyes and be honest with each other. The United States is made up of a lot of different groups of people and one thing is certain. We are all in this together. How or when we got here is not the problem. The fact is that we are here. I limit this to those who came here legally. Breaking and entering is a felony in most states. I helped build the roads and schools and I don't want trespassers using my property. This blog is about the Black Community. Few are honest when they talk about the Black Community and that includes both Blacks and all others. I found out a long time ago that the first step in solving a problem is to, "admit that you have one". If you don't feel that the Black Community has a problem and the country has a problem with the Black Community, you are not being honest. What I want is an honest discussion that just might help find a solution.
In about 1975, I predicted that any progress that the Black Community had made in the past 200 years in the United State was going to be destroyed by the Black Community themselves. It is closing in on 40 years since I made that observation and it appears to be coming true. Normal people want a decent quality of life and they want their kids to do a little better than they have done. We all know that we stand on the shoulders of those who came before us and we respect that. As we get older, it is our shoulders that our kids and those after us will stand on. When you think about this, if it does not humble you, you don't have American blood in your veins. My forefathers were Scotts and Native Americans, but now me and my children consider ourselves Americans. Everything in our bodies came from the soil of America. We are Americans. We are proud and responsible at the same time and that is the reason that I feel we have to admit there is a problem with the Black Community and we have to be honest about it. We are all Americans.
I know my history and I know that most of the countries of South America imported a higher percentage of slaves from Africa that did British America. Slavery was legal in all countries of South and Central America while it was never legal in North America for more than half the states. That is a fact. For the past 150 years the quality of life has been better here in America than almost any other place in the world, yet the Black Community does not appear to have shared in that life. Why? Most of us believe in the same God, yet something is different. Why do we have a Black Caucus in our government? Why not a Scottish caucus? What is this separation that we condone?
As I have blogged in the past, most things are simple. Governments and laws can't make me want to plant a garden or tend my bee hives, nor can they make me study hard and try to do well in school. I make those decisions for myself. Even my parents have had little influence. I am curious and want to better understand the wonderful world around me. As I have stated in the past, I have slept under bridges and in tent
in fruit orchards, but that was not who I was inside. I don't know what it was, but I have been around the world more than once and seen things that I never thought in a million years I would see. I have owned airplanes and yachts and sailed almost every ocean, but that is not the point. It is something inside of a person that makes then try and when stopped to try even harder. What is it about the Black Community that so few seem to have, what ever it is, inside of them. I don't know what it is, but few in the Black Community seem to have it. It is not just IQ. IQ is over rated as is a college education. What I am talking about happens when you are under 10 years old. Now I am not an expert on any of this, I have just paid attention for the past 70 years and am now trying to connect the dots. People like me have a responsibility to try to connect the dots because we are the only ones who really can.
Back In 1975 there was an article in the Scientific American magazine about the out of wedlock births with in the Black Community. In 1975, it was 50% and had risen from only 5% in 1940. I had no idea why there was this big change, but I knew at the time that it would cancel out any progress the Black Community had made up to that point and I have been proven right. What caused the sudden rise in out of wedlock births? It has gone on to get much worse, but why? It has to be something inside of a person to let themselves be a part of such a thing. What changed? How does the Black Community dig out of such a deep hole? In 1975 Black kids who were 20 years old were born back in 1955 when the rate was less than 10%. 20 year old Black kids who are 20 years old now were born in 1990 when the rate was over 80%. I have 5 children and I can tell you what a job it was for two parents to raise those 5. How can it be done outside of a normal marriage? Even so, some Black kids have that something inside of them that allows them to go on to have normal lives and a decent quality of life, but why do so few have it?
The drop out rate for Blacks is many times that of other American, why? The schools are free and it is where most of us learn the most important things in our lives. I'm over 70 and I rely on what I learned thru 12th grade more than I do on what I learned in college or graduate school. I am sure that is true for most people, so why does the Black Community turn their backs on this important opportunity to have a better quality of life? That is my question.
I could go onto drugs and crime, but it would just be piling on. We know there is a serious problem and yet no one seems willing to come forward with a solution. I know that the solution is not going to come from the outside because this is a problem that is inside each Black person in the Black Community. I found what it was in me by about age 8 and that was before I knew anything about politics, money or wealth, so it is not that. Rather than blast me with foul comments, why don't you blast me with ideas because if, that some thing, does not some how get inside more in the Black Community it is only going to get worse and as an American that is not why we are all here.
