Fourteenth Day of Black History Month: Love Conquers All

Barack Obama took the day off to celebrate Valentine’s Day with his family.

Let that settle in for a moment, shall we?

if ANYONE could have earned a pass for Valentine’s Day, it would have been Mr. Obama.

But where is he?  At home.

THAT is a man I respect.

In the midst of history in the making, a campaign for the ages,  and the very notion of change in the most powerful nation on the planet bubbling all over the world, Barack Obama is at home with his family.

Not nearly enough attention has been paid to this fact.

Because when the Koolaid is all drunken up, and all y’all have pulled your levers and shook hands with history, All Barack Obama is going to have, win OR lose, is Michelle and the Girls.

That is all any of us have.

It is no accident that many of the Giants of our era, were buttressed by Women who were Giants in their own right.

Coretta Scott King and Betty Shabazz could have been every bit the peers of Martin and Malcolm but they chose to show that strength by playing the most difficult role of all.  I will pause at this point and mention that Mrs. King had a particularly difficult role to play in light of the um….er…extraneous issues that were involved in her life.

I could regale you with tales of the women behind the men, but I had a long night with the woman behind me, so I will leave y’all to connect the dots.

Thirteenth Day of Black History Month: United We Stand

Today was Black Love Day.

Yeah…was.  It’s Damn near Midnight.  Sorry I didn’t push this out when I was thinking about it, but I was off loving someone Black.

The concept behind Black Love Day was established in 1993, by Ms. Ayo Kendi. Feeling the strong need & desire for more expressions of “black love” among those in the community, Ms. Kendi quickly organized the first Black Love Day public observance in Northeast, Washington, DC. Her idea, vision & efforts were widely accepted by the public and the media in its inaugural celebration. With this success, the following year, BLD became an official day of recognition, observance and celebration by Mayoral Proclamation in DC.

Black Love Day is meant to serve as an alternative to Valentine’s Day. BLD is meant to be a celebration of all Black relationships…from self-love first to love for the family to love for the community & the race to finally love for The Creator. Instead of the trademark colors of red & pink for Valentine’s Day, people should wear or display the color purple for spirituality or black which is the blend of all of the colors.

You would think that loving someone Black was a fairly universal state of affairs, especially for Black Folk.

But Alas, such is hardly the case.

Thanks to the ongoing effects of a concentrated attempt to strip us from any semblance of humanity or dignity, enslaving us as mere property and instuments of investments; capital goods, if you will,  our ability to see the true value in ourselves and each other is severely compromised, to this very day.

And SURE, You, oh enlightened bougie Negro, you with the solid uppercrust privileged background grew up around Mr. Graham and ‘nem’s Kind of People, and would never think of yourself as less than, but you damn sure thought of ME as less than, conveniently ignoring that the business end of a Police dog, fire hose, service revolver, or burning cross, isn’t particularly interested in our different pedigree.

Black folk have come an incredibly long way since making the scene on this side of the world.  Considering the circumstances, that we even maintain a significant presence in Western Culture is nothing short of miraculous.

That kind of feat would call for a universal sense of love of self and all that we represent, if we weren’t still living in the denial that a history of brutal oppression can create.

However, in that we STILL can’t just BE Black and love on ourselves and each other based on that simple commonality, days like today were necessary.

Now go on out there and hug on a Black Person.  They probably need it.