This is the least racist moment in our country's history. We must begin with the black nuclear family if black Americans want to solve disparities.
In some ways, I believe we are living in a time similar to Charles Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities," in which he wrote, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the era of wisdom, it was the age of folly."
We are constantly assaulted with propaganda saying that America is rife with racism and white supremacists. The conventional two-parent family is now considered a form of white privilege by the National Council on Family Relations.
If you only listen to the news media, the entertainment industry, and the academic-industrial complex, you will be startled to hear that this is our country's least racist time in history.
My parents and grandparents, who grew up in the Jim Crow south, would have liked to have grown up in the America I grew up in. For many years, a major portion of the country has operated in a post-racial America. Regardless of color, people around the country have been treating each other with respect, dignity, and compassion. They were assessing people based on the content of their personalities.
We can enact laws allowing me to enter any building and book a stay in any hotel in the country, but we can't make laws requiring people to open their hearts and homes to individuals who don't look like them. But Americans have been doing just that for decades. So, how can we account for the disparities between what we see on the ground and what we hear in the media?
My family is a textbook illustration of "best of times, worst of times" and the gap between reality and rhetoric. My now-adult children were raised in a two-parent household. They had their difficulties, but they also had stability, unconditional love, and well-defined limits.
Unfortunately, their cousins on my side of the family are rather different. My children are the only ones of my four siblings who grew up with both a mother and a father at home. As a result, my siblings' children's lives have been entwined with sorrow and pain.
What is the best way to explain these disparities? Was it a result of systematic racism in American society? Was it something else entirely? Despite the fact that both stories are about the same family and have the same skin hue, the differences are significant.
I was five years old when Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed. Nearly 80% of black children were born into two-parent homes at the time. Unfortunately, throughout my lifetime, the black community has gone from 80% two-parent households to 80% fatherless families, with no national attempt to change the trend.
The American black family would be listed as an endangered species if it were a spotted owl or a gray wolf. Instead, what has occurred to the African-American family in the United States is nothing short of a cultural genocide.
This was not the King's dream, and it has been a nightmare for children born at that time. For the past 50 years, the black community has been utilized as a political pawn.
As a result, I've embarked on my quest to assist the black community return to its cultural origins and reverse a tendency that has wreaked havoc on generations of families, including vulnerable children born into circumstances beyond their control.
From personal experience, I can attest to the fact that our country is not racist on a systematic level. My grandparents and parents experienced institutional prejudice. I didn't do it.
My siblings, unfortunately, made different choices in their life. They were all drug users, and three of them were jailed. Worse, their children were reared without the presence of their dads. Many families have been wrecked by a lack of parental engagement, personal responsibility, faith, and, most significantly, hope.
I am profoundly saddened by what has occurred in their lives. My children live in stark contrast to their relatives, and it is not because of their skin tone.
To be clear, there are racist individuals in our nation who do awful things to others, but the country as a whole is not racist. To put it another way, if you search this country for racism, you will find it. You will discover chances a hundred times over if you seek for them.
How can we end the "Tale of Two Cities," with its 80% fatherless households and persistently poor graduation rates for black high school students? Ironically, it is black Americans that hold the capacity to effect change. I'd want to address the following remarks to all black Americans in the United States.
We've been seeing our black communities be devastated from inside for far too long. We are currently in a worse position as a community than we were before to the Civil Rights Era.
We have the ability to go forward and begin a long-overdue shift of healing and progress. And we don't need government assistance or cash to make this change.
We are missing out on possibilities in this nation to which we are completely entitled as citizens, opportunities that appear to be obvious to almost everyone except native-born black Americans. Many of us are blinded by anger, mistrust, and misunderstanding, which causes us to make judgments that are not in our best interests.
Black Americans who have lawfully moved from the Caribbean Islands and African nations such as Nigeria now have much greater wages than black Americans who were born in the United States. They have better educational attainment. They're enjoying the American ideal that civil rights activists envisioned for us.
Many of these new citizens arrived with their families intact, which aided their success and assimilation. Another reason for their success is that they have not been brainwashed with anti-white, anti-American, and anti-capitalist animosity throughout the years.
It is more important than ever to forgive our nation's past faults, re-establish two-parent families, restore our culture, and join other Americans around the "Table of Prosperity" as fellow citizens of our magnificent country. What's the best way to get started?
I believe it begins with recognizing the benefits of our cultural origins, which are intertwined with our Christian religion. The cornerstone of Christianity is forgiveness. We are expected to forgive others in the same way that God forgives us in Christ.
The heavy load of bitterness, wrath, and resentment will be lifted from our shoulders as we forgive the country for the sins of slavery, Jim Crow laws, and many other types of racism that followed. Our eyes will be awakened so that we can clearly see the way forward and focus on what is best for our own and our children's futures.
Forgiveness is a sign of strength, not weakness, and we must start the process of mending and rebuilding our communities. This is our Return of the Prodigal. It's time to return home.
Now, to all Americans: Our shared history extends beyond political parties, race, religion, and socioeconomic status. Like the interlaced roots and branches of trees in a thick forest, our shared humanity bonds us together.
Forest fires are being lit by organized organizations in order to divide and destroy our unique American culture. It's critical that we not only put an end to their attempts, but also build a new movement that nourishes, unifies, and strengthens us as Americans, regardless of race, for future generations.
