Now, it is my sincere belief that no one is born lazy. As a matter of fact, it's pretty hard work, that's why you come out kickin' and screamin'. Laziness is a learned (not inborn) behavior that people perpetuate either because it is rewarded (for example, by the welfare and economic system that makes it more cost effective to stay home than to go out and work for a minimum wage) or because it carries no negative consequences (e.g., loss of a job, getting kicked out of the house, getting evicted, etc.)
What I call the Ghettover Mentality is the learned pattern of behaviors instilled by the gentle racism of lowered expectations. While trying to take a shortcut instead of working hard to earn the best result may, on the one hand, be an essentially capitalistic lifestyle choice, it is premised on and perpetuates the pattern of seeking to get something for nothing. The Steppin' Fetchit approach to life, that over relies on whatever sympathy you can garner from well meaning and guilt-ridden white middle class liberals, is a training ground for failure in life. Passing that type of worldview on to our children only exacerbates an already desperately depressed economic base in our communities and insures that we will never be able to break the cycle of poverty to which many of us have succumbed.
I do not want to engage in an exercise of "blaming the victim." However, we have to own up to our own responsibility for the dismal status in which we, as communities, find ourselves. It has been said time and again, but bears repeating: Education is the key to liberation. By education though, I do not mean the type of indoctrination that is fed to most of our children in overtaxed and overpopulated public schools that are seen as way stations and holding pens for the prisons that are presumed to be our youths’ rightful place in life. By education I mean opening up the eyes of our children to the realties of their lives so that they can critically analyze, act upon and improve their surroundings and their lot in life.
For too long we have been content to make futile claims for reparations that will never come and which, even if they do come, will be too little too late. For too long we have wasted our energies looking for whom to blame for our plight. For too long we have allowed ourselves to lapse into frustration and despair and turned to taking drugs, engaging in violence or other types of self-destructive behaviors that only cause us to sink even deeper into an abyss from which God himself may well not be able to save us.
It is as simple as starting with your next day. Do at least one positive thing for yourself and for a neighbor. No one expects you to change the world all by yourself, but, if Hillary Clinton had it right when, she named her book after the African adage that says "It Takes A Village (to raise a child),” then those Harlem pioneers, who sought to do their little bit to change the day to day suffering of their neighbors, had it equally right when they preached the gospel of "Each One Teach One."
No one can do everything, but we can each do something.~~ Gil Scott-Heron
Every journey begins with one step…
