A LETTER FOR THE BLACK PEOPLE

Off the record, I am not ashamed to be black.    I am pretty much more prouder than ever before because I managed to do the right thing and show to white, Indian, and Jewish colleagues to name a few that here is a black man who doesn't act like the typical, trashy, and contemporary "black" male.  

If you think blackness is embodied in a very barren and trashy hip hop culture where it is all about sex, drugs, rock and roll and dripping in masochistic pleasures, then I really, really pity you.    If you think that I have to PROVE my blackness by talking in Jamaican patois, listening to Bob Marley and reggae, and hanging out with black folk that I really can't connect with, then you are sorely mistaken.

Another thing that bothers me is that contemporary black culture and folk (and I get this from my extended family in the states), sees EVERYTHING as a race issue, not accounting that we have come a LONG way from civil rights and emancipation from slavery was over 150 years ago initiated by a white Christian president, Abraham Lincoln.   The whole Josh Duggar issue is a matter of character, not the fact that if he were black he would have been jailed, and because he was white he would have got a slap in the wrist.    Martin Luther King Jr. didn't die to cause further friction between races.   His death was a means of bringing unity and peace toward all.   If we want racial harmony, follow his example and love people of white, Indian, Chinese, Korean, Muslim, etc., not have any further animosity.

However, I am open to dialogue.   Maybe I am missing something.   I have witnessed and experienced racism myself.   But I say this; the only way that a black person is going to rise above the chaff is to be 100X better than the rest, regardless of race.   And that, my black brothers and sisters, is how you will make it in life.

And that my friends, is the gospel truth.