Time for blacks to move forward

08.MAR.07

Editor: As people, blacks are perhaps in the most unfortunate position. Statistics prove that we produce the fewest High School and College graduates and blacks constitute the group with the lowest financial reserves and natural resources. In Africa for example, black teenage girls have the highest pregnancy figures; we have the highest presence in prison, the highest HIV AIDS rate and the list goes on and on.{{more}} One way to move forward as a people is to forgive and forget about the past and look for the end of racial disharmony and segregation. Education is the only way we can excel as a people. It seems to me that as a people we are still stuck in the past mentally, although we are the most innovative, diligent, intelligent ambitious people, our identity is still lost in our unfortunate past because we cannot free ourselves from the psyche marred by our condition of slavery. The work done by our brave and courageous ancestors was not slavery, it was survival. We are the evidence, the end product of a tenacity and will and ability to survive the most extreme reverses. We need not look for compensation, we are our own compensation. We should be proud of our past and the fact that against all odds we today enjoy freedom of speech and equal opportunity to succeed in life.

Instead of moving on we are seeking compensation.

This I think is likely to put a stumbling block in our way and taint our experience of a brighter and more prosperous future in which all races, classes and creeds work together. We need most of all to learn to love ourselves and our brothers and sisters equally. Strange as it may seem this has created some of the gravest injustices done to humanity. As a people, blacks do not appreciate changes and cannot embrace power nor exercise prestige positively. We abuse our power when criticized. We use our authority for our own personal ends in crushing our critics and we develop dual societies in which exists the privileged presumed intellectual and rulers against the hard working less fortunate masses whom we take for granted. We need to become more mature in our politics. Those in government need to appreciate criticism and those in opposition need to become more mature in their quest for political offices. We are making rapid strides in life but only the presumed upper class who keep on exploiting the working class. If we could learn to stop fighting against each other and love ourselves to live and let live, blame ourselves for our mistakes and stop blaming others and take each and every educational opportunity that comes our way and accept ourselves for who we are and from where we came, we can make great progress.

Ariston Dennie