(BALTIMORE – March 23, 2025) – In an era where government agencies and federal policies, including historic Civil Rights legislation and DEI, are being gutted, I implore every Black person in America to stand on their Blackness. Our ancestors fought too hard, sacrificed too much, and died too often and too young for us to ever forget or forsake their contributions that afford us to live the lives we live.
We remember that bullet that took out Malcolm and the one that took out Martin. We remember Emmett Till, and we remember George Floyd. We remember Tulsa’s Black Wall Street and the Greensboro Massacre and every other act of terrorism wreaked on our people since our first interactions with Europeans on these North American shores. And we remember the Indigenous Peoples who gave of their corn in return for reservations and blankets laced with smallpox.
We owe it to all of our ancestors to become as successful as possible in every discipline and industry imaginable. They showed us that we have always been more than somebody’s slave. They demonstrated this to the world without fail through science – like George Washington Carver, the agricultural scientist and botanist who found over 300 uses of the peanut, through medicine – like Dr. Daniel Hale, the first person to successfully perform heart surgery, through space exploration – like Ronald E. McNair, a NASA astronaut and physicist, through industry – like Annie Turnbo Malone, one of America’s first Black millionairesses who is the pioneer of the Black beauty industry.
Sure, we dance like nobody else and can sing as well as anybody on the planet. At the same time, we are also physicians, dentists, lawyers, judges, teachers, professors, and business owners. We are mechanics, plumbers, carpenters, nurses, drivers, and managers.
Yes, brothers and sisters, today we must stand on our Blackness like never before. Our community is under deep attack, and those forces of darkness have no problem using those who look like us to carry out their diabolical plans.
Still, we rise! The blood that flows warmly in our veins has the DNA of kings and queens.
Sure, we must pray, but we must also work like it’s totally up to us. My father always said, “God helps those who help themselves!” We are not victims. We are victors. And I don’t care what this White House tries to devise to demean, degrade, and minimize our voices – we must stand unapologetically on the Blackness that we proudly inherited from some of the strongest people this world has ever known.
As for our children, this is no time for us to drop the ball. If you make a baby, raise that baby. The media and social media have many of us living a false narrative. We have grown women trying to compete with young girls. We have so-called grown men saggin’. We are often found doing things on camera where that time could be better spent – hypothetically, in a damn library. We have 2-year-olds on TikTok, but increasingly more teenagers who cannot read.
And, truth be told, we are heavily outnumbered. Blacks comprise roughly 14% of the US population. Even Latinos have expeditiously surpassed our numbers at 19%. We are outnumbered, and too many of us are incarcerated in the most incarcerating nation on earth – home to 1 in 4 prisoners worldwide. Black men comprise nearly 40% of those in America’s penal system, and Black women are the fastest-growing prison demographic. On the streets, this means that women head 70% of Black families. Most social scientists and almost every grandparent out here will tell you that a child raised without a father is at a severe disadvantage.
So, we have work to do. Education must become our sacred priority again. If our ancestors could build Black colleges fresh out of slavery, then we have no excuse not to fully utilize them today. The Black church must also get back on point. Prosperity theology and celebrity status can never successfully guide us to the Holy Spirit. We cannot get too high and mighty that we forget that God has always been our source. Black men have to put down childish games and get back on point also, for as they lead, the women and children follow. And we all need some damn therapy. Anybody who says they don’t must be living under a rock. Considering the trauma heaped on Black America from Day 1, the question becomes who hasn’t been disaffected by the racism, the discrimination, the micro-aggressions at work, the redlining, the lynchings, the rape, the murder, and theft of our peace of mind?
We cannot be but so concerned about what others do. It is time to focus on ourselves, our own well-being, our own growth and development. We have stood up so that other races and groups could have the same rights and freedoms as white Americans, only to have them turn their backs on us. So, we must stand on our Blackness today like never before. We must recommit ourselves to building our families and our communities. Nobody is going to go and get Jamal off the corner except us. And on that note, big-ups to “We Our Us” for leading the way.
Be encouraged. God didn’t bring us this far to leave us. And no matter what the media says about us, we must know us for ourselves. And we must support Black media.
I love you. Do not give up. Persistence pays off.
Ase’
