The current issue is always free to all readers

If you need the access available to a
and cannot afford the $50 subscription price, request a complimentary subscrpition here.

(With minor revisions, this was previously printed in HAWK’s self-published 1996 book Hawkish Wisdom. With the recent “sell” of formerly long-time, Black-owned publications and businesses to those who historically have not had the African World Family’s best interest at hand, I believe that the revival of this article is necessary.)

In lieu of the Million Man March and the countless crises that beset the Black community and that the March addressed, it is my opinion, that the solutions to the problems of today’s Black community (African World Family) have been locked away in the vaults of yesterday.  However, we, African (Black) people know the combination to each one.  So let us unlock the vault.

For far too long in the 1 billion-plus member African World Family, we have tolerated the intolerable - irresponsible parents, disrespectful youths, and spineless leadership as it relates to us economically, educationally, politically, in the Church and elsewhere. Too often, have we put up with those in our community, our family. Who we should have put out? That includes the above, of course, especially all those to whom we have given countless chances to mend their ways with our community - yes, our family, the African World Family (AWF) - only to have them kick dirt in our faces and spit in the water cup of opportunity.  For far too long, shamefully, we have applauded those who need to be booed and have booed those who need to be applauded.  If we don’t change this, AWF, our community, yes, our family, will definitely come to a train-crashing, tragic end.

The solutions in the vaults of yesterday, that are so desperately needed to answer the serious questions of today and even of tomorrow, all have one central theme: Return to the Old Ways.  Indeed, that we must do.  We must return to the Old Ways of Mother Africa and the African American community of twenty to thirty or more years ago, even if somewhat modified.  We must return to the Old Ways, which our fore parents, the world’s first and oldest people and the people from whom all other people came, established before there were any other of this planet’s people.  We must return to the Old Ways that our fore parents brought on the slave ships with them from Africa, where respect and honor were the order of the day and night in our community.  We must return to the Old Ways where every adult could and would properly instruct and discipline any and all the community’s children and any and all the community’s children sought good instruction and firm but fair discipline.  We must return to the Old Ways where men, women, and children who brought honor and dignity to the community were exalted; those who often failed but consistently did their best were encouraged; and those who just simply refused to do anything positive at all and who especially and continuously brought disgrace to the community were expelled - kicked out of the community, to fend for themselves in the opposing communities for whom they obviously worked.

One thing that the world-renowned, historian, elder, scholar-activist, and my grandmaster teacher, Dr. John Henrik Clarke, taught to me and to any and all those who have seriously taken the time to listen and abide by, through his lectures and writings is this: The world’s 1 billion-plus African (Black) people must embrace and live nightly and daily by two basic things if we are to survive on this planet.  The first is a concept that he ingeniously called “the essential selfishness of survival,” which means that African people the world over must look out for our “kith and kin [our own people, each other] first and foremost”.  The second concept is liken unto the first one.  The world’s African people, as a unified global front, must develop a system of adequately rewarding and even protecting those within our global family who consistently and unashamedly uplift our family, the African World Family, and a system of punishing those within and outside our family who disgrace and betray it.

This, African World Family, we can and we must do, even though it may be painful.  But it must be done and started right now if we are to protect ourselves properly from the brutal assaults against our community, across the globe, at the hands of white, brown, and yellow supremacists.  Yes, that also means that, as the Honorable Marcus Garvey, the leader of the largest Black mass movement in history, has taught us, we must be mindful of the terrible treachery of traitors within our community who have prostituted us culturally, economically, educationally, and spiritually, and, who, by so doing, have, unknowingly prostituted themselves as well.

In my humble opinion, brothers and sisters, near and far, young and old and yet unborn, if we as a 1 billion-plus member African World Family wholeheartedly embrace and daily and nightly live out both of Dr. Clarke’s often ignored concepts of “the essential selfishness of survival” and the concrete development and the balanced conducting of a rewards and punishments system for those within and outside of our community, we can overcome, in time, the murderous efforts of white, brown, red, yellow and other anti-African/Black supremacists and their mindless, spineless, and soul-less Black “attack dogs”, puppets, and lackeys.  If we do not, then it will be better that we lay down in the middle of the busy road and wait, without wavering, for the cars to come.

The choice is ours.  Let’s make the right one.

BC Columnist HAWK (J. D. Jackson) is a priest, poet, journalist, historian, African-centered lecturer, middle school teacher and part-time university history instructor. Click here to contact HAWK.