It's Black History Month, Strike up the Band!

Let the word go forth, it’s Black History Month! There, I have said it.

Now I’m not going to talk about somebody doing street designs in DC, or someone else inventing traffic signals that you ignore and then have to show up later in court for. I can’t even tell you about how I marched with Martin in the fifties and sixties, unless of course you use that Mitt Romney way of looking at things. I don’t know much about those things so I will mention something about support.

In the mid nineties, I was given the predicament of making a choice. The Honorable Minister Farrakhan was organizing a rally in Washington, the Million Man March that he hoped would bring together black men. This was to be an act of mass confession or atonement by brothers in order to see where they had come from and to develop a more positive direction in which they would go.

I had seen Farrakhan before and whereas I had believed he was a very interesting speaker and much of what he said appealed to me, I didn’t hold much significance in what I considered would be a million man group hug. I didn’t want to go. But Bernadette however, did.

Bernadette was a girl that worked with me and as she stated, if she couldn’t get a man there, she would not be able to get a man anywhere. Hence, after many days of hemming and hawing, swinging and swaying, I thought to myself that if she could go for whatever reasons she could find, it would be wrong for me not to go and the March fail because of my indifference. I would feel bad if the whole thing fell short and people looked at me pointed and said, “because of you.”

Consequently on Saturday with my boyfriend, not Bernadette, I headed for DC for the Monday meeting, after assuring my boss that I would show up for work on Monday. Some sacrifices would have to be made, otherwise the whole effort on my part, would be meaningless. I showed up at the march at around noon Monday after calling out sick at 5am from the club. I met a few people, but I saw was reintroduced to even more people who I had not seen in a while and had lost contact with. I listened to many of the speeches from the various speakers all the way to the end and I came away with the idea that it was the responsibility black men to stop the violence, look after their families and honor their women. I had done my part for the cause and I left satisfied.

After all this time, I’m not really sure if anything really positive came out of the whole thing. There seems to be even more black on black crime now than there was then. I don’t know anything about the black family other than my own and I can’t tell you much about that, the case is coming up soon. But as far as honoring women, I have never in my life seen so many women called bitches and ho’s and treated with so much disrespect on TV and in real life.

So now, there is a junior senator from Illinois asking for support from me as well as others and as usual I am wishing and washing away like it’s nobody’s business but my own. But I don’t know if I should support people or issues just because we’re both black. It seems to limit my choice or even my thought processes if I do. But there is something to be said about climbing on the bandwagon or joining the herd. There is a safety in numbers that will be hard to find when you are out there on your own. What to do? What to do?