Bring It

Since the beginning of time, man’s inhumanity to man has been off the chain. In the bible you’re got the world’s first son and you kill your own brother cause he’s got more game than you do. Then you got Jacob, who with the help of his momma, steals his twin brother’s inheritance. Then there’s Joseph’s brothers, who throw him in a pit and leave him for dead. Now all of this is in the first book.

We fast forward to the second world war and you got Jewish folk being thrown into gas chambers in Germany, while people of Japanese ancestry are being uprooted and placed in internment camps in the United States.

Since the beginning of time, men and women have brought the plight of their condition to the light, via word and music, and I’m sure that biblical, Jewish, and Japanese, and other communicators will continue to express their displeasure and anger at what they’re going through. Now I’m not going to dwell on the deaths, suffering and inequity still being experienced by black folk, but allow me, if you will, to bring what we feel from an African American neighborhood.

Sojourner Truth once remarked “I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me”. Ralph Ellison and countless others have eloquently and adamantly expressed our discontent with the way black folk are treated, yet still today many of us feel as he did when he communicated in the prologue of the ‘Invisible Man’, “I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me”. 

Countee Cullen may not have fully understood his Divine Commission when he said “I doubt not God is good, well meaning, kind…Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:To make a poet black, and bid him sing”, yet he continued, through his poetry, to sing. You see there is something inherent in all of us, and visible in a lot of us that reflect our Maya Angelouian response to adversity, “Still I’ll rise”.

The key to resolving this rampant inhumanity that yet exists, is for all of us to bring it. We all got to bring our voices but also our ears. Most importantly…we got to bring intent and constant commitment to being of one accord. Of course we have our differences, but if we’re able to share them equitably, and people are willing to hear what we have to say, our oneness will become manifest, and we’ll be amazed at the blessings that ensue. We can do this y’all. We can put a lid on this mess, by simply listening and doing for another, that which we desire for ourselves. 

I’ll holla…


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