We need a united village

20th February 2023   ·   0 Comments

Time magazine referred to the Millennial Generation as the “Me Me Me Generation,” in 2013. Millennials, born from 1990 to 2000, are ‘lazy, entitled, selfish, and shallow,’ according to the author.

There may be some truth in Joel Stein’s observations and data on millennials. He attributes his theory to studies about narcissism. A National Institutes of Health study found that narcissistic personality disorder is nearly three times as high for people in their 20s as for the generation that’s now 65 or older, and 58 percent more college students scored higher on a narcissism scale in 2009 than in 1982.

Admittedly. The studies are outdated, but the mere observations of Millennials today bear out the study’s findings. The “selfie” phenomenon, TikTok and Facebook postings, and YouTube channeling show Millennials are obsessed with themselves.

Unfortunately, self-absorbed Black adults can hardly be expected to sustain long periods of unity for a common cause. Some people in the U.S. are on a mission to turn back the clock to the good old days of segregation and divide and conquer. Others are bent on keeping Americans from learning America’s true history and treatment of Black people.

More than ever before, Black Americans need a united village to cope with attempts to silence, marginalize, and otherize them.

There was a time when the village – community members – looked out for each other. It was when Ms. Jones would tell a mother what her child was up to when she was at work.

There was a time when a neighbor would tend to a sick person next door, offer a ride, lend a few dollars, or pick up items from the grocery store for a non-relative.

There was a time when neighbors would cook and bring food to someone mourning the loss of a loved one or call someone on the phone to see how that person’s day was going.

There was a time when parents could count on the next-door neighbor’s teenage daughter to babysit while they ran errands or had a night out on the town.

There was a time when “Big Mama,” your neighbor, would keep your children at her house until you returned home.

That was the village back then. We did that during slavery, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights Movement.

What changed? What dismantled the village? We think integration, technology, and extreme competitiveness. Could the ethnic cleansing of our public school system be at fault? Gentrification? Or the haves abandoning the have-nots among us, and the crab-in-the-barrel syndrome: When one rises to the top, another pulls that one down? The educated versus the uneducated.

We need to wake up. We need to be woke about what’s going on around us. Black people no longer have the luxury of saying, “I’ve got mine. You’ve got yours to get,” or “You do you, and I’ll do me.” We have no time for self-imposed isolation or remote social interactions, i.e., Instagram, chat boxes, Facebook, and FaceTime.

While the threat of COVID is ever present, we still need to reconnect with our folks, friends, and associates in real-time, human-to-human, face-to-face in the same space and time. We still need to listen and learn from each other and not just host one-way communications. And, yes, we need to be able to shake hands, hug and kiss and come together for the common good.

We need to be united. We need to bring back the village. If we’re going to be marginalized and forcefully segregated from other ethnic groups, we need to close ranks and be about helping and uplifting each other.

We must do this to immunize ourselves before a fascist state is complete. We see the movement toward authoritarian rule. We see the powers trying to deny us benefits we’ve earned, Medicare and Social Security, running up daily living costs to unparalleled levels, including gasoline, eggs, and milk. We see them taking over our rights to bodily autonomy, and we see them trying to muzzle us.

Why are state rights seemingly taking precedence over federal rule? Why are white politicians visiting scorn and resentment on Black Americans? Because by 2045, the U.S. will become ‘minority white’ according to the Census projections. Black and brown people will comprise the majority of Americans.

“Youthful minorities are the engine of future growth,” the Brookings report adds.

If that’s true, how do we get youthful “minorities” to resurrect the village concept? “It takes a village to raise a child” should also apply to a strategy for recruiting teachers, mentors, and elders to teach youth how to advocate for their communities and stand up for their rights.

Elders can guide youth in constructing a village where everyone loves thy neighbor and work together to create safe neighborhoods and monitor the actions of those in leadership.

Black people must stay woke and vote out sell-outs in government, lobby legislatures for better schools and accountability for those who run them and demand a piece of the economic pie.

Many have heard of these solutions before. But without action, there is no reciprocity. We can’t allow ourselves to be too busy to care, too busy to lend a hand in training youth, too busy to love thy neighbor, or too busy to speak truth to power.

The purpose of a village is to obtain unity where community members work together to secure life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

If the village is not reconstructed, if we stay silent and do nothing, nothing is what we will get or worse.

“First, they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me. Lutheran Pastor Friedrich Gustav Martin Niemöller, a German, said more than 50 years ago.

In the 1920s and early 1930s, Niemöller sympathized with Nazi ideas and supported radically right-wing political movements. But after Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, Niemöller became an outspoken critic of Hitler’s interference in the Protestant Church. He spent the last eight years of Nazi rule, from 1937 to 1945, in Nazi prisons and concentration camps.

Sound familiar? If we fail to work together to demand our rights, if we don’t speak truth to power, and if current attempts to install a fascist government are successful, and if domestic terrorists overturn the federal government, we can kiss our rights goodbye.

Let’s not be too busy to work together and create a village to save our lives. We’ve done it before. We did it during slavery, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights Movement. We can and must do it again.

This article originally published in the February 20, 2023 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.