Tis’ the Season to rebuild the village
2nd December 2024 · 0 Comments
Once upon a time, the Black community in New Orleans was as close as a knitted sweater. Bonds among neighbors were commonplace. If you acted out as a child or teen, your parents would hear about it from neighbors before you got home from school.
In short, Black America was one big village from coast to coast. The African proverb, ‘It takes a village to raise a child” rang true back then.
In this village, Black people looked out for one another. Calling each other “brother” and “sister” became a part of Black culture. Blacks relied on village members – entrepreneurs and skilled practitioners – for jobs, mentorship and skills training in construction, auto repair and hairdressing.
There was a time when relatives hosted a child’s birthday party but also had a party for the parents of partygoers simultaneously. It was a time for weekly house parties, one at someone’s house, for waistline and rent parties.
It was when social and pleasure clubs and brass bands took to the street in the African tradition for funerals, now called second line parades. Extended families lived together, and everyone “put in” to host fun events, repasts, or family reunions.
The Black Power Movement from the late 1960s through the mid-1970s was electrifying and unifying. Black people sang their truth – “Say It Loud, I’m Black, and I’m Proud,” “What’s Going On,” “The Ghetto,” and “Stand Up, Get Up. Stand Up for Your Rights” – and put words over the music about the state of Black America – “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” among other musical portraits reflecting Black culture.
But something caused the village to begin to crumble. Full-on integration and the “divide and conquer” mentality that is as old as dirt became the order of the day. Black Americans became the last hired and the first fired. Only the “talented tenth,” as W.E.B. Dubois predicted, were allowed in particular social and corporate circles.
That trend continues today with American Blacks being used as window dressing – like the clownish Mark Robinson, the lieutenant governor of North Carolina who recently ran an unsuccessful campaign for governor – to give the perception that powerful whites aren’t racist.
Poverty, the lack of economic opportunities and jobs, and hopelessness became the impetus for their get-rich-quick drug-slinging schemes.
Instead of expanding the village by helping each other out, the selfie generation emerged, bringing chaos and selfishness in a wave of self-destruction that ostensively killed the village and created a dog-eat-dog atmosphere.
“Per capita, New Orleans is the number one city for homicides in the country, and almost all the homicides are done by young black men to other young black men. It is a statistic that should alarm us all,” USAFact.org reported. And in 2022, Louisiana had the second-highest murder rate in the nation.
According to the NOPD, they have a person of interest who may have been involved in the recent mass shooting at a sacred event in New Orleans’ Black culture, a second line, which took the lives of two and injured twelve. The person hasn’t been named, nor has a photo been provided, but the odds are that person is a member of the Black community.
Young Black males are doing shootings all over New Orleans. Their mug shots are startling and regrettable. This month, there were homicides in the 3rd, 5th, 7th and 8th Districts. And although it is reported that there are fewer homicides this year than in previous years, that doesn’t make the loss of one life less painful. This holiday season will have empty seats at the table for family meals, celebrations and gatherings.
For one family, three children will not have presents under the Christmas tree or a place at the family feast. They burned to death in a house fire set by their father.
Why the devastation, the killings, the apparent self-hatred?
When did we, the village, stop valuing the sanctity of human life and our Black relatives and neighbors? Why are our youth and young adults engaging in Black-on-Black violence? When did we forget that human life is precious, and that family is the real wealth in this world?
Our hearts go out to the victims of homicide and Black-on-Black crime. We also mourn for the perpetrators who lack guidance, mentors, and parents and relatives who tried the best way they knew how to keep their children on the straight and narrow path to success.
In 1990, Black psychology professor Amos Wilson wrote a book called “Black-on-Black Violence.” Wilson argued that Black-on-Black violence was the result of socio-psychological, political and economic causes that perpetuated white domination.
Professor and psychologist Kevin Cokley offered his insight in “Addressing Black-on-Black Violence: Some thoughts for those who pretend to be concerned,” an article published by Psychology Today.
Cokley holds the University Diversity and Social Transformation Professorship at the University of Michigan, where he serves as associate chair of diversity initiatives and a professor of psychology in the psychology department.
Cokley cited Na’im Akbar, a well-known Black psychologist and proponent of Afrocentric psychology, who wrote an article called “Mental Disorder Among African Americans.”
Akbar identified four categories of mental illness among African Americans, one of which he called “Self-Destructive Disorders.” He described self-destructive disorders as destructive attempts to cope with the unnatural condition of white supremacy, where individuals exhibit a survival at any cost mentality that was directed at themselves or other Black/African people.
So, what is the solution to the killing fields in which we are living? We must rebuild the village, brick by brick, person by person. School counselors must deal with the trauma our young people have experienced because of impoverished conditions and depression.
New Orleanians must reach out and mentor our young men and women. Small businesses, entrepreneurs, and corporations should give youth on-the-job training and allow them to earn livable wages.
All life is meaningful, and every life can be salvaged with the right resources, education, and mentorship.
This article originally published in the December 2, 2024 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
