One people Many voices
I am listening to the greatest CD as I write this post. It is a music filled with the drums of Africa and the Carribean. I have to stop from time to time as I listen to stand and shake my hips and shoulders. The music is infectious. I have to calypso a little and then I am compelled to stop and listen to the lyrics. It is impossible to remain still while listening to it. The CD is Rashad Ali & the Rain People. To order go to his web site: Rainpeople.com.
The music reflects the idea I tried to convey in Passion's Promise. If you remember, the main character, Cara St. John, taught African-Carribean dance at the community center. Many of the people living in the housing project were Carribean, African, or Mid-Eastern. My point in the novel and always is that there are so many more similarities between people of the diaspora than there are diffrences. Sometimes the thought overwhelms me because we tend to look for ways to think that we are better than others who were not born where we were. We complain about accents, different cultural values, and different norms. Stop and think, the drum beat is the same regardless of where you are. And when you hear the beat of the drum, you know how to move. Even a baby knows that.
I refuse to use the term African-American most of the time. That label is so limiting. We are indeed a minority when we think of ourselves only as descendants of Africa living in American. But we have connections--brothers and sisters--all over the world. We are the majority. We are a mighty people. We are strong and powerful. We did not die from being overworked from sun up to sun down in cotton fields or sugar cane fields, we did not die when raped, we did not die in the middle passage lying in our feces and that of others, we did not die from heartbreak when our babies were torn from our breasts. We are strong. We are survivors. We lived to tell the story. We pass must pass it down from generation to generation. Not to cry over those indignities, but to remind ourselves of our strenght. If we can overcome those atrocities, we can overcome anything. Everyone knows who we are and we scare them with our joy, with our enthusiasm, with our love and power. We are Africans in a strange land.
We are indeed one, but it is too much to expect us to all agree. We are not a monlith with one mind. We have many thoughts many ideas. Don't get angry when one of your brothers says something to publicly embarrass you. He has a right to his thoughts. Of course, wrong is wrong and there are some things that even I--the most easygoing person on earth--will not tolerate. I'll go into those things later. But for now let's agree on two things--we are brothers and sisters and we will disagree.
But that are there any reasons strong enough to go to war with people who do not believe as we believe? Is there a reason to invade someone's land? In the year 2006, after two world wars and several wars in between, is there any other way we can settle our differences?
The music reflects the idea I tried to convey in Passion's Promise. If you remember, the main character, Cara St. John, taught African-Carribean dance at the community center. Many of the people living in the housing project were Carribean, African, or Mid-Eastern. My point in the novel and always is that there are so many more similarities between people of the diaspora than there are diffrences. Sometimes the thought overwhelms me because we tend to look for ways to think that we are better than others who were not born where we were. We complain about accents, different cultural values, and different norms. Stop and think, the drum beat is the same regardless of where you are. And when you hear the beat of the drum, you know how to move. Even a baby knows that.
I refuse to use the term African-American most of the time. That label is so limiting. We are indeed a minority when we think of ourselves only as descendants of Africa living in American. But we have connections--brothers and sisters--all over the world. We are the majority. We are a mighty people. We are strong and powerful. We did not die from being overworked from sun up to sun down in cotton fields or sugar cane fields, we did not die when raped, we did not die in the middle passage lying in our feces and that of others, we did not die from heartbreak when our babies were torn from our breasts. We are strong. We are survivors. We lived to tell the story. We pass must pass it down from generation to generation. Not to cry over those indignities, but to remind ourselves of our strenght. If we can overcome those atrocities, we can overcome anything. Everyone knows who we are and we scare them with our joy, with our enthusiasm, with our love and power. We are Africans in a strange land.
We are indeed one, but it is too much to expect us to all agree. We are not a monlith with one mind. We have many thoughts many ideas. Don't get angry when one of your brothers says something to publicly embarrass you. He has a right to his thoughts. Of course, wrong is wrong and there are some things that even I--the most easygoing person on earth--will not tolerate. I'll go into those things later. But for now let's agree on two things--we are brothers and sisters and we will disagree.
But that are there any reasons strong enough to go to war with people who do not believe as we believe? Is there a reason to invade someone's land? In the year 2006, after two world wars and several wars in between, is there any other way we can settle our differences?
posted by Mildred and James Walters @ 11:14 AM
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