Eyes on the Prize

My post was gonna be all about how angry I was because I happened to look at the blog of a person who is in grad school and who is reading stuff I read like 3 years ago and the person is actiing all like this is the best stuff in the world and is all brand new. So I was gonna be all angry and upset and pissy because I was feeling like I should be reading that stuff and writing that stuff because I did that stuff a while ago. So, that was what my post was gonna be. Anger and jealously. But I've decided to redirect my energies.
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Sometimes I spend so much time reading what other people are doing and thinking about what people are thinking about or trying to think about what they are thinking about me, that I just waste time. Tonite, my bro set me straight. I mean he really did and I needed it. This ain't no time for being focused on what other folk is doing (or saying they doing) this is time for me to do what I need to do.

I've been watching 'Eyes on the Prize' tonight (you can find out more about this program on pbs.org) and it never fails to motivate me. I remember watching this show when I was a kid in middle school. Grades 4-8 piled in a room (I went to a small prodimatley Black Catholic School) and so we could easily fit into one large classroom. We watched the entire series, its basically about the African-American struggle. I didn't realize how important it was for me to know and learn about it, but I always felt good when I watched it and just didn't know why. Now I know that what I was feeling was a connection, a connection to the struggle and to others. While in no way do I think my life even compares to the way folks struggled before, but nowdays things are just different. The issues of race and class are so blurred. Some of my friends who aren't brown folk have experienced many of the same things I did because of class, but there is are still race/color issues. But anyways, when I watch this show I just always had this since of pride and feeling good about where I came from and who I came from. I would listen to stories from my grandma about how when she was a child Jim Crow was rampant. White folk would give little Black boys a penny or two to sit in a window and eat watermelons and peanuts. Schools shut down in her town because folk did not want to integrate.

We have come so far, but have such a long way to go.

Because of all these setbacks and injustices we just have so far to go. I'm thinking bout how we sent our kids into schools to try to integrate and how there would be riots. Riots. Riots, because little girls and boys would go to school. Now there are riots in our schools- us against us. Ridiculous. We are so lost in so many ways, and I don't know how we can get back on that road again- my guess is that it starts small. Hell, I'm feeling lost so let me start with myself.

So, instead of bitching and moaning and complaining and being a hatah, I'm not gonna put that energy out there. I'm gonna put good positive energies out there, and think about folks like Malcolm, Martin, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglas, the Blackstar, and more local- my granny, my grandpa, those folks who made it even possible for me to be doing what I do.

And made it possible for me to keep dreaming and working towards doing even more.