Martin Luther King Jr. Day came and passed, and now we must go on honoring him into the bad bitch month that is February. As we move on to remember the awesomeness of our ancestors, we must move past the little bit of community service event we do on MLK Day. Dr. King was a minister who would always preach love and peace, non-violence and cooperation. As we move forward in our lives it is important to carry these lessons with us and keep them in our subconscious mind.
1. Recognize the Problems in your community.
A problem people often encounter is that they do not want to accept that America was not built in mind with black people to succeed, so we cannot do the same things our white counterparts do and expect to get\ the same reaction. Unfortunately. that is the society we live in. but we cannot hate the white man because of this. We have to accept the facts and forcibly change the structure. It’s 2019, get educated and form an opinion.
2. Buy from Black-owned businesses
Black people have the highest spending power in the United States. If we harnessed that power and put it back into our community we could stop feeding the oppressive majority off of our pockets. Everything that we use on a daily basis, we can buy from a black-owned business. This would cycle that money back into our community, and it allows even more businesses to be opened, which inevitably would increase property values and improve African-American way of life.
3. Create Jobs
A major problem in urban metropolitan areas is poverty and joblessness. Opening black business would create more jobs for the influx of homeless people, and unsupported people. There would be a self-sustaining community cycling its money between distributor and customer, and helping put black people on equal grounds with their white counterparts; If your ingroup controls the business and hiring process, there will be no prejudice because both parties in the professional relationship are apart of the ingroup.
4. Encourage your children
My parents had a very strict upbringing and that southern abuse bled down into my mom’s parenting skills. My mother did not encourage my natural hair, and I didn’t even know what it was until 7th grade; I do not believe that is what Dr.King envisioned for us. The next generation of children will grow up loving their dark skin and normalizing their curly hair. We have been taught for too long that our traits are undesirable; The next generation of kids should not have the same insecurities as their parents we have to encourage their melanin from day one.
5. Love Unconditionally
Black people have a reputation of being mean, and I think we need to abandon that reputation. I promise you, you look beautiful when you smile. Wave back at that girl and smile back at that guy, just be a kinder human because I’m sure that’s what Dr. King would have wanted, After all, he was a minister.