When we take a critical look at what we have been taught to believe and how it may have a negative impact on others, them we all can have a conversation of unity. No other ethnic group on this planet has suffered more than those of African ancestry. When other groups stand up for them, then we can all secure the future of the rest.
If not, then the conversation of equality and justice is meaningless.
Black people have always stepped up for the basic human rights of all, but those who cry now can never see themselves standing up for the African. Why!
The universal order dictates “what goes around, comes around”.
So where do we go from here? Does all of this go to the back pages of the news?
Or does this become a litmus test for social discourse on humanity?

Obviously, I am an African American man. And clearly, yes, I take a certain pride in seeing Obama’s appeal to the wider nation and the greater planet perhaps as a validation of my own worth.

That has been a struggle for me my entire 50 years on this planet. Even as I achieved success in this society, I was reminded of the cost paid for it — both mine and that of family who came before me. I do not hate, and I give my hurt to God to keep me from lashing out. But there still those moments, and I have seen them this year, when things happen that spark those memories, those hurts, those fears, that anger.

A few nights ago I watched am ESPN documentary on the Black players and coaches from historically Black colleges, and the barriers they faced. Many overcame them. Many were eaten alive. Their story is, on some strange level, what passes for normal in our society, as if being ‘better’ than we once were on issues of race and gender is good enough. It isn’t. We should never have needed separate laws to ensure that we treat all American like Americans, but that is was the best we could do at the time.
‘They treat us better’ is not what I tell my children.

If we spend our lives settling for “better” and not striving for “best” then we reduce ourselves to being a nation of people who simply wish to get by. That is not the promise of America that may father and uncles fought for in Vietnam, that my grandparents sacrificed for during World War II, that my ancestors died for during the Civil War.

I have long loved my country, even when my country did not love me. I agonized over celebrating July 4, since technically I most likely would not have been free on that day. Even as I celebrate Juneteenth I do so with sadness since it marks a day when we learned that we had been freed but had not been told.

But I do know one thing – I am so glad this conversation is finally happening with something at stake. It is along time coming, and I for one never thought I would live to see it. I can only imagine how my 80-year-old friend, a jazz musician who played in the old “Chitlin Circuit” must feel after all he has seen.

This conversation may cost Barack the election. I hope it doesn’t cost our country, my country, even more. The world is watching us. They want to see if we really believe all the hype about justice and equality for all, that we all really are created equal, or if we will simply surrender to factionalized differences that are no less destructive than what we see in other countries around the world.

Either way, the genie is out of the bottle.

James Michael Brodie