The Real Enemy of The Black Community

I've been a Black man in American for 46 years now, and needless to say, I have been a part of, seen and heard many conversations about what is wrong with the black community and how to fix it. The answers, and opinions range from the practical to the down right bizarre. But the one thing that the participants of such dialogues, monologues, or diatribes can all agree on is the fact that there is definitely something wrong in and perhaps even with our community. There has often been talk about who the enemy is, and I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the fact that there are many. Everything from cultural conditioning, to the police, to economics, high blood pressure and of course white people who perpetuate, and knowingly participate in a racist system designed to oppress those of us who are not white. But as far as I am concerned, none of these things are our worst enemy. The number one enemy of the black community is complacency.

Complacency is defined as: a feeling of calm satisfaction with your own abilities or situation that prevents you from trying harder.
Let me be clear. Many of us try and succeed and many us don't  because we buy into a culture of defeat, and marginalization. This is why we relegate ourselves to low paying jobs, this is why we condemn ourselves to live in projects surviving in the shadows without actually living, and this is why some of us spend so much time in jail that it becomes a second home. I have no doubt that someone will read this and suggest that there are other factors that contribute to the plight of black people in this country like tougher sentencing laws, economic disparities, and flat out racism which is not only as American as apple pie, but is so ingrained within the fabric of the flag itself that a slave was forced to sew the original by hand. There are certain things that are just not up for debate. It is what it is. But unlike our enslaved African ancestors, there is nothing that is impossible for us unless we actually believe that it is. Maybe you've had a low paying job for years. If you truly believe that working at King Burger is the best that you can do or could do, that thought process will manifest itself into inaction because you have convinced yourself that you are not worth more more than minimum wage so why try. Maybe you're a third generation project dweller who has become accustomed to paying low rent in a place that you will never own because you feel like the bank will never "give" you a house. Guess what?! The bank will definitely never give you a house because you didn't try, and you're content with not trying. Don't get me wrong. Effort is not easy. That is one of the reasons why it's called effort. It requires that you do something more than live at someone else's mercy. For example. If you don't have a skill that makes you valuable in the workforce, you're at someone else's mercy because the skills that are required on most low paying jobs are a dime a dozen. If you don't put yourself in a position in which you cannot qualify for a home loan, when gentrification comes to your neighborhood you're at someone else's mercy. We can discuss disenfranchisement, displacement, and many other issues. But you must ask yourself if you are doing yourself a dis-service by "resting" on these issues. Succeeding in our community is only an anomaly if be believe that success is the exception instead of the rule. As individuals we must decide at some point that we will position ourselves to triumph despite what we see, and despite what we acknowledge .

There is nothing wrong with being down. But there is everything wrong with staying down.


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Just When You Thought You Heard It All News

Myron Rolle’s NFL career didn’t last long, but he always made clear that he had higher priorities than playing football, and he’s just taken a major step in his real calling. Rolle, a 2010 sixth-round pick of the Titans who also spent time with the Steelers, has been chosen for a neurosurgery residency at Harvard after he completes his education at the Florida State University College of Medicine this spring.

“Seven years of neurosurgery is a big deal, something I wanted for a long time, really excited about it. Today is just great, it’s remarkable,” Rolle told WCTV.Rolle was a star player at Florida State who once arrived late to a game because he had an interview for a Rhodes Scholarship. He spent a year studying at Oxford between the end of his Florida State career and the start of his NFL career, and although he spent a couple years in the NFL, his primary goal was to become a doctor.

“Saving lives and helping people live a better life,” Rolle said, “that’s going to make life worth living.

 “Seven years of neurosurgery is a big deal, something I wanted for a long time, really excited about it. Today is just great, it’s remarkable,” Rolle told WCTV.

Rolle was a star player at Florida State who once arrived late to a game because he had an interview for a Rhodes Scholarship. He spent a year studying at Oxford between the end of his Florida State career and the start of his NFL career, and although he spent a couple years in the NFL, his primary goal was to become a doctor.

“Saving lives and helping people live a better life,” Rolle said, “that’s going to make life worth living.”

Here’s hoping the winds at least blew away the grass clippings. 

A breathtaking photo captured a Canadian man casually mowing his lawn as a massive tornado whirled around in the distance.

Cecilia Wessels said she was at her home in Three Hills, Alberta, on Friday when she snapped the now-viral photo of her determined husband.

“The tornado was about 2km (1.24 miles) from us moving eastwards. There was very little wind at our back yard and not even rain. It was just very hot,” she told HuffPost on Sunday by email. “It was a shocker to see something like this but my husband was calm, the whole street was out taking pictures and well, staying calm was the thing to do.”

Wessels told Edmonton station Sonic 102.9 that she was taking a nap when the storm started blowing in, causing her 9-year-old daughter to panic.

“She says, ‘Mommy, mommy, please wake up. There’s a thing in the sky, it looks like a tornado, and Daddy doesn’t want to come inside,’” she recalled. “We said to him, ‘Are you coming inside?’ And he’s like, ‘No, the wind turned. We’re fine!’”

Her husband, identified as Theunis Wessels, repeated this carefree attitude to the Canadian Press: “I was keeping an eye on it.”

“It looks much closer if you look in the photo, but it was really far away. Well, not really far, far away, but it was far away from us,” he added.

Another angle of the tornado shows the twister spinning near a highway as cars continue to pass by.

Let this be a lesson for all of those who love social media. There is no such thing as anonymity!

Maybe they’ll learn from this.

Harvard University revoked offers of acceptance from at least 10 potential freshmen after discovering they had posted memes in a Facebook messaging group mocking rape, the Holocaust and child sex abuse, The Harvard Crimson reported Sunday.

According to the campus newspaper, which had obtained screengrabs of the messaging group, some participants joked that abusing children was sexually gratifying. Others targeted ethnicity, race or nationality. One poster referred to the hanging of a Mexican child as “piñata time.” Two incoming students told the Crimson the group was at one point called “Harvard memes for horny bourgeois teens.”

After discovering the messaging group ― which had split off from what one student called a “lighthearted” Facebook chat for admitted students ― administrators informed the offending applicants in April that the admission offers no longer stood, the Crimson noted.

“We do not comment publicly on the admissions status of individual applicants,” a Harvard spokesperson told CBS Boston, which reported the video segment above.

Just last November, students already enrolled at Harvard paid the price for online postings clearly not meant to go public. The Ivy League school suspended its men’s soccer team after documents were discovered in which some players rated the sexual attractiveness of the women’s team.