The Master Plan
Every morning I spend an hour or two watching local news and looking through my rss feeds for international news on certain topics. For the past few months, my rss feed for “African American” has delivered a myriad of distressing news. Every day the national headlines regarding African Americans reflect poor health, ethics, education, and finances. Please take a moment to navigate away from this page and Google: African American
I had several conversations last weekend about “The Master Plan.” In short, “The Master Plan” is a conspiracy theory about the eradication of the Black race. I don’t know if such a plot exist, but I do know that African American scholars and activists are getting old and dying off every day while young African Americans are exponentially being failed by the school system and/or becoming property of the United States Department of Corrections.
[Quick side note] When I was in middle school, I remember watching the news and seeing hundreds of Bosnian kids throwing rocks at military tanks as they were rolling through their neighborhood. Somehow those kids stopped one the tanks and it made international news. Children who were my age at the time or younger did their part for the good of their people’s survival and were universally applauded for it.
The major difference between them and us is solidarity. They were one people united for the greater good. In the past, there were several Black movements in which African Americans united for the common cause of freedom and liberty. The most notable were those led by Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King Jr, The Black Panthers, and Malcolm X. Also note that all of these leaders were imprisoned and/or murdered. Conversely, today’s pop and hip hop cultures award individuality and materialism over all else. Songs and stories about togetherness and awareness have been replaced by “I got this and I bought that.”
Who’s to blame? How can we fix it?
Hopefully a sociologist or historian will be able to shed some light on this subject because I do not have a definitive answer. I do know that it begins with each individual becoming a vocal example of positivity. Jay Z once mention in a song that he wonders if things would be different if he glorified a more legitimate lifestyle rather than the drug dealing rap star lifestyle. Maybe we need to create our own conspiracy and make the charitable biologist the cool thing to be? What do you think?
