Getting Back to Normal

It has been almost one month since the horrible events of September 11th. For weeks, everyone from entertainers to politicians has been talking about getting back to our "normal" lives. How can anything ever be "normal" again?

In my life and the lives of countless African Americans, normalcy means getting stopped while coming home from a hard days work because you look like a "suspect". Normal means being pulled over by the police because you have a fancy car. Normal means being followed around major (and not so major) department stores because of the color of your skin.

Normal also means inferior educations, low wages, unequal pay for equal work, covert segregation, discriminatory hiring practices, the unavailability of quality andaffordable healthcare and the list goes on and on and on.

Normalcy also seems to mean the ability of non whites, and certain blacks that have attained a certain status, NOT to be able to see things the way they are for African Americans in the United States. While blacks have made certain inroads when it comes to attaining the American dream, most blacks are still struggling. Struggling to pay bills. Struggling for equality. Struggling for justice.

Politicians, pundits and those that lean to the conservative side seem to think that more blacks have not made it up and out because they don't want to or lack the resolve to. They seem to think that African Americans lack the ability or intelligence to succeed academically and the ones that do are an anomaly.

That's not true. With crumbling schools, old or missing textbooks, and neighborhoods that have little or no social, academic or cultural enrichment programs, black children often drift into the hopeless pasttimes of many urban communities -- gangs and drugs.

Add to that the discriminatory social policies that work to keep African Americans in blight-ridden urban communities and the widespread economic redlining that keeps blacks from not only buying homes in better communities, but also in their own communities -- fostering absentee landlord sydrome that contributes to crumbling, unkempt homes -- and you have a desperate situation.

I, for one, cannot just continue life as I knew it. I will continue to try to get the word out to the American people about African Americans, our culture and our status in American society. However, I will engage in my mission more fervently. I will reach out to civic leaders, activists and politicians on a city, state and federal level. I will write, protest, march and fight the good fight for what I believe in.

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