"We are each other's harvest; we are each other's business; we are each other's magnitude and bond."--Gwendolyn Brooks
It has taken me years to sit down and pull my thoughts together on exactly what I wanted to say to black folk. I knew, ultimately, that what I wanted to say would resonate with some, anger others, and put yet others on the fence and incapable of knowing what to think or say. Bill Cosby said that the sure way to failure is to try and please everyone. There is no such thing, therefore, as a book written by any author that is going to make everyone happy.
At the end of a 24-hour day, we do not struggle for perfection of every jot and tittle of writing that we do; but for that perfect expression of what is our own perspective and our own truth when we take a glimpse at history and decide to endorse it or pronounce judgment on it. The lives of black folk in the United States is complicated and parimutuel--not the individual black or African American person, but the all-encompassing total black people.
I knew I did not want to take forever to say what I had to say; and in writing this book, discovered that someone who may care to try can read 30,000 words in about two hours--it is just under 30,000 words.
It doesn't take a treatise or a million words and a book the size of an atlas and encyclopedia and dictionary to put this election year, and how it has impacted black folk in general, in perspective.
Writers tend to either take for granted that their public understands where they are coming from; or they tend to take for granted that everyone is stupid except themselves. This book makes neither presumption.
It simply says what is heartfelt and expedient and expresses the truth in its own casual and causal manner, all BS, MS, PhD, and JD aside.
It is not meant to enflame, but to enrich; not to provoke anger, but to stimulate dialogue, conversation and deeper thought processing.
It is partly modeled after the sense of W.E.B. Du Bois'
The Souls of Black Folk, in which he talked fully about the dilemma of the black man in 1905 and of America's 'color line' problem 40 years after the delivery of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1865.
It has now been 40 years-plus since the death of the most well-renowned historical leader of the Civil Rights Movement; which ended, a short two months later, Civil Rights Movement itself. Black folk dropped the ball in 1968 and lived, as a whole, to regret.
Question is, what do we now do to salvage what's left of our universal dignity, pride and restore our rightful place in America; and will Obama be the color-line eraser of all-time that will help this process along?
