More Than Just a Birthdate
I’ve completed 60 revolutions around the Sun today. I’m not really 61 years old as much as it’s the first day of my first year past 60. I don’t celebrate birthdays, but I do recognize my birthdate as a way of tracking the time I’ve been alive.
Born October 10, 1965, I’m a true child of the ‘60s, and from day one I have experienced every negative and traumatic scenario a Black man can experience in these United States during my 60 complete years of living.
I’ve survived and at times even thrived despite those experiences, and I’m grateful for every last one of them. They created and shaped the person I’ve become and the person you see expressed as a writer online.
I believe they never wanted Negroes to live past 60 in this country.
They knew there was a distinct possibility that time and circumstance might create a Negro like me, and like so many of you who have awoken and come to understand the truth about white supremacy and its brutal history, no matter how desperately they tried to conceal it.
The miseducation of the Negro was planned and purposeful, meant to maintain the status quo of white supremacy and keep the illusion of white hegemony alive in the minds of the captives, the descendants of the enslaved. Our ancestors were murdered, abused, experimented on, segregated, and bound by Black Codes, and every effort was made to exterminate them before Negroes like you and me might come into existence.
We are the end result of their inability to contain our rise and our realization. For those of us who remain in a mental slumber, unconscious, unaware, unbothered, and inattentive, we offer hope to the heirs of slave owners that they will get away clean with the crimes committed against our humanity.
For those of us who are awakened, we are labeled a threat to their stranglehold on history, monitored closely, sabotaged regularly, and in some cases murdered. Leaders like Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were killed during this very decade. To some, it looks as if we who are awake have lost our minds, when the truth is that we have found our minds and recovered our senses through the facts they would much rather we ignore or deny.
They see people like you and me and get as nervous as cats in a rocking chair factory. They’re skittish and high-strung in anticipation of what may come next. As I head into year 61, I can only guess their next move against us, steeped in Biblical prophecy and tracked by the predictability of human nature.
They are scared.
They thought the assassinations carried out in the ‘60s would spare them the consequences of their forefathers’ actions and would create a docile Negro population, conditioned to give comfort and aid to their enemies. Now they know that nothing could be further from the truth.
As I grow older, the divide widens between Negroes who know and Negroes who don’t care to know. I understand the distance it creates, and I accept that some who claim to be family may no longer associate with those of us who refuse to ignore the damage created by the history we’ve suffered at the hands of our oppressors. This, too, was predicted: the truth would divide and fracture even those who are supposed to be closest to you. As I age, I’m learning to accept that reality and move on mentally, far and away from those who have chosen to disassociate and disconnect in order to “protect their peace.”
I encourage them to carry on without me, as any association with the world or its pursuits is not in spiritual line with my own, and it may be best that we each go our own way. An awakened Negro’s journey becomes more a quest accomplished in solitude and self-reflection, and doesn’t require empty or meaningless associations that are not in parallel alignment with Kingdom interests.
Those sacrificed on that journey are but casualties of the cause and considered acceptable losses.
I continue to grow, I continue to learn, and I continue to move forward without the burden of carrying the mental baggage of the past.
With 60 full and completed years behind me, I now look forward to the next phase of my development, in hopes that my path might be made straight through faith in The Creator, who I believe pays attention to every step I take.
Thanks to all who recognized this day with me. It’s greatly appreciated and highly valued.
Selah!
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