Do You Like The Things That Life Is Showing You?

What I like most about Anthony Hamilton’s music is his southern sensibilities in his songs. His down-home flair is something I miss about living growing up in the south. This song, AIN’T NOBODY WORRYIN’, really got me thinking about all the problems facing the Black community, and how it seems things only continue to get worse for us rather than better. I know that there are programs out there to help our people, but I still wonder if they are helping. There are those of us who volunteer helping children, the elderly and the homeless, but I can’t help but wonder if the efforts of those amazing people will somehow be lost along the way. So much of what we see of ourselves in the media doesn’t offer much hope, and after a while, it seems overwhelming...like there is so much too do, too little people to do it, and the results just aren’t coming quickly enough. It can all be so discouraging before one even gets started. Yet, there is a part of me that has to believe that every little bit helps, and maybe, just maybe it’s things aren’t as bad as they seem.

I watched a documentary about the Muhammad Ali - George Foreman fight, WHEN WE WERE KINGS. Ali talked a whole lot of trash, lol, but you couldn’t help but be drawn to him. What I fell in love most about him was how he was all about uniting Black people across the world and his courage to refuse to be drafted into the Vietnam War. His main point was, why am I going to go over there and fight poor people who haven’t done anything to me. They haven’t lynched me or called me a nigger. I don’t hear a lot about the stances our athletes are taking today, if any. Maybe I’m missing it. All I know is that to me our society, our people are so different from the way they were back then. In the 70's (and in earlier decades) Black people stood up for what they believed in and spoke out against what wasn’t right, and I’m trying to figure out what happened to us...what has changed?