“There is a soul sickness in the halls of lawmakers. Healers and musicians, and storytellers can shift consciousness in ways that political posturing cannot. But because the deep introspective work required to change these paradigms we complain about is not part of the American curriculum we are destined to repeat the pattern over again.
In respect to the Negro National Anthem it does not come as a surprise to me. I have painfully discovered, and eventually accepted some fundamental things about African Americans. One glaring, and persistent characteristic of Black Americans is our tradition of self-loathing. It is so deep. Africans, from home, whisper about it. In fact, if I speak in French to Africans about this tendency among Black folks I get honest answers. Africans have their weird wacked out stuff, but ours is ours. We own it and boast about it.
The last time, as a young man, I returned to the States from Morocco I created the percussion chair in a large Pentecostal church, Free Gospel Church of Christ, in Maryland. It was there through the drum this ‘negro paradigm’ rose its ugly head. The way it came up needs more space and time than we have for this sharing, but the root of our self-loathing comes from the church. We stopped short of becoming a free people when the Civil Rights movement ended because we don’t have the courage to search our churches for the root of our tragedies, misconceptions about power, belief-system, or freedom, and hold fast, we do, to the conviction that slave owners and missionaries gave us a religion to free us.
It is frightening to do this kind of spiritual work. I know from personal experience. But without it we, as a people, will never garner the respect we think we deserve for the simplest of reasons. Our fight for freedom ended when the law allowed us to do what white folks did, and let us eat, and work with them. That is all we negotiated for, it seems, in retrospect. That simple approach to our own growth will never permit us to be the kind of people you obviously ache to see, and be a part of. We cannot see that this is the work we should be doing: unlearning what we know, defining power, and negotiating with power with the Powers.
Our truth is hard to say aloud, but we do it anyway. We like being ‘niggers’ for some reasons.” – Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories
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