The One Sentence Black Parents Should NEVER Allow Our Children to Utter!

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“I hate to read!”  A few weeks ago, my six-year-old uttered that sentence loud and strong when I told her to gather a book to read for homework time. I realize that she is too young, too innocent and too naive to know the deep innuendos the word “hate” carries.  So, I know she doesn’t really hate reading, she simply did not want to tear herself away from her favorite YouTube show.  But when her words traveled to my ears, then registering in my brain, they landed like a sword to my heart.  My heart dropped, my body began to shake, and my mind ventured back to a time when my beautiful, enslaved African ancestors were forbidden to read and right.  Many were savagely whipped, maimed, sold to another plantation and even murdered when caught with a book or having the ability to read and write.

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From the moment I became pregnant with our first child to today, I pride myself on instilling daily doses of historical and cultural facts about our people, slavery, and all things that encompass our proud black heritage.  Even while being a human incubator for our daughters, I would read stories, poems, plays and narratives written for and about our people, hoping the words would penetrate through my belly to their ears, heart and spirit all while in utero.

I was caught off guard when she spoke that ugly sentence, “I hate to read,” because not a day goes by that I do not recite a phrase from Maya Angelou’s dynamic poem, Still I Rise.  “I am the dream and the hope of the slave!”  To enforce that into my girls, I personalize it just for them and say, “YOU are the dream and the hope of our slave ancestors.  They spent numerous nights laying on dirt floors and dreaming, hoping and praying that one day, their great, great, great granddaughters would be free and allowed the right to read!”  

Parents, I realize our lives are busy and we are inundated with task, responsibilities, worries, issues, etc., but we can not raise a generation that is ignorant of their past.  Why is it when we African Americans speak about our tattered and tainted past, many outside our culture tell us to “get over it?” But other races and ethnic groups uplift their heritage and it is praised and held in high regard.  We can not lose the beauty of our black culture to the societal culture of today.  Our black children must know about various leaders besides Rosa Parks and Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  They were outstanding human beings, but that is not where I history began or ends, and unfortunately most history books used in schools gloss over the in-depth contribution of various black patrons.  The only  way to teach our kids about our culture, is to read and educate ourselves on it. 

 

Growing up in my home as a child was like living a walking and talking black history lesson.  During dinner, my father would religiously drill us on black history facts.  My parents had us listen to recorded speeches of black leaders and then direct us to memorize parts, if not most of the speech, and recite it back to them all while standing behind a podium.  And most importantly, my father made sure we read books, lots of books about anything and everything.  Mom and dad knew that knowledge was power and that the one thing racism could never take away from us, was the insight we held in our minds.  My siblings and I were teased periodically by some of our peers because we were not allowed to watch television much.  My father preferred we open a book and allow the words in it to take us further than any television program could.  

Because our children are “the dreams and the hopes of our slave ancestors,” it is imperative that we NEVER allow them to utter the words, “I hate to read!”  Teach them that one of the many scare and control tactics that the white slave owners used, was to keep the slaves ignorant and uneducated.  Share with your beautiful black children that their ability to read, write, create and learn is the direct byproduct of people risking their own lives and liberties so they could have the privileges they have today.  When our black children truly grasp that knowledge categorically is power, and that this knowledge comes through reading, studying and discipline, they we are no longer simply the “dream and hope of the slave,” we, they will be the destiny manifestors for generations to come.

“Out of the huts of history’s shame

I rise

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

I rise

I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave

I rise

I rise

I RISE”

(excerpt from Still I Rise, Maya Angelou)