There has been a lot of controversy over the all-white Academy Awards nominees. The hashtag #Oscarssowhite has been popular on social media and many celebrities are considering skipping the awards in protest. The media has also taken to attacking anyone who disagrees with the majority view point that the awards show is racist and needs to be stopped.
The latest casualty under media fire is Stacey Dash for her condemnation of networks like BET or majority black award shows like the Image awards. It is Dash’s belief that until we disband things that are specifically black, we can’t argue about things that are specifically white.
Let’s not forget that in 2009 Morgan Freeman sat down on 60 Minutes and advocated the same things.
Yes, at one time we needed to have our own recognition because we could find none in what people considered the “white world” but look how far we have come. As a nation we still have a long way to go but let’s not forget all the achievements we have made.
We can’t demand equality and integration while still promoting our own special brand of segregation. I’m all for the demolition of Black History month. I’m extremely proud of my heritage and I celebrate it every day I’m alive not just in the shortest month of the year. That’s not an achievement. It’s pacification.
When does it stop? Blacks were not the only ones who were mistreated yet somehow all those other cultures found a way to move on and thrive as a whole and we are the only ones who have yet to do so. Maybe the reason the world doesn’t take us seriously is because we have yet to take ourselves seriously.
Every day I hear about another young black man losing his life by another black man and no one bats an eye yet the minute another race takes a black life we are all up in arms. Why is it that we don’t care if we kill each other but only care if someone else does? Moreover when are we going to stop tearing each other down and help each other rise?
Knowledge is power and we have to stop insulting people for seeking it or making them feel as if there is something wrong with it. We also need to start taking responsibility for our own actions. When you mess up admit it. Own up to it and move on.
Look to our leaders and see what we can do. I promise you if you were to go back in time and ask Martin Luther King Jr. or Rosa Parks if they thought we would ever have a half black president and a black First Lady they would say no. Yet there they are.
We need to come together first before we demand anything of anyone else.
We can’t accuse the Academy Awards of being racist just because they are under the belief that the movies who cast Black actors were not Oscar worthy. We need to do better. Be better.
Stop thinking everyone is out to get you just because of your skin color. You are only caging yourself in. When we, as a black community realize this, there will be nothing anyone can do to stop us.
Religion can be spoken about freely, yet we tread softly when publically mentioning it.
But, the hardest idea to grasp is that having the right to spread religious awareness is certainly not the same as pushing beliefs on others.
While people reserve the right to practice religious freedom and to speak without restraint about any faith they choose, forcing others to listen isn’t freedom of speech; it’s harassment.
There are over 127 major religions and seven billion people on earth with seven billion different views of God. Some love Him, some fear Him, some question His existence and some are still searching for Him.
Some will decide that God plays no role in the trials and tribulations of life, while others will find faith the moment they see their newborn child take the first breath of being.
Whether we discover where we spiritually belong in a pew on Sunday morning or on a lonely drive with no destination, the journey to finding or forgetting God is what determines our views. We can’t be told what and who to believe in, or to even believe in anything at all.
What we learn, who we meet and the challenges we face are what we remember when we stand before Him, not the church members that knock on our front doors, or the people that stand in the quad condemning us all to hell.
And if the church goer at your front door changes your perspective, let them. Be baptized in one church, change your mind, and be baptized in another. Let what you learned in biology class make you question evolution and the powers above.
Learning from life experiences and questioning God’s ways isn’t sin; it’s human. It’s human to change emotionally, mentally, and spiritually when physical surroundings change. It’s human to simply be curious and indecisive.
Faith only exists because there are people that believe strongly enough in it to make it a reality and a way of life. Without doubters and differences, the strength of religion would never have anything to be measured against.
Because of that, religion without true belief is weak.
Never practice out of habit, don’t follow just because your parents or friends do, and don’t ever think one religion is superior to another. In a time that seems to have the explanation for everything in a test tube or on a database, people believing in any God at all is a miracle in itself.
