Time for a little house cleaning.

The election of Barack Obama as the 44^th president of the United States was of special significance to the country as a whole and especially so to the black community. President Obama now joins the ranks of Jesse Owens, Hank Aaron and countless other black luminaries that have shattered the “black inferiority myth” into thousands of tiny pieces. Not too long ago, having a black man ascend to the most powerful office in the world would have seemed an impossible dream to millions of African-Americans around the country. On Jan 20^th 2009 that impossible dream was fulfilled. More importantly, hope has been unleashed in the hearts and minds of millions of young African-Americans all across the county. African-American kids can now dare to dream that they too could be the president of the United States of America someday. The responsibility of nurturing those dreams lies with the collective members of the black community. It is not an easy task and I have to admit my skepticism on whether the black community is up for that challenge.

The challenges we face in the black community are real and many. Keeping hope alive in the hearts and minds of our youngsters is going to require the community as a whole to confront those challenges head-on. It is not a secret that our communities are overrun by dope dealers, hustlers, pimps and other kinds of vice. Our schools are failing. The infrastructures in our communities are failing due to neglect. We have become numb to all the violence, deaths and destruction that are far too common in the black neighborhoods. Our kids want to grow up to be thugs and hustlers. We have songs that glorify the ghetto and thug life. We drink and dance to these songs and pretend that everything is alright in our community. We continue to bury our head in the sand; we have indeed become the proverbial ostrich.

Perhaps this is an ideal time for the black community to awake from its stupor. It is the high time we did a little house cleaning. We must start with insisting on better and quality education for our children. While the fact that president Obama is black is inescapable, what often is not discussed enough are his other achievements. He is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, a community organizer, a published author of two best sellers, a US Senator to mention but a few. I would like to think that the reason he was able to achieve what he has achieved is because opportunities to do so were available to him. We should do no less for our kids. We need to provide them with the same opportunities that president Obama had growing up. We need to get involved in our schools by attending PTA meetings and providing any kind of assistance that we can afford to provide. We must demand and insist on qualified individuals to teach in our schools. The quality of our education is something that we will and should not compromise on.

We will certainly fail in our endeavor to clean up our communities if we do not start with our families first. We should work to raise well adjusted kids that will grasp the opportunities that this great country has to offer. We should also grasp at those opportunities as well. We should strive to become better neighbors. We need to look out for each other. We need to put the dope dealers, the pimps and the hustlers on notice that they are no longer welcome in our communities. We have to stand up to these bullies and let them know that no amount of threats or intimidation will deter us from cleaning out the trash from our communities. This should actually be easy. The thugs that terrorize our communities are not outsiders. They are members of our families. We know them really well. We went to school with them. We have spent time with them. Some of them are our sons and daughters, brothers and sisters or nephew and nieces. Hiding these criminals in our midst because they are family is what has gotten us into the mess that we are in right now. That will have to change. Tyrone, Andre, Shanice or Ebony need to know that their criminal activities will no longer be condoned. As good citizens of the black community we should report Tyrone if he is a dope dealer or Shanice if we have information linking her to a crime. In the name of cleaning up our community, it is our duty to report him/her to the police regardless of whether he/she is our friend, brother or sister or uncle. The “stop snitching” creed needs to be laid to rest. Failing to report these criminals that are a menace to the community only leaves us and our family members at risk of being their next victims.

The leaders in the black communities need to speak out more about our responsibilities in cleaning up our communities and making them decent places to live and raise a family. I commend minister Farrakhan for constantly driving this point home in the majority of his speeches. I just hope that the black community would listen. The power to transform ourselves and our communities is in our hands. The shameful state of our communities is not due to slavery or anything that the white man did or is doing. The blame for this one is squarely on our heads. We should not expect an outsider to resolve our problems for us. It is time to kill the slave mentality. It is time to roll up our sleeves and start confronting these challenges.