Black People : Integration, Segregation, or Isolation?

[Blue Print]

It is important that we have a vision for collective success, a path to it, and a method of measuring our progress along the way.

It seems we have three options:

Integration

Segregation

Isolation



Integration:
Many African Americans feel vested in America and seek success in an integrated American society.

Segregation:
Many African Americans feel equality in America is unobtainable, yet they feel that the service of our ancestors to this nation as slaves and the opression over the years since slavery entitles us to land and resources in the country we helped to build.

Isolation:
Many African Americans feel the White race is so intrinsically evil that co-existence is impossible. Therefore, they want complete separation from the White race and a return to the homeland.

What is your vision for our destiny? Which ideology do you support? What would be considered success within these three options? How would a successful collective Black/African American people/familiy/environment look like within your vision of our destiny?

Lets discuss our vision and paths to obtain it. Lets try to avoid criticism of visions or paths you do not agree with, but focus on defining and articulating what you believe to be good and right for black people. ANYONE can criticize the ideas of other, but we need people who can produce or defend ideas of their own.

 

[cherryblossom]

Good topic!

I think my ideology is more of a half-and-half.

I'd like to see our communities renewed and reclaimed. I'd like to see the businesses back in our neighborhoods as before Integration. Doctors, dentists, lawyers, clothing and grocery stores, movie theaters, and all the self-sufficient components which sustained our needs and hobbies can be replanted.

However, just as before Integration, Blacks have always had to maneuver within the White power structure, but our communities could still be maintained to serve and benefit us.

"For us, by us."

Other races and cultures work within the White system of this country but they maintain their own culture within their separate communities. I'd like to see us do the same.

The White man's ice is not colder than ours, and I believe we can heal our neighborhoods, clean them up, start and support our own businesses again.

 

[Destee]

It is important that we have a vision for collective success, a path to it, and a method of measuring our progress along the way.

It seems we have three options:

Integration

Segregation

Isolation



Integration:
Many African Americans feel vested in America and seek success in an integrated American society.

Segregation:
Many African Americans feel equality in America is unobtainable, yet they feel that the service of our ancestors to this nation as slaves and the opression over the years since slavery entitles us to land and resources in the country we helped to build.

Isolation:
Many African Americans feel the White race is so intrinsically evil that co-existence is impossible. Therefore, they want complete separation from the White race and a return to the homeland.

Brother Blue Print ... i don't think we have to be limited to the above options, or that we must choose one of them. I think we can have them all. They all exist right now. There are Black People living, thinking, and believing, all three of those ways, and more. I don't think our unity, our love, care, and concern for each other, must be dependent on any one of those things.

We can love each other, independent of personal choices made by each, allowing our diversity to strengthen us.

Choosing one of the paths mentioned above, is akin to requiring each of us to choose either, Islam, Christianity, or African Traditional Religions. No one has to choose, in order for us to unite. I propose that we can unite, no matter these personal choices each of us make.

We must come up with a way that is inclusive of all of us, those willing to demonstrate their love for their own selves, and their own people, no matter the life path they are on.

Even a Sister on crack, strung all the way out, can make the best decisions she can for herself, and her babies ... which might mean ... giving the babies to someone else, so they can escape some of the horrors of such a life. Giving her room to struggle to save her own life, so that she might be able to return to her babies ... clean and sober ... one day. Becoming a role model, a mentor, an example, to those who are facing like circumstances.

We're at the point now, where we must count all things, no matter how raggedy it looks.

We have no time ... nothing ... to waste.

What is your vision for our destiny?

I'd love to see all of my people loving themselves, and each other, properly.

Which ideology do you support?

I support them all because they all exist. They are all real, and the Sisters and Brothers that live them, are real too. They have opinions, experiences, knowledge, and wisdom that can be used to the benefit of the collective.

What would be considered success within these three options?

Success would be, that all within each, learn to love and respect the other. That each recognize, that the other, is a Sister or Brother just like them, trying to find a way out of the condition we are all in. Realize that that Sister or Brother, is only doing what they think is best for them ... based on their personal life circumstance, experience, knowledge, wisdom, or lack thereof ... they are only doing what you are doing. Success would be that each of us recognize that, for we are all in the same boat, no matter the ideology we live by.

How would a successful collective Black/African American people/familiy/environment look like within your vision of our destiny?

Black People would be loving themselves, and each other, properly. That is what it would look like. The vast changes that would bring over the landscape, over the world ... are too numerous to list.

Lets discuss our vision and paths to obtain it. Lets try to avoid criticism of visions or paths you do not agree with, but focus on defining and articulating what you believe to be good and right for black people. ANYONE can criticize the ideas of other, but we need people who can produce or defend ideas of their own.

Great topic, thanks for sharing!



Destee

 

[Blue Print]

Brother Blue Print ... i don't think we have to be limited to the above options, or that we must choose one of them. I think we can have them all. They all exist right now. There are Black People living, thinking, and believing, all three of those ways, and more. I don't think our unity, our love, care, and concern for each other, must be dependent on any one of those things.

We can love each other, independent of personal choices made by each, allowing our diversity to strengthen us.

Choosing one of the paths mentioned above, is akin to requiring each of us to choose either, Islam, Christianity, or African Traditional Religions. No one has to choose, in order for us to unite. I propose that we can unite, no matter these personal choices each of us make.

We must come up with a way that is inclusive of all of us, those willing to demonstrate their love for their own selves, and their own people, no matter the life path they are on.

Even a Sister on crack, strung all the way out, can make the best decisions she can for herself, and her babies ... which might mean ... giving the babies to someone else, so they can escape some of the horrors of such a life. Giving her room to struggle to save her own life, so that she might be able to return to her babies ... clean and sober ... one day. Becoming a role model, a mentor, an example, to those who are facing like circumstances.

We're at the point now, where we must count all things, no matter how raggedy it looks.

We have no time ... nothing ... to waste.




I'd love to see all of my people loving themselves, and each other, properly.




I support them all because they all exist. They are all real, and the Sisters and Brothers that live them, are real too. They have opinions, experiences, knowledge, and wisdom that can be used to the benefit of the collective.




Success would be, that all within each, learn to love and respect the other. That each recognize, that the other, is a Sister or Brother just like them, trying to find a way out of the condition we are all in. Realize that that Sister or Brother, is only doing what they think is best for them ... based on their personal life circumstance, experience, knowledge, wisdom, or lack thereof ... they are only doing what you are doing. Success would be that each of us recognize that, for we are all in the same boat, no matter the ideology we live by.




Black People would be loving themselves, and each other, properly. That is what it would look like. The vast changes that would bring over the landscape, over the world ... are too numerous to list.




Great topic, thanks for sharing!



Destee

Sister Destee,

Thanks for your input, you have made a very good point. Each of these ideologies do exist now. This is partially why I brought this topic up and why the last sentence of my initial post in this thread stated that anyone can criticize others but we need people who can aticulate their own ideas.

In the currently onging thread "Are we raising weak black men" James and I are discussing "Character". James seems to think that in the absence of white people, all black people have good character, therefore the answer for him is "Isolation". So, when we discuss any problem that exist in our community, his answer is guided by his belief in one of these three options.

So, as we discuss solutions to any problems we hope to solve, the correct answer is based upon which vision we are persuing. If we are persuing "integration", the absence of white people cannot be the solution to any of our problems. If we are persuing "Isolation", yet are not actively working to remove ourselves from white people or white people from us, we cannot claim we are trying to solve our problem....we are simply paying lip service to it.

So, I agree with you that all exist now and asking one to choose between three narrow choices is strange, but putting this on the table will hopefully help us to understand that when we discuss SOLUTIONS our vision for where we are going as a people become relevent to which solutions or appropriate for us. Hopefully we can respect others whose vision may be different from our own and who therefore have a different set of answers that do not mesh with ours.

 

[Clyde C Coger Jr]

In the Spirit of Sankofa and the Truth!

...Integration, Segregation, or Isolation?...What ever happen to Separate But Equal?

It is important that we have a vision for collective success, a path to it, and a method of measuring our progress along the way.

It seems we have three options:

Integration

Segregation

Isolation



Integration:
Many African Americans feel vested in America and seek success in an integrated American society.

Segregation:
Many African Americans feel equality in America is unobtainable, yet they feel that the service of our ancestors to this nation as slaves and the opression over the years since slavery entitles us to land and resources in the country we helped to build.

Isolation:
Many African Americans feel the White race is so intrinsically evil that co-existence is impossible. Therefore, they want complete separation from the White race and a return to the homeland.

What is your vision for our destiny? Which ideology do you support? What would be considered success within these three options? How would a successful collective Black/African American people/familiy/environment look like within your vision of our destiny?

Lets discuss our vision and paths to obtain it. Lets try to avoid criticism of visions or paths you do not agree with, but focus on defining and articulating what you believe to be good and right for black people. ANYONE can criticize the ideas of other, but we need people who can produce or defend ideas of their own.

Blue Print,

Welcome to Destee.com and this is a great post, for real. Obviously, I agree with sister’s cherryblossom and Destee, both have plainly and clearly articulated our present condition and how we should go about changing and improving our demise. One question though, on cherryblossom’s concept, does no reply indicate a disagreement?

Furthermore, it is strange to me that there is no mention of Separate But Equal as an option in search of our vision and methodology toward collective success. The real black people of the day opted for this plan of action, to be separate but equal, and it just happens to be what we continue to seek this as a remedy to our overall displacement. To be separate but equal speaks to choices, rights and privileges that are automatic, or at least should be.

Again, rather than integrate, which was always considered as acceptance of a so-call inferior position, which is to say that blacks must come up to the status of whites, was rejected by the collective that was on the battle field, at that time.

And with the knowledge of genetics we now have, even to say equal is an understatement in the wrong direction. Nevertheless, equal rights is all we have ever wanted, to be recognized as human beings is all we have ever wanted, to be viewed as men and women is all we have ever wanted. To put simply, we must take our rightful place by assimilating what is now in front of us, freedom. We now know who’s who and what’s what, so the proper question becomes this, why have we not arrived, well, the sleeping giant is still asleep, that’s real.