I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind,
And did He stoop to quibble could tell why
The little buried mole continues blind,
Why flesh that mirrors Him must someday die,
Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus
Is baited by the fickle fruit, declare
If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus
To struggle up a never-ending stair.
Inscrutable His ways are, and immune
To catechism by a mind too strewn
With petty cares to slightly understand
What awful brains compels His awful hand.
Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:
To make a poet black, and bid him sing!
“Yet Do I Marvel” by Countee Cullen
The place and history of Black people in the United States is quite a rich and accomplished journey of survival and a display of brilliance. Against all odds, we are the arbiters and contributors to America’s culture while always outside of the society and enduring never-ending suppression and oppression.
Yet we have displayed miraculous and inspiring creativity, tenacity in all fields of endeavor. We have changed sports, music, politics, medicine, law, health, religion and any other field that you can think of.
From here our culture has been exported all over the world with Africa and the African Diaspora shaped by who we are, what we say, what we wear, how we think and what we do.
Our rise into Black consciousness touched and fed identity and resistance in Africa as far back as the Marcus Garvey movement of the 1920s and the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. When the militant Black Panther Party arose similar movements and chapters spread around the Black World.
The Nation of Islam and the Teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and his top student and servant, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, have spread and spawned followers around the globe. Even in the darkest of times, we have offered light, life and power to the entire planet.
Instead of becoming embittered and sour, we have offered humor, style and optimism to the world. We have stayed compassionate. We remain giving. We remain proud. We have displayed greatness.
What flows from the souls of Black folk has helped heal and has moved the peoples of the earth. We are unlike any other people as our oppression has not fully destroyed our gifts and we keep producing that which the world embraces, even if we are often not embraced.
That doesn’t stop us from continuing to move forward and staying in a struggle that would have broken others but has not kept us from shining.
The quality of our hearts has been shaped in such a way that we don’t seek to do the evil done to us. We have a special heart that feels for the suffering and the plight of others. Our grandmothers and mothers always had something to spare for someone—a meal, a place to stay, a kind word, a prayer—when we had nothing.
Our fathers, grandfathers and uncles extended their hands, their wisdom and their love to those who were abandoned, whether blood relations or not. Black teachers and neighborhood “Big Mommas” and “Big Misters” refused to give up on our children when others said there was no hope.
And we prevailed.
Still, it makes you wonder, what would we be if we fully knew ourselves, our true history as the Original People and Cream of the Planet Earth? What would we be if we existed and enjoyed full and complete freedom, justice and equality? What we have displayed in our sojourn in a strange land under a strange people is just a sign of all that is within us.
So, in these trying times, don’t worry. One day we will live in that reality and it’s not too far off.
Naba’a Muhammad is editor-in-chief of The Final Call newspaper. He can be reached via www.finalcall.com and [email protected]. Find him on Facebook. Follow @Rmfinalcall on X and Instagram.
