As we enter the New Year, it is wise to consider the previous year and lessons to be learned. The New Year can also bring up new vision and inspiration about what we would like to accomplish in 2025 as we seek to make progress and do better.
Black America in 2024 faced again serious challenges and were haunted by old struggles we have endured during our sojourn in North America for nearly 500 years now.
We saw rising racism, violence within our community, racial and police attacks outside of our community, the rise of right-wing, anti-Black politics and rhetoric coming from the Supreme Court and Republicans while the Democrats move away from us in efforts to regain the White House and Congress.
State legislatures continue to work to blunt and deny us voting rights and power as our enemies assert their determination to protect White privilege and White status in the United States.
We have suffered from worse health, lagged behind in wealth, employment and income, and suffered more from the ravages of inflation. Suicide and deaths from drug addiction and diseases have brought us tremendous pain and suffering.
Yet in the midst of these curses, we have a blessing if we choose to embrace it. Clearly we have been shown we cannot depend on the children of our slavemasters to treat us fairly or even respectfully.
We have clearly been shown that moral appeals, public protests, voting at the ballot box and hoping and praying that White America will change have not protected us from loss.
These bitter realities are good for us if we are willing to act in accord with the time and what must be done. If this is not the time to depend on those who have spitefully used us, what time is it?
It is time we turn to Almighty God Allah and ourselves with strong faith and a determination to act in our own best interests. Acting on our own behalf, exercising self-determination and joyfully embracing the ordained struggle for freedom, justice and equality are inspiring.
It is empowering to take charge of your life and the life of your community instead of waiting for a benevolent White man, or White woman, to come to the rescue and for a recalcitrant, hate-filled, murderous system to change. None of those things will happen.
Things are not getting better; they are getting worse. Harmony and peace are not increasing, strife, anger and division are the order of the day. That’s all the more reason for us to abandon hopes and dreams for an American change of heart and action.
Where must we turn and who must we turn to? How about God Himself?
“Who is better than Allah (God) to depend on for our sustenance and the granting of our innermost desires? Who knows what is best for us, other than Allah (God)?” asked the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, in an article originally published April 15, 1988, in The Final Call. It was titled, “We Must Depend On Allah and Ourselves.”
“Oftimes we have desires which, if fulfilled, would bring us great sorrow. However, if we are strong enough to desire only that which pleases Allah (God), then we can never suffer disappointment and grief over not fulfilling some cherished desires.
“Allah (God) teaches us in the Holy Qur’an that He is the Grantor of Security and that He straitens the means of subsistence for whom He pleases. It is He, then, who can cause the Earth to reveal its treasures to us and it is He who can keep us from the treasures of the Earth. So let us depend on Allah and ourselves,” said Minister Farrakhan.
“Why should we depend on ourselves? There is an old saying that God helps those who help themselves; and we are taught in the Holy Qur’an, ‘Surely Allah changes not the condition of a people, until they change their own condition.’ ”
“When we submit our will to do the Will of Allah (God), and it turns Him toward us, producing the springtime of our life. Faith takes root, we grow, bud, blossom and reproduce, spiritually and materially,” observed Minister Farrakhan.
For a long time, we have desired to be accepted by White people and have been rejected at every turn. Even momentary progress has been met by social, political and legal backlashes that killed “progress.”
The joy and hope many felt with the election of Barack Obama as the first Black president is long gone and was replaced by ugly All-American racism and extreme politics that are still growing.
Many Whites who voted for him turned around and voted for a president who is the antithesis of the best impulses of Mr. Obama and his soaring, if inaccurate, One America rhetoric.
Four years ago with the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, Blacks and Whites sometimes marched together to protest the murder of a Black man that was caught on videotape.
The outrage over this heinous theft of life is long gone and any thought that America owes Blacks anything or must undo racial injustice is long gone too.
Being rid of fantasies and illusions is a good thing. If we accept reality and build for ourselves, we will find a greater level of peace and joy as we do that which is good for us—and what Almighty God Allah desires for us. Please see The Muslim Program published on the inside back page of The Final Call.
