Articles

Little to Show After 10 Years

Opinion by Leonard Pitts Jr.
Miami Herald
Oct. 12, 2005

Ten years later, more than 65% of our children are still born out of wedlock.

Ten years later, we are still five times more likely to die of homicide.

Ten years later, we still marry less, go to jail more and die sooner.

Ten years later, the promises we made that crisp Monday in October lie fallow and unredeemed.

On Sunday, it will be a decade since African-American men descended on the Mall in Washington, 400,000 strong according to the National Park Service. An independent agency ABC Television retained said a minimum of 837,000 of us were actually there. But in the end, the event is defined not by hard numbers, but by a metaphorical one: one million.

Opposing Views

Two things strike me about the Million Man March. The first is a sense that we black men and our fellow countrymen seemed to be talking about two marches. We heard we were going to support the notorious Jew-baiter Louis Farrakhan and to attack America for its mistreatment of us. We said we were going to attack our mistreatment of our families and ourselves, and that many of us joined the march not because of Farrakhan, but in spite of him.

The second thing that strikes me is the optimism we felt. We stood, generation be-bop, generation do-wop and generation hip-hop, gathered to slap backs and shake hands and be shoulder to shoulder and man to man. We were the show, standing on what felt like the pivot point of change.

Yet here we are, still damned by numbers. Because change is not something you talk into existence. Change takes action.

Some of us did go back to our communities and work to change them. But too many of us just went back.

And yes, I know about cops and courts, about the bank's loan officer. And I know about the lies too many white people tell themselves, including "liberty and justice for all." I know about the truths people won't face because to do so is to cut too close to their cherished conceits and necessary self-deceptions.

In our own hands
But I also know that much of what is needed requires no white person's consent:

Get educated.

Seek a career.

Don't make children you can't support.

Understand that support means money.

Understand that support means more than money.

Marry the woman.

Model manhood for your children.

Save some money.

Buy a home.

Build a life.

Easier said than done? Yes. A guarantee of happily ever after? No.

Yet I persist in believing that for African America, changing the world lies in the embrace of these and other old-school dictums. And that revolution can be as simple as having dinner as a family, checking homework and going to church on Sunday.

I thought we understood that as we gathered under that autumnal sun.

But 10 years later, it is hard to glimpse even the bare outlines of change.

There used to be a song that said, "Brother's gonna work it out." Ten years later, another autumnal sun. And we are waiting on brother, still.

Leonard Pitts Jr. appears most Wednesdays and Fridays in the Free Press. Reach him at the Miami Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, FL 33132; at 888-251-4407 or at lpitts@herald.com.

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