the open hand and the closed fist

This is just my version of a Frederick Douglass quote: "Power concedes nothing without a Demand."

Basically, power gives up nothing without being made to do so. Anything that you get without struggle is worthless.
I know that the things that I value the most are the things that were painful for me to obtain. My children came to me through struggle. My relationships with my parents came through work and struggle. I fight the hardest for the things I want the most.
In the sixties, black folks had a lot of role models to look to. It was our age of Transformation. Like the Industrial and French Revolution at the same time. Black folks had a lot of room to decide what direction the community was going to take, instead of Black people deciding our own directions and priorities we let our lust for materialism and our desires to be "Fully American" push us as communities that were not neccesarily healthy for us. Now we are facing super high unemployment and incarceration and for the most part, our children have no sense of who they are. We want to assimilate into a society that has never wanted "us". What America wants from Black people is our labor and the money that our labor produces. It has no interest in our well being as a community or our cultural values as a people. Even worse, we as a people have very little idea what our cultural values are.
Anyway back to my original topic. On what basis do we have to demand anything from America? And what do we have to give? What is the worth of African Americans? Is it just our language, our music? What do we feel we have to give?
The classic example of the Open Hand and the Closed Fist would be Malcolm X and Dr. King.

Dr King came with a message of mutual love, tolerance and respect, appealing to the "Christian Conscience" of what he called our "Sick white brothers". He spoke in the highest terms about the founders of the United States and frequently quoted their writings in his addresses.

"A third source that we must look to for strong leadership is from the moderates of the white South. It is unfortunate that at this time the leadership of the white South stems from the close-minded reactionaries. These persons gain prominence and power by the dissemination of false ideas and by deliberately appealing to the deepest hate responses within the human mind. It is my firm belief that this close-minded, reactionary, recalcitrant group constitutes a numerical minority. There are in the white South more open-minded moderates than appears on the surface. These persons are silent today because of fear of social, political and economic reprisals. God grant that the white moderates of the South will rise up courageously, without fear, and take up the leadership in this tense period of transition. "
Dr. Martin Luther King
"Give Us the Ballot," Address Delivered at the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom17 May 1957, Washington, D.C.
He seemed to truly believe in his heart that America would experience a change of heart and welcome African Americans with open hearts once the ridiculous evil of racism was made plain. Dr King came with the Open Hand.


"The white man -- The white man is too intelligent to let someone else come and gain control of the economy of his community. But you will let anyone come in and take control of the economy of your community, control the housing, control the education, control the jobs, control the businesses, under the pre-text that you want to integrate. No, you outta your mind."
-Malcolm X
"Ballot or the Bullet"

Malcolm represented a much more pragmatic approach. He simply said that the human rights of African Americans had been and was still being denied and that this was no longer acceptable. He demanded that African Americans be treated as human beings based on the nothing other than our basic humanity. He was also quick to point out that other groups of Africanas around the globe had taken it upon themselves to demand equal rights and justice at the business end of a firearm. In his famous speech the He represented the Closed Fist.

Here we have struggled, but is this what our foremothers and forefathers were struggling for? Are we as a people, even headed in the right direction? Are we following the American Dream and if so, is that a dream that we want to follow? What are our priorities and values? What is it that makes us, as African Americans, these descendants of the enslaved-what is it about us that makes us different from any other group of people here in these United States. I feel we need to take a huge step back and really examine ourselves, check our priorities, decide on a direction and some credible leaders and and then move forward with some unity. Right now, our efforts are individualistic and selfish and we cannot hope to prosper or have any kind of self determination while that mentality prevails.

I know I have a lot of questions and few answers, but I feel that we really need to make some real changes.

Peace to the Peaceful