My Attempt to Spread LOVE

In my first love letter to you, I want to deal with why I’ve decided to spread love to my audience in hopes to reach the entire world. So let’s start there, shall we.
The black family: and no, I’m not a racist… Not anti-white, just pro-black. The separation of our families have destroyed our communities, tainted our babies and made future generations damn near die off. How have we turned into a people that once fought for basic rights and now abuse those same rights? The whips on the backs of our ancestors have not given us reason enough to love our black faces, our black women, our black men. And just like slavery, our souls have been sold. No price tag, no refund.
So, how did the destruction of our black families begin?
Answer: The head of our homes are no longer the head. When drugs were placed in our communities (and notice that I said placed) our families were never the same. It made our brothers and sisters territorial over areas that were once shared. You see, word must have gotten around that due to revolutionary groups like the Black Panthers and other street gangs, that we knew one thing: how to organize. So a strategy had to be put in place to disorganize us, separate us. And so it happened.
In the 60s and 70s, weed was the beginning of a new trend for our black mothers and fathers. The smoking of it, the dealing of it, the lies it told. It was a movement that moved us farther and farther from each other. And it worked…
The 80s, the decade of crack. The crack that led our black men behind bars, our mothers strung out and our children lost. And, we’re still lost. Several families had lost their leaders, their fathers. Without the father leading the household, homes became single-parent homes, or even no-parent homes. And that manifested into generations of lost families, utilizations of complicated systems (i.e. welfare and the development of the projects) and communities of pain and neglect.
In the 90s we were so distracted by the Hip Hop movement and the cross colors that we were too far gone to even recognize that our families were gone. Our mothers, and sometimes fathers, were alone raising babies. The hearts and souls of our parents were lost in the cracks of concrete, the same cracks they desperately searched for their next high. The love was lost. And then we slowly turned on one another. A people who once stood firm against oppression began to live oppressed and apart. We began to distrust our neighbors, our friends and even those in our own homes.
And if you’re one of those lucky babies from the 80s, from a solid home, based on value and self-love, consider yourself lucky. You’re among very few.
So you see, my intent to spread love, as cliché as it may seem, has an underlying purpose. It is my desperate attempt to save our generation, reconstruct our families, challenge you to think of how this all began, and how it just may end.
If you don’t believe that our families are broken, let me convince you. Notice how small our families are getting. During the 40s and 50s, families averaged between 5 to 9 kids per family. Now, it’s rare if a black couple produces more than 3 kids. Our generation, literally, is dying off as it shrinks into hopelessness and disparity. Now, our women and men are not in their necessary roles, and this has damaged our youth. Women have taken an independent stand, a stand that says to hell with our black men, we can do it ourselves. Our men have crawled behind this movement and hide behind the shadows of social disorder. And all this happens as our children watch. And as they watch, they follow suit. They have become the results of broken history and painful lives.
And of course the violence, the violence that has turned us against one another and has caused other ethnicities to criticize and judge who our people once were versus who we have become. We kill each other more than any other race. Our children are not safe at school, in their neighborhoods and not even in their own homes. And for that, their futures are unpredictable battles that they fight day by day. Battles in which they hope to win, if they make it out alive.
So this first letter to you is simple. It’s to say first, I’m aware of the happenings of our families, I see it, I study it. And most times, it brings tears to my eyes. The pain that I have for my generation is unexplainable. Our families are broken We’re dying off and those who are wise enough, those who know the history and can retell the history, are of old age and soon to leave this earth.

So I’ll tell it. In every love letter to you, some easy to read, others not, I can promise one thing…honesty. I will not lie to you about what’s happening. But first, we must stop lying to ourselves. Being honest brings us one step closer to renewing our generations. So let's be honest with where we are, so we can get where we're going.
　
Love you,
Vee