WE NEED NEW BLOOD!
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- Category: Blogs
- Published: Wednesday, 19 March 2014 14:24
- Written by Dr. Vincent Polite, Sr.
by Dr. Vincent Polite, Sr.
Intellectuals of all type love to suppose and offer various thesis on why black folks behave and believe the way they do. Since emancipation the one thing that has eluded us as a people, is the ability to have a unified voice to address our concerns and grievances. At the community level this has had a debilitating effect on our power to protect and grow our community, in a wholesome and healthy manner.
What little cohesion and unity that Jim Crow and the Civil Rights era forced our community to embrace, was lost in the rush to grab the illusion of equality that desegregation promised. In our mad rush to embrace what was thought to be better we abandoned what was tried and true.
As a young man at the dawn of the eighties I departed Orlando in hopes gaining a place in the world and being able to add to the legacy of my culture and community. I had like so many of my generation, witness the cultural change that saw black people demand to be heard and no longer be beggars in the determination of their own fate, because for too long others had carried that responsibility on our behalf. But somehow black Orlando failed to change and actually digressed from previous gains, the unity all but gone. The black middle class abandoned historically Black Orlando for the promise of life among those who looked different, mostly in an effort to somehow live "better".
So here we are thirty three years later and what have we as a community gained? Not much…. Sadly many of our community leaders are really opportunist with nothing more than their own agenda as their political platform. We see them during political seasons wooing old folks with chicken dinners for their vote knowing they have them because many young people cannot vote because Florida's grand schemed to disenfranchise African Americans through use of the criminal justice system has been a huge success. We as a community have abandoned education and respect as community and cultural standards replaced by "I gotta get mine "and the cry of "YOLO!" as the new anthems of our collective. The solution is simple WE NEED NEW BLOOD!
Related:What Is Leadership and Where Are The Leaders?
We need the old leaders to respectfully sit down and pass the torch because you are no longer effective. Orlando has transformed its self in every way and every neighborhood except ours... Think of yourselves as the old lady that has been an usher for fifty five years on the same usher board. Yes you know who everyone is and yes you know how pastor likes it done, but the people who you now serve are of a newer generation and need their problems approached with fresh ideas and energy. They can get things done because they are game changers, not part of the old system and beholding to none of the old guard. We thank you for your past service, BUT WE NEED NEW BLOOD!
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