Black Americans are on the pathway of destruction because our leaders won't lead. We are on a pathway of destruction because our caregivers don't properly educate to navigate and negotiate false ideologies. We are becoming facilitators of our own demise because of the continuation of the slave mentality. We are on the path of our own destruction because we have embraced the social consciousness of the supremacist, and are spiritually lost to the truth that man was created in God's image.

Black Americans are still conditioned to feel inferior and raise people of a lighter color up as being somehow more important. We've been around since the beginning of time, and we've been subjected to the cultural norms of America. Although some leaders rose up, such as Tubman, Vessey, Douglass, Wells, Garvey, Shabazz (Malcom X) King, etc., most of us seem to have forgotten the reasons for Civil Disobedience. Our leaders were assassinated as they gave their lives for their people. The economical manufacturing of our people, along with the genocide of our people, has gone on too long, and now, today, who is left to lead us?

The Black leaders whom we chose of our own were killed. Yet, while those leaders chosen for us were set up for failure, we (Black Americans) found ourselves in a forgiving mode; in the meantime, plots and schemes continue while we are focused off the issues of social injustice. We need leaders who won't sell us out for the "American Dream." We need leaders who won't sell our issues short, integrating them with other's issues. We need leaders who will speak their minds, and not be afraid of what mainstream America thinks. We need leadership that is honest, true, informative, and intellectual enough to stand firm, and not bow down to our oppressors. And we need Black Americans to stop believing the hype whenever falsehoods are propagated about our leaders: remember Moses once killed a man; David sent a man off to battle so he could have his wife; Jesus fasted against temptation, so let's remember that Jesus said that whoever is without sin should cast the first stone, biblically.

Black Americans are on the pathway to destruction, because of our choice of caregivers for our children. Our children are placed in childcare centers, schools, left with baby sitters, or given television and video games to entertain them. Being poor is not an excuse for mis-education. Being poor should not stop parents from using resources available, and demanding the best guidance for their children. Being poor should not be a device, an excuse, to allow ignorance to succeed. The best of parents can be poor, but can still readily and eagerly check out the caregivers of their children. Parental interaction with children and their caregivers should be as standard as putting on one's clothes in the morning. If we were created in God's image, then why are some using excuses for failure? Who the teachers are, and what they teach, should be questioned. Parents are the first caregivers, and should enthusiastically teach their children the proper morals, value and principles of life. They should know their children's friends, and what they are about. They should know what ideologies are being taught to their children. They, the parents, are the guiders of the child vessels (minds). Children ought to be taught respect, after they come of age, should have the right to choose to make proper decisions.

Television and videos should not take the place of books, family talks, and babysitting. Books should be provided for older children and read to younger ones. Too many parents today let their children tell them they don't have homework, or they don't have homework on the weekends. I would question that. Children ought to be prepared while in grade school to want to learn more, want to read more, and want to use their minds to explore more. But if you allow your children to not have homework from their teacher, then they'll be lacking, and if you don't also educate them, they will be double lacking. This is one of the reasons why we are lacking today, and our children are put in special education classes, lose interest in school, and end up in the criminal justice system, on alcohol, on drugs, becoming neglectful parents, teen parents, feeding into supporting the genocide of our culture without knowing it.

The caregivers of our children play a very important part of the nurturing and development of our Black children. They need to learn how to navigate and negotiate mainstream ideologies and philosophies, and understand their own culture to develop self-worth. Black Americans are products of their own demise because of the slave mentality conditioning. Institutional racism teaches our people to be schooled, not educated. We go along with the curriculum set forth by teachers. We go along with the moral standards set forth by our government, media, and mainstream society. By embracing the social consciousness of the supremacist, our conduct falls into accord with what the supremacist predicts it to be.

Black Americans are forgiving of others, but are harder on each other. We charge our own more for products than the others. We pay our own cheaper wages for work. We use false power (titles) over those who are under us in rank, in employment, in a futile attempt to make ourselves look better to the others, continuing oppressive institutional racism. We talk about one against the other behind each others back. When one makes an accomplishment, hating occurs, and when one shows faults, everyone is interested. Yet, many of you claim to be Christians, Muslims, Catholics, Baptists, etc., lacking encouragement and empowerment to help the less fortunate succeed. Not all Black Americans embrace this brand of apathy, but it is pervasive enough to keep us divided.

We are in churches, doing the ritual things, not the spiritual things. Our people are focused on money, money, money. We sell one another out for money. When one of our own succeeds, and make millions, they rush to buy a sports team, airline, hotel; it is their right to do so, but how do these rights help those of us who supported them while we remain disenfranchised, unemployed, homeless, or underemployed? We have some rich African American people, hundreds of wealthy athletes and entertainers that do not provide us with better economical options. Why can't they get together and open up banks? Banks for those of us to get the help we are deprived of because mainstream banks practice institutional racism--Black banks, for people of color, to build an economical base. Bill Cosby, for example, leased his cartoon characters "Fat Albert and the Gang" to FUBU (which isn't completely Black owned). African American kids spend $100.00 for a shirt, $150.00 for a jacket, $98.00 for jeans, $100.00 for sweaters, with the image of Fat Albert on them. This company is capitalizing on our culture and doesn't give a damn if the money you spent to buy your child some of these clothes for birthdays or holidays came from a worker making $6.00 an hour, or General Assistance. That shows you the mind frame of our thinking and what we have become. How are these ridiculous prices helping Black Americans economically? What portion of that money is going back into the communities? The answer is, it is all going to Bill, FUBU executives, and CEOs--corporate America's pockets. Such ridiculous prices take high advantage of African Americans by using Black images to sell the products. The price of clothes skyrocketed because of FUBU (For Us By Us). Why can't Bill Cosby, Michael Jackson, Oprah Winfrey, Quincy Jones, and Robert Johnson, to name a few, get together and start an economical base for Black Americans? It can't hurt them to try. Instead of using their fame to allow themselves to be used by mainstream to take advantage of us, turn the tables around, because it takes more than making donations to the United Negro College Fund--heck, many of our children do not make it to college, especially Black males (Read Jawanza Kunjufu's "State Of Emergency; We Must Save African American Males").

We need an economical base, to which those funds are invested to build low-income housing, Black owned businesses and plants. What is going on, that we do not bond like our ancestors did when all were equally oppressed, and subjected to live beneath poverty levels, and in slavery? Promoting the mainstream takes away from cultural relevance and uplift of the culture. The slave mentality exists with a twist when we get a little of the American pie. Jawanza Kunjufu suggested that the churches pool their money together, and form a business panel to come up with business plans. The best business plan wins the pool, and so on, and so on, until all ideas are formed and backed. Ideas are created but hardly implemented because we have become our own oppressors, believing and adapting crippling behaviors like a disease, that are stagnating us, causing us to stay submissive to mainstream ideas, while genocide takes place due to our own ignorance.

Black Americans need to wake up. Black Americans need to look beyond the principalities of the old dogma, beliefs and rituals that keep us in a slave mentality. We are participating unconsciously in our own genocide, because of individualism, materialism, and the praising and worshipping of the dollar bill. This narrow mindedness needs to stop. We trust them, but don't trust each other. We fear the hype before we fear God, because if we feared God, then we would let no man create such a fear over us that we fall inferior to them and submissive, asking for handouts, begging to be a part of, if we truly believed in God. So by us lacking in that belief, how can we trust and believe in one another. We need to strive to educate ourselves, so we can educate our own to not fall into the traps, to come out of this slave conditioning, and reform our bond within the families, communities, and society. This is not what our creator had in mind for us, and there is no reason to continue to be blinded to the truth. Let's rise, together.[]