Do We Know Who We Are?

"Trust in a relationship is like mortar to a brick wall," is our thought this weekend.

Recently, the family and I took a vacation. It was one of those opportunities to bond, get next to each other, and understand you can pick your friends, but you're stuck with your family. There is another adage too; the one that says blood is thicker than water. It's a sage remark many of us forget, and many have too little experience realizing how invaluable family in America really is.

America is a melting pot. We have melted so much many of us can't understand who we are or where we are going. This is true, especially, if you are a minority. Many of us have become so assimilated into a society that has nothing to do with us, that we don't know who we are. Our blood has become so thin it would take ten of us to provide a transfusion to one of the people who made this country what it is today. And I'm not talking about a Nobel peace prizewinner. I'm talking about the village of relatives that raised us to be somebody...to be proud of our heritage, and most of all...believe in ourselves.

Indeed, America is a melting pot, and so many of us have accepted the disguise of the dominant culture, that we have lost our dream. We have become so immersed in "Tivo", cell phones, or the latest hip-hop craze that we have forgotten Langston Hughes, jazz, or turnip greens. We have forgotten ‘blood.'

Why? It seems we have not taken the time to remember. Because we have not taken the time to share the joys and sorrows of what it was like to be invited into a home, and know it was a home. We have forgotten ‘blood' because in our attempt to keep up with the Jones's we have become the Jones's, even though we never knew who they were. That's why we don't know who we are today. And if we don't know who we are today...how are our kids going to know?

The night before our vacation ended, I'd laid my wallet down. Please understand as I approach 60, I cannot remember as much as I once could. My memory has taken a monumental decline since I got married, and had children, and one of these children became a teenager. Being more or less the banker on this trip, I kept a pretty accurate account of what I had. And just before retiring, going to bed, not checking out of the work pool, I checked my wallet. Money was missing. Money I knew was there.

I proceeded to go through the normal checking of pockets, and places I knew it couldn't be, but hoped it was. My wife asked what I was doing, and of course, I couldn't tell her what I suspected, because what if I was wrong? What if I did lose the money, and my son didn't...the words wouldn't come? So I went to his room and asked him. He denied it. He looked me in the eye and denied it. And I did what every fathers wants to do...I trusted him.

As black people, our trip down the road to success has been a road of trust. We have trusted men and women who were blood; who believed in a legacy...and trusted us to use it wisely. Have we? Have we fulfilled their trust? Would Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., be proud of his people today?

Disappointed, depressed, and somewhat disgusted, I went back to my room. Could I be so wrong? Could I have lost the money? Could my son have lied? About the time I was about to question my own sanity, there was a knock on the door. It was my son, with a grin on his face, and the comment, I should be more careful as he gave me the money he had taken.

Relieved, I was still annoyed, yet I told him how important it was that he owned up to what he had done. I used the opportunity to share with him how important it was to be able to trust him, and even though I had a good idea, where the money was...I wasn't for sure.

Are you for sure? Do you know how important it is you realize you are benefactors of some of the greatest people who ever walked this earth? People died so we may share in the promises of our ancestors. Are we worthy of that sacrifice? Only you can answer that question. Yet, if you have been so assimilated and melted that you are allowing your kids to accept a culture that demeans women, talks like thugs, or thinks it's the government's fault they can't get ahead, then I think that maybe Dr. King may trusted the wrong people. Dads...step up to plate and prove me wrong.