Reading Really Is Fundamental

As someone who loves books and learning, I believe there are some books that as a Black person, as an African American, I just have to read and keep in my collection for my children to read. I’m not talking about the drama-filled books that you find at Wal Mart by the check out stand or in the book club rotations. No, I’m talking about the books that bring our history to life and make us think and connect the dots so that perhaps once we gain a better understanding of how we got HERE, we can make some personal as well as social changes to help us get THERE.

Currently, I’m reading The Souls of Black Folk. In reading The Souls, I had a light bulb moment when reading over the successes and failures of the Freedman’s Bureau and the Freedman’s bank and the affects their eventual collapse had on the psyche of black people during that time. It occurred to me that we are still feeling the residual effects today.

I’m older and a little bit smarter than I was say 7-8 years ago, so I’m paying more attention to my finances and the legacy, inheritance I will leave with my children. In The Souls, it talks about how many of the ex-slaves began saving their money with the Freedman’s bank only to have the bank collapse and along with losing their money, losing their faith in man, government and banking institutions. And so it clicked to me that this issue that we have as a people today with saving and credit, etc. is borne out of a fear and faithlessness that was created over a century ago. And in order to combat this issues and provide for our children a different existence, a different way of dealing with money we have to 1) stop blaming our parents and our parents’ parents because they were doing the best with what they knew, and 2)gain some understanding for how their “way” became to be and know that they thought they were ‘protecting’ us and, 3)armed with that knowledge we must now seek to teach ourselves and our children about the financial systems at work so that we can end this cycle of forever struggling.

The best way for us to protect our children today is to arm them with the knowledge they need to grow wealth and control their own destiny.

For those of us who did not take African or African-American Studies courses in college, and have only heard about these types of books, but haven’t read them, it would behoove us to take up “arms” and read. For those of us who did take those classes and haven’t touched the books since taking those classes, it makes sense to re-read them now that we are older and a little bit more mature and hopefully wiser so as to get a better overstanding of the information that is being brought forth. Then, perhaps collectively and singly, we can take a serious look at the problems that prevail in our communities and take on the tasks of eradicating them for good so that we all can grow and prosper.