Wake yo MIND UP!! or Put yo goodletts up!!!

 So me and good ol Goodlett were having this discussion about the state of minorities, people young and old, and by minorities we were referring to any and all enslaved or colonized people .Several things came up during this discussion that were both upsetting and comical. Goodlett brought up two terms I had never heard before:  “Post traumatic slave syndrome” and “Post traumatic colonization syndrome”. They both refer to how people act and what they choose to do with themselves after they have been oppressed. Goodlett and I both reside in Oakland, California so the demographic we were talking about was mainly the African American and Mexican American brothers and sisters of the area. I say to Goodlett, “Goodlett, there is no excuse why people don’t get up and do something with their lives. I mean, there is a tremendous amount of resources for them to pull from if they used even half their asses.” Goodlett replied with the biggest smile I’ve ever seen, “I’m with you about there not being an excuse but there is a reason, its called Post Traumatic Slave syndrome.” He went on to say that a lot of us are broken by the thought that we don’t deserve anything more then what we have or feel that it’s pointless to try and change because the world only sees you as this stereotypical figure; people have the desire but have been brain washed for generations. All I could say was “WOW,” wow because of all the conversation with my brothers and sisters from the neighborhood, conversations with the children I work with, a similar theme kept coming up in my memory bank: all the conversations ended with, “I want to do it, but man you know how it is.” How deep did these syndromes go with my fellow Oaklanders? So like I do I started asking people questions, because of convenience I started with my African American people, I started asking them about the middle passage, the holding cells in Ghana and even about slavery here in the states. Sad to say that most knew only what they saw in movies or what they briefly learned in school. How could my people not know their own history and just accept what they were told? Furious with what I just heard I interviewed some of my Mexican people; their response was parallel with those of my own race. I think one knew that Spain had occupied the country at one time. Is not knowing our history the source of all the confusion throughout our community? Is it appropriate to blame outside entities for our current position in life? When should we stop making excuses and start making history? I don’t have all the answers nor do I have a formula for success, all I’m saying is what ever the reason, what ever the cause, all of us need find that inner strength we all possess to stop surviving and start living.