5 First Steps: Suggestions On How Black Americans Might Save Themselves

By Vickey Wilcher

In Five First Steps: Suggestions on How Black Americans Might Save Themselves, Vickey Wilcher delivers five short essays that lay out the steps she believes Black Americans from all walks of life will need to take to save themselves from extinction. The essays speak to historical and socio-culture norms that have often led or forced many Black Americans to think of themselves, and to live as less than. Each essay then calls for Black Americans to take specific actions to change the way they think about and treat themselves and one another so that the group is prepared to take the lead in raising itself to equity of personhood, socio-economic equality and the inalienable right to sustained existence.

Through these five essays readers are offered practical, easy to follow suggestions on how to accept and embrace personal and group responsibility for changing past cultural, systemic and oppressive challenges into the building blocks needed to ensure an overall enhancement in the quality and sustainability of life for Black American individuals, families and communities—And as a result, the whole of American Society.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Oct 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9781667849607

Book preview

BK90067761.jpg

© Vickey Wilcher 2022

ISBN: 978-1-66784-959-1

eBook ISBN: 978-1-66784-960-7

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Note to readers

To the community at-large; with sincere hope that something herein

will be helpful.

Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness. Desmond Tutu

Preface

For centuries, America has mistreated her Black citizens. From the very beginning, those Africans brought to this country and enslaved have been victimized in the most grotesque ways. Whether openly under the hood of a Ku Klux Klan costume or covertly under the law, the most heinous offences against Black Americans have been executed with little, if any, consequence. Yes, Black Americans have made great strides in the journey to equality, but no honest human being can in good conscience even suggest that that long, long journey is in any way near over. Simply put, we are NOT living in a post-racial American utopia.

In fact, it might be argued that the forward movement of Black Americans in mass has in many ways been stalled. It might be further argued that the delay in forward progress has as much to do with what Black Americans themselves will and won’t do to ensure their own progress. This is not to say that the rest of America and its systems and ideologies, and other peoples and world systems for that matter, don’t bear enormous responsibility for the continued oppression and maltreatment of Black Americans. It is however, to suggest in the strongest of terms that unless properly examined, the actions and/or inactions of the Black American community may be what will ultimately lead to the group’s (re)subjugation, or worse, its ultimate extinction.

Many will read the words subjugation and extinction and think not possible. But even as I am writing this paper, the world is protesting the deaths of Ahmaud Abery, Rayshard Brooks, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Jacob Blake, and a few media outlets are reporting about the recent wave of hangings of Black Americans. But no mention is made of the likely innumerable murders of innocent Black people in the United States of America that are not caught on video. And nothing is said of the fact that Black Americans are still victimized daily by America’s socio-economic and political systems.

The important point here then is that Black Americans and now their supporters have protested many times before and still Black people are brutally and overtly murdered and otherwise subjected to all manner of harm. So, clearly, something else must be done. Here, another point of clarification is in order: I am not suggesting that to protest is not meaningful or effective. In fact, I sincerely believe that without those committed to that form of action, even less progress would be made. The suggestion here is simply that other activities must be joined with the protest in order to