WHEN GREATNESS SHOWS ITSELF
Every once in a while, something happens that forces us to stop what we’re doing and look at ourselves a little differently. We may be going about our daily business, dealing with bills, family problems, political arguments, and all the other distractions that consume our attention, when suddenly we witness something so extraordinary that it reminds us of what human beings are capable of achieving. For a moment, the noise disappears, and we’re left staring at a level of talent that challenges everything we thought we knew about human potential.
Recently, I was sent a video of a beautiful Black woman performing an amazing balancing act on a nationally televised talent show. She manipulated several large, flat, circular objects with her feet and hands, spinning them with incredible control, timing, and coordination. She even balanced a table on her feet, turned it around, and performed a rhythmic dance while lying on her back. What I witnessed wasn’t ordinary entertainment. It was a demonstration of discipline, imagination, physical intelligence, and the kind of dedication that allows a person to develop an unusual gift into something extraordinary.
But what made this performance even more meaningful was the conversation it inspired. The person who sent me the video wasn’t simply impressed by a talented woman. She saw something deeper in that performance. She saw a reminder of the extraordinary abilities that exist within Black people, abilities that have too often been ignored, exploited, misrepresented, or buried beneath the daily struggle to survive. Her reaction wasn’t just about one woman’s talent. It was about an entire people and the question of what happens when a people forgets its own greatness.
That conversation took me to a place that deserves much more attention than it receives. How much of our potential have we failed to develop because we’ve spent generations fighting to be treated as human beings? How many brilliant minds have been consumed by poverty, racism, violence, poor education, and the daily pressure to make it through another day? How many people have been taught to measure themselves through the opinions of those who never wanted to see them rise? These questions reach far beyond entertainment because they touch the very heart of our collective identity.
My concern is that we’ve become so accustomed to talking about what has been done to us that we sometimes lose sight of what still exists within us. We know the stories of injustice, exclusion, and exploitation, and those stories deserve to be told. But our history cannot end with the things we’ve suffered. Our identity cannot be reduced to the pain we’ve experienced. We must also talk about our imagination, our intelligence, our creativity, our spiritual depth, and our ability to build something remarkable out of circumstances that would break many others. We’ve spent so much time studying the chains that have held us down that we must also rediscover the strength, knowledge, and vision that can help us break free.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE FORGET OUR DIVINITY?
When I speak about our divinity, I’m not suggesting that Black people are superior to every other group of human beings. I’m talking about the sacred value of human life, the extraordinary potential we possess, and the creative power that allows us to imagine, build, solve problems, express ourselves, and transform the world around us. I’m talking about recognizing that our lives have meaning beyond the labels society places upon us. Our divinity, as I understand it, is the part of our existence that refuses to be reduced to somebody else’s definition of our worth.
The tragedy is that people can be surrounded by evidence of their own greatness and still fail to recognize it. A child can be brilliant without having the language to describe his intelligence. A young woman can possess a rare talent without understanding how far it might take her. A community can produce musicians, artists, inventors, builders, thinkers, and entrepreneurs while remaining trapped in conditions that make it difficult for those gifts to grow. Potential can exist everywhere, but potential without opportunity, encouragement, knowledge, and direction can remain buried for an entire lifetime.
That’s why I believe we’ve got to take a serious look at what it means to lose our connection to ourselves. When generations are taught that their ancestors were primitive, their culture was backward, their intelligence was questionable, and their achievements were unimportant, the damage goes far beyond a history lesson. It begins to affect how people see themselves, how they raise their children, what they believe they can accomplish, and whether they even consider themselves worthy of occupying positions of power and influence.
A person doesn’t have to be told directly that they’re inferior to absorb the message. Sometimes the message comes through the absence of positive examples. Sometimes it comes through entertainment that repeatedly presents the same narrow image of a people. Sometimes it comes through schools that give little attention to their contributions. Sometimes it comes through institutions that celebrate their labor while ignoring their humanity. And sometimes it comes through the people within the community who have absorbed these messages so deeply that they repeat them without realizing where those beliefs originated.
This is where the loss of divinity becomes especially dangerous. When we no longer recognize the value of our own minds, we stop investing in them. When we no longer respect our own communities, we stop protecting them. When we no longer understand the importance of our history, we allow others to tell our stories for us. Eventually, we can reach a point where we look outside ourselves for permission to become the very people we were capable of becoming all along.
THE CELL PHONE THAT FORGOT ITS POWER
I think about this situation in terms of a cell phone that has lost its charge. Imagine having a device filled with contacts, photographs, messages, important information, and access to the entire world through the internet. All of that information is there, but when the battery dies, you can no longer access it in the usual way. The phone hasn’t suddenly lost everything it contains. It simply cannot function as intended until it receives the power it needs.
I see a lesson in that example. A person can possess intelligence, creativity, courage, and ability while remaining disconnected from the knowledge, support, and opportunities needed to put those qualities to work. The potential hasn’t necessarily disappeared, but the connection has weakened. When that disconnection continues across generations, people can grow up without ever realizing what they’ve been missing.
Now, I want to be clear about something. No outside force has to possess supernatural control over us for this disconnection to happen. We can understand it through ordinary human systems and historical conditions. When access to education is limited, when families are denied economic opportunities, when communities experience repeated violence, and when cultural achievements are erased or ignored, the ability to develop and pass on knowledge can suffer. Those conditions can leave people struggling to understand their own possibilities.
The most effective form of control doesn’t always require somebody to stand over you with a weapon. Sometimes it works through the ideas you’ve been taught to accept about yourself. If a young person grows up believing that success is reserved for somebody else, that person may never attempt something extraordinary. If a community comes to believe that its best days are behind it, its people may stop imagining a better future. And if a generation loses its connection to the accomplishments of earlier generations, it can be forced to start over without the benefit of everything that came before.
That’s why I don’t believe our work begins and ends with telling people to feel good about themselves. Empty encouragement isn’t enough. We need knowledge, education, ownership, practical skills, historical understanding, and a willingness to build institutions that can carry our progress forward. We need to reconnect our children with their curiosity, give our young people room to experiment, and stop treating intellectual achievement as something separate from our cultural identity.
Reconnecting with our divinity means making our potential useful in the real world. It means turning imagination into invention, education into opportunity, creativity into businesses, and community pride into institutions that can support future generations. The power means little if we never learn how to use it.
THE GREATNESS THAT HISTORY FAILED TO HONOR
When we look back across history, we find extraordinary evidence of African civilizations, advanced knowledge, architecture, trade, artistic expression, agriculture, and systems of government that existed long before many modern institutions took their present forms. The pyramids of ancient Egypt remain among the most powerful examples of human engineering and organization. Across the African continent, different societies developed their own systems of knowledge, craftsmanship, commerce, and cultural expression.
These accomplishments should not require an apology, and they shouldn’t need to be exaggerated to make them impressive. Their real history is powerful enough. The problem is that African history has too often been presented through narrow viewpoints that give greater attention to conquest, poverty, and suffering than to the full range of African life and achievement. When history is taught that way, people can grow up knowing more about the tragedies inflicted upon their ancestors than about the civilizations, ideas, and accomplishments that existed before and alongside those tragedies.
We must also recognize the contributions of Black people throughout the modern world. Black inventors, scientists, engineers, farmers, artists, writers, laborers, and entrepreneurs have helped shape the societies in which we live. Some have received recognition, while others have faced barriers to patents, financing, education, professional advancement, and public acknowledgment. In certain cases, credit for Black innovation was minimized, obscured, or unfairly claimed by others. In other cases, talented people never received the resources or opportunities that could have allowed their ideas to flourish.
I don’t believe we serve ourselves by pretending that every major invention came from one group or that every achievement by a Black person was stolen. History is more complex than that, and the truth can withstand honest examination. But we absolutely must confront the ways racial exclusion and unequal access to institutions have affected who gets to invent, who gets funded, who receives recognition, and whose names become part of the official record.
Think about what it means when a person has a brilliant idea but lacks the money to develop it. Think about the business owner who cannot secure fair financing, the student who attends a school without proper equipment, or the inventor whose work is dismissed because of prejudice. The loss isn’t limited to the individual. Society loses an opportunity to benefit from that person’s ability. Families lose the chance to build wealth, and communities lose examples that could inspire the next generation.
This is why preserving our history is about more than pride. It’s about restoring the connection between knowledge and possibility. When our children learn about Black achievement, they should see more than a list of names to memorize. They should see evidence of what people can accomplish when their minds are developed, their work is supported, and their ideas are taken seriously. They should understand that achievement doesn’t belong to one race, but neither should the achievements of their own people be hidden from them.
SURVIVAL MODE IS STEALING OUR ATTENTION
One of the strongest points raised in the original conversation was the idea that we’re constantly forced to defend ourselves against one problem after another. I think that’s an important way to understand the pressure that can consume a community. Imagine preparing a beautiful outdoor meal with good food, a peaceful setting, and everything you need to enjoy the afternoon. Suddenly, a swarm of stinging insects appears, and instead of enjoying what you’ve prepared, you spend the entire time trying to protect yourself. Your attention is no longer on the meal. It’s on the immediate threat.
That example captures something about living under constant pressure. When people are worried about rent, food, safety, employment, discrimination, healthcare, or whether their children will make it home safely, their attention is pulled toward whatever threatens them most urgently. They may have dreams, talents, and ambitions, but those ambitions can become difficult to pursue when their energy is consumed by immediate needs. Survival becomes the main objective, and everything else is pushed to the side.
For Black people in America, the long history of slavery, segregation, racial discrimination, unequal treatment, and economic exclusion has shaped opportunities across generations. Those realities have never affected every Black person in the same way, and there are many examples of people who have overcome enormous obstacles. But we cannot honestly discuss the challenges facing Black communities without acknowledging the ways past and present conditions can limit access to safety, wealth, education, and opportunity.
When the pressure continues for years, survival can become more than a temporary response. It can become a way of thinking. People may learn to expect trouble before they expect opportunity. They may spend more time preparing for the next crisis than building something that could improve their future. They may become so accustomed to defending themselves that peace begins to feel unfamiliar, and planning beyond the immediate moment becomes difficult.
This doesn’t mean that people who struggle are weak, lazy, or lacking in vision. Quite the opposite. Many people are displaying enormous strength simply by getting through circumstances that others never have to experience. But we must ask why so many talented people are required to spend so much of their energy surviving conditions that could be improved through fair policies, stronger communities, better schools, safer neighborhoods, and wider economic opportunity.
We cannot create our best work when every ounce of energy is consumed by the latest emergency. We need room to think, room to learn, room to experiment, and room to fail without losing everything. We need neighborhoods where children can play safely, adults can work with dignity, and people can invest in long-term goals. We need the kind of stability that allows a young person to ask, “What can I build?” instead of spending every day wondering, “How am I going to get through this?”
WHEN DEFENSE BECOMES OUR WAY OF LIFE
There is a difference between being aware of injustice and allowing the fight against injustice to consume every part of our existence. We must never become comfortable with discrimination, police misconduct, unfair treatment, or the denial of basic human rights. Speaking out remains necessary, and silence can allow harmful conditions to continue. But if every conversation, every plan, and every ounce of energy revolves around the people or systems that have harmed us, we risk allowing those conditions to define the limits of our imagination.
I want us to be capable of confronting injustice while still building lives that are bigger than the injustice itself. We can challenge unfair treatment and create businesses. We can demand accountability and teach our children science. We can expose historical lies and preserve our art. We can defend our communities and develop new technologies. These efforts don’t compete with one another. They strengthen one another because a people who can defend their rights while building their future are less likely to have their entire identity consumed by the struggle.
The danger comes when resistance becomes our only identity. If the only story we tell about ourselves is that we’re fighting somebody, what happens to the story about what we’re creating? If we only measure our progress by the obstacles we’ve survived, how much attention do we give to the institutions we’re building? And if we spend every day reacting to somebody else’s decisions, when do we make the time to develop our own plans?
We have to reclaim the ability to think beyond the immediate conflict. That’s not a call to ignore oppression or pretend that racism has disappeared. It’s a call to refuse to let oppression become the only thing we can imagine. Our ancestors were more than victims of history, and we must be more than the sum of our present struggles. We need to study the forces that hold us back, but we must study the tools, ideas, and strategies that can help us move forward as well.
A community can be politically aware and economically unprepared. It can be loud in its protests but disconnected from its young inventors. It can celebrate famous entertainers while overlooking the teachers, builders, researchers, caregivers, and small-business owners who quietly hold neighborhoods together. That’s why we must broaden our understanding of progress. The fight for justice matters, but so does the creation of something lasting that future generations can inherit.
WHAT HAPPENED TO OUR COMMUNITIES?
One of the most painful questions in the original conversation was simple: Where did our neighborhoods go? The speaker described growing up in Black communities in California and later seeing neighborhoods and schools that once had large Black populations become predominantly Latino. She also described changes in the racial makeup of certain blue-collar industries, where she remembered Black workers being much more visible in earlier years.
Those observations deserve to be taken seriously as personal experiences, but they also require careful examination before we draw conclusions about an entire population. Neighborhoods change for many reasons, including housing costs, immigration, employment patterns, redevelopment, family movement, school boundaries, and the effects of public policy. Black residents moving out of one neighborhood doesn’t automatically mean Black people have disappeared, and changes in the racial makeup of a workplace don’t tell us by themselves what happened to the workers who were once employed there.
Still, the question behind those observations is important. What happens when the economic and social foundations of a community change so much that the people who built its institutions can no longer afford to remain there? What happens when rising housing costs push families away from familiar streets, when local businesses close, when jobs move elsewhere, and when children grow up without the same neighborhood connections their parents once knew?
Black communities in America have experienced major changes through urban renewal, highway construction, segregation, discriminatory housing practices, economic shifts, and redevelopment. Some neighborhoods were weakened by policies that divided communities or destroyed homes and businesses. Other areas have changed through broader economic and demographic trends. The details differ from place to place, but the result can be a deep sense of disconnection when a familiar community no longer looks or functions as it once did.
The loss isn’t only about who lives on a particular street. It’s also about ownership, memory, and the ability to pass something forward. A neighborhood may have had generations of families, barbershops, restaurants, churches, social clubs, local businesses, and informal networks of support. When those connections disappear, the community can lose more than buildings. It can lose places where children learned from older adults, where families exchanged information, and where people built trust over time.
We should be careful not to turn this concern into hostility toward Latino families or any other community. Ordinary people are often making decisions under their own economic pressures, just as Black families have done for generations. Another family’s presence isn’t proof of a conspiracy, and demographic change alone doesn’t tell us who caused the underlying conditions. The better questions concern who owns the land, who controls development, who receives investment, who can afford to stay, and what opportunities are available to the people who live there.
If we want to understand where our communities have gone, we need to follow the housing records, employment data, migration patterns, school enrollment figures, and local economic changes. We need to listen to residents who experienced those transitions and compare their experiences with reliable information. We must be willing to examine uncomfortable facts without allowing suspicion to replace evidence. Our communities deserve serious investigation, not explanations that leave us angry but no closer to understanding what happened.
WHERE ARE THE BLACK MEN IN THE WORKFORCE?
The concern about Black men disappearing from certain blue-collar industries raises another important issue: the changing relationship between Black workers and economic opportunity. In some places, a person may remember seeing Black men working in sanitation, construction, manufacturing, transportation, or other public-facing jobs, only to see a different workforce years later. That change can feel like an entire generation has vanished from the economic life of a community.
But we must distinguish what we see on one street from what is happening across an entire city or nation. A workplace that once employed many Black men may have changed its hiring practices, contracted out its work, relocated, reduced its staff, or become part of an industry that has changed over time. Some workers may have retired, some may have moved into different occupations, and others may have struggled to find new employment. To understand the full picture, we must examine the evidence rather than assume every change has the same cause.
That doesn’t excuse discrimination or make the question less urgent. Employment is about far more than a paycheck. A stable job can provide housing, healthcare, retirement savings, family security, and the ability to help the next generation. When people lose access to reliable work, the effects can spread throughout an entire community. Local businesses lose customers, families have fewer resources, and young people may begin to doubt that honest work can provide a stable future.
We need to ask whether training programs connect people to real jobs, whether hiring practices are fair, whether criminal records create barriers that last beyond a person’s sentence, whether employers offer meaningful paths for advancement, and whether schools prepare young people for the industries that actually exist. We should also examine the effects of automation, outsourcing, union changes, economic restructuring, and shifts in public employment. These forces can affect workers in many communities, but their effects may be especially damaging where families already face fewer economic options.
I want to see Black men and women equipped to compete, build, manage, invent, and own. I want young people to understand that skilled trades are worthy careers, that education can open doors, and that entrepreneurship is about solving real problems rather than simply appearing successful. I want us to celebrate the sanitation worker who provides for his family just as much as the executive who runs a corporation. There’s dignity in useful work, and there should be no shame in doing the labor that keeps society functioning.
But I also want more of us to think about ownership. What would it mean for a community to own businesses that provide essential services? What would it mean to develop local construction firms, technology companies, food businesses, transportation services, and training centers that employ residents and help money circulate locally? Jobs matter, but ownership can give a community greater influence over its own future. The goal shouldn’t be to look down on anyone else’s labor. It should be to expand our choices so that our people have more ways to earn, build, and thrive.
AFRICA AND THE QUESTION OF OWNERSHIP
For those of us who look toward Africa as a place of ancestry, possibility, or a future home, another difficult question arises. How can a continent with enormous natural resources still have communities where people lack reliable electricity, good roads, safe drinking water, strong public services, and sufficient economic opportunity? How can gold, diamonds, oil, fertile land, and other resources exist alongside poverty and hardship?
The answer isn’t that Africans lack intelligence or that the continent is incapable of developing. The situation is shaped by a long and complicated history that includes colonial exploitation, unequal trading relationships, political instability in some countries, corruption in some institutions, external corporate interests, debt pressures, infrastructure gaps, and decisions made by both foreign and domestic leaders. These conditions vary widely from one African country to another, and no single explanation can account for the experiences of an entire continent.
But the central question of ownership remains. Having natural resources underground doesn’t automatically mean that ordinary people benefit from them. The value of those resources depends on who holds the rights to extract them, who finances the operations, who controls the processing facilities, where the products are sold, how taxes and royalties are collected, and how public revenue is used. A country can possess enormous wealth in the ground while receiving only a limited share of the value created from it.
That reality should force us to think beyond the excitement of pointing to gold mines, oil fields, or diamond deposits. If the raw material leaves the country and the most valuable processing happens elsewhere, much of the potential economic benefit may leave with it. If contracts aren’t transparent, public revenue isn’t managed well, or communities bear the environmental costs without receiving fair benefits, natural wealth can become a source of conflict instead of widespread prosperity.
We need to ask what it would take for African countries and communities to capture more of the value generated by their own resources. That means developing local expertise, improving infrastructure, building processing industries, strengthening public institutions, supporting local entrepreneurs, and negotiating agreements that protect national and community interests. It also means ensuring that resource wealth supports schools, hospitals, clean water, transport, research, and other services that improve everyday life.
For people of African descent living abroad, reconnecting with the continent can be meaningful, but we must approach that connection with open eyes and respect. Africa isn’t a single country, and moving there doesn’t automatically solve every problem a person may face. Each country has its own laws, opportunities, challenges, and social realities. A meaningful connection requires learning about those realities, understanding local communities, and recognizing that people who live on the continent have their own histories, ambitions, and views.
The goal shouldn’t be to romanticize Africa as a magical escape or to assume that every problem comes from outside. The goal should be to understand the continent’s diversity and support practical forms of cooperation that benefit people. Skills, investment, education, technology, honest business, cultural exchange, and partnerships built on mutual respect can all help create opportunity. Reconnection becomes powerful when it moves beyond symbolism and contributes to the well-being of real people.
THE POWER OF OUR CULTURE AND CREATIVITY
One of the clearest demonstrations of Black creativity can be found in music, dance, fashion, storytelling, visual art, and other forms of cultural expression. These contributions have traveled around the world, influencing popular culture and creating entire industries. Black artists have transformed sounds, styles, and ways of communicating, often building new forms of expression out of difficult circumstances and limited resources.
But I want us to recognize that creativity isn’t confined to entertainment. The same imagination that produces a remarkable dance routine can be applied to engineering, design, medicine, agriculture, business, and technology. The same discipline that allows a performer to control several objects with incredible precision can be used to master a complex trade or scientific skill. Talent may appear in different forms, but the process of developing it often involves curiosity, practice, patience, and a willingness to keep improving.
That’s why the balancing performance that inspired this conversation deserves to be viewed as more than a moment of applause. It showed what can happen when an unusual ability is developed and presented to the world. It reminded viewers that talent doesn’t always arrive in the form they expect. Sometimes greatness is found in a laboratory, sometimes in a workshop, sometimes in a classroom, and sometimes in an act so unusual that people struggle to describe how it’s being done.
We need to build a culture that recognizes this wide range of potential. A child who loves taking things apart should have opportunities to learn how they work. A young person who draws constantly should be encouraged to explore design, architecture, animation, and other creative fields. A student who asks difficult questions should be given the chance to investigate them. We should stop assuming that intelligence has only one appearance or that success can be measured only by fame, money, or public attention.
At the same time, we must stop treating entertainment as the only visible road to achievement. There is nothing wrong with celebrating athletes, musicians, dancers, and performers, but a community also needs scientists, teachers, builders, accountants, farmers, engineers, nurses, and people who can maintain the systems that make daily life possible. We need more examples of people who solve problems and create lasting value, even when their work never becomes a viral video.
Our cultural influence is a source of pride, but it should also remind us of the value of intellectual property and economic ownership. When our creativity generates enormous demand, we should understand the contracts, rights, business models, and financial decisions that determine who benefits. Creating something valuable is one achievement. Learning how to protect it, manage it, and build lasting opportunity from it is another.
STOP LIVING DOWN TO THE STEREOTYPE
One of the most painful effects of a negative public image is the way it can influence the people being described. When a community is repeatedly portrayed as dangerous, unintelligent, irresponsible, or incapable, those images can shape how others treat its members. They can affect hiring decisions, school expectations, public policy, and the willingness of people to invest in a neighborhood. Over time, they can also affect how individuals see themselves and what they believe is possible.
We must be careful with this subject because a stereotype never tells the whole story about a person or a community. No racial group has a single personality, and no individual should be judged by the actions of someone who happens to share their background. Yet we also have to be honest about the damage caused when negative behavior becomes the main image people associate with an entire population.
When violence, public humiliation, exploitation, or destructive behavior receives constant attention, it can crowd out stories of service, achievement, family responsibility, creativity, and quiet excellence. This doesn’t mean that every negative story is invented or that legitimate problems should be hidden. It means that a narrow stream of negative images cannot serve as a complete picture of a people. We need the courage to confront real problems while refusing to let those problems become our entire identity.
We also need to examine the choices we make within our own communities. When we glorify violence, mock education, disrespect people who try to improve themselves, or treat exploitation as a sign of success, we can reinforce conditions that harm us. We cannot control every image produced by the media, but we can decide what we celebrate, what we support, and what kind of behavior we encourage in our homes and neighborhoods.
That responsibility doesn’t belong only to young people. Adults must set examples, create opportunities, and demonstrate that integrity is a form of strength. Parents and caregivers can encourage curiosity, responsibility, and self-respect. Teachers can help students see pathways beyond the circumstances around them. Community leaders can invest in programs that give young people practical skills and safe places to develop their abilities. Business owners can create opportunities for others rather than simply seeking personal success.
I refuse to believe that the most visible problems within a community define the limits of its potential. But I also refuse to pretend that potential alone will solve those problems. We need standards, accountability, compassion, and consistent work. We must learn to hold two truths at once: people can be harmed by unjust conditions, and people can still make choices that affect their future. Understanding both realities gives us a stronger foundation for change than blaming everything on one side or pretending that every obstacle is imaginary.
WE MUST RECONNECT THROUGH ACTION
So how do we reconnect with the divinity we’ve forgotten? We begin by changing what we teach, what we preserve, what we reward, and what we build. We teach our children a fuller history of Africa and the Black experience without replacing one distortion with another. We preserve family stories, photographs, documents, art, and the records of people whose achievements might otherwise disappear. We make knowledge accessible and treat learning as a lifelong responsibility rather than something that ends with a diploma.
We also create environments where talent can develop. That means supporting libraries, workshops, mentorship programs, arts organizations, science clubs, trade schools, and small businesses. It means giving children access to tools and experiences that allow them to discover their abilities. It means encouraging adults to develop new skills at every stage of life. A community that invests in the growth of its people is investing in its own future.
We must also become more intentional about economic cooperation. Where possible, we can support businesses that serve our communities, build partnerships with people who share our commitment to fair opportunity, and develop enterprises that solve practical problems. We can teach financial literacy, entrepreneurship, and the basics of contracts and ownership. We can learn how to evaluate investments, protect intellectual property, and make informed decisions about the resources we have. Pride becomes more powerful when it’s connected to the ability to provide for ourselves and contribute to others.
Another part of reconnection is learning to cooperate without demanding that everyone think exactly alike. No community is made up of people with identical opinions, personalities, or priorities. We will disagree about politics, religion, culture, and the best ways to move forward. But we should be able to recognize shared interests even when our personal beliefs differ. Safer neighborhoods, better education, fair employment, healthy families, and meaningful opportunities are concerns that can bring people together without requiring them to surrender their individuality.
Finally, we must learn to protect our attention. Our time and mental energy are valuable resources, yet we often allow endless arguments, outrage, entertainment, and online conflict to consume them. We can spend hours reacting to what somebody else said while neglecting the project we promised ourselves we’d complete. We can argue about the problems of the world without learning one new skill or making one meaningful improvement in our own lives. Awareness is important, but awareness must lead somewhere.
I want us to become people who can recognize a problem, understand its causes, and then put our hands to the work of creating a solution. We need to study history without becoming trapped in the past, confront injustice without allowing it to consume our identities, and celebrate our gifts without assuming that talent excuses us from responsibility. Reconnection isn’t a mystical shortcut. It’s a process of restoring knowledge, purpose, discipline, relationships, and the confidence to use our abilities for something meaningful.
THE QUESTION WE MUST ASK OURSELVES
When I return to the question that started this conversation, I keep thinking about the extraordinary performance that caught our attention. A woman demonstrated a skill that required control, creativity, coordination, and countless hours of practice. People watched in amazement because she showed them something they had never seen presented in quite that way. Her performance became a reminder that human ability is often far greater than our expectations.
But what happens after the applause? What happens when the cameras are gone and the audience moves on to the next attraction? Does the moment inspire somebody to explore a talent of their own, or does it remain a brief moment of entertainment? Does it encourage a child to practice, a teacher to recognize an overlooked ability, or a community to invest in opportunities that help people develop their gifts? The real value of inspiration is measured by what it encourages us to do next.
I want us to look at our people with that same sense of possibility. I want us to recognize the child who hasn’t yet been given the right tools, the adult who still has an idea worth developing, and the neighbor who possesses knowledge that could help others. I want us to stop assuming that brilliance must arrive with wealth, status, or a famous name attached to it. Greatness can begin quietly, in a small room, with a curious mind and a willingness to keep learning.
And I want us to ask harder questions about the conditions that prevent so much potential from being developed. Why do some communities have so few resources for their young people? Why are talented students sometimes pushed toward limited expectations? Why do some workers struggle to find stable employment while their skills remain valuable? Why do communities lose businesses, homes, and institutions without receiving a meaningful chance to shape what comes next? These questions deserve answers grounded in evidence, followed by action that improves people’s lives.
We cannot afford to spend the rest of our lives simply wondering where our greatness went. Some of it may have been denied recognition. Some of it may have been lost through historical injustice. Some of it may still be waiting for an opportunity to develop. And some of it may be right in front of us, overlooked because we’ve become so accustomed to seeing ourselves through the problems that surround us. The task is to recognize what remains, understand what has been lost, and create the conditions for something better to grow.
OUR DIVINITY IS NOT GONE
I don’t believe our divinity has disappeared. I believe that many of us have become disconnected from the knowledge, confidence, resources, and sense of possibility that help us recognize and express our full potential. That disconnection can be painful, but it doesn’t have to be permanent. We can rebuild what has been weakened, recover what has been forgotten, and create new opportunities that earlier generations could only imagine.
We must remember that our ancestors were not defined solely by the hardships they endured. They were parents, builders, thinkers, artists, farmers, healers, inventors, teachers, and people who created lives under circumstances that were often brutally unfair. They possessed knowledge, made discoveries, passed down traditions, and found ways to survive and contribute. Their stories deserve to be understood in their full complexity, because their humanity was never limited to the oppression they faced.
Our responsibility is to carry that understanding into the present. We must give our children more than warnings about what can go wrong. We must give them the skills, examples, encouragement, and opportunities that help them discover what can go right. We must show them that intelligence comes in many forms, that discipline can turn talent into mastery, and that meaningful achievement often requires patience long after the excitement of the first moment has passed.
We must also stop waiting for somebody else to tell us that our lives have value. Recognition from the outside world can be welcome, and fair treatment from institutions is essential, but our worth cannot depend entirely on whether another person acknowledges it. We must learn to recognize our own potential while remaining humble enough to keep learning, disciplined enough to keep improving, and responsible enough to use our gifts in ways that benefit more than ourselves.
So when I ask, “Where have we gone?” I’m not asking whether Black people have vanished from the earth. I’m asking where our collective attention has gone, where our resources are being directed, where our institutions are being built, and where the next generation is finding its sense of purpose. I’m asking whether we’re creating enough room for our children to become everything they’re capable of becoming, and whether we’re doing enough to ensure that our achievements are preserved, protected, and passed forward.
The greatness we seek cannot be restored through pride alone, and our history cannot be repaired by pretending that every problem has a simple explanation. We need truth, knowledge, ownership, cooperation, and sustained effort. We need to recognize injustice without surrendering our imagination to it. Most of all, we need to stop treating our potential as something that belongs only to the past and start treating it as a responsibility we carry into the future. Our divinity isn’t a trophy to admire from a distance. It’s a responsibility to develop the gifts we possess, respect the humanity of our people, and build a future worthy of the generations who will come after us.
PEACE, LOVE & RIGHTEOUS REVOLUTION ALWAYS,
SCURV
