The State of the Black Family

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The Black Family Pledge - Poem by Maya Angelou

BECAUSE we have forgotten our ancestors,
our children no longer give us honor
BECAUSE we have lost the path our ancestors cleared
kneeling in perilous undergrowth,
our children cannot find their way.
BECAUSE we have banished the God of our ancestors,
our children cannot pray.
BECAUSE the old wails of our ancestors have faded beyond our hearing,
our children cannot hear us crying.
BECAUSE we have abandoned our wisdom of mothering and fathering,
our befuddled children give birth to children
they neither want nor understand.
BECAUSE we have forgotten how to love, the adversary is within our
gates, an holds us up to the mirror of the world shouting,
'Regard the loveless'
Therefore we pledge to bind ourselves to one another, to embrace our
lowliest, to keep company with our loneliest, to educate our illiterate,
to feed our starving, to clothe our ragged, to do all good things,
knowing that we are more than keepers of our brothers and sisters.
We ARE our brothers and sisters.
IN HONOR of those who toiled and implored God with golden tongues,
and in gratitude to the same God who brought us out of hopeless desolation, we make this pledge.

"Dream Song" - Common and Will.I.Am

The title simply reminds one of the image of nation conveyed through one of the most revered orations of our time. Common and Will.I.Am, to some extent, are able to further expound on the situation Black people find themselves in these days. "In between lean and the fiends, hustles and the schemes. I put together pieces of a dream," Common raps summing up a lesson that can drive thoughts of hopelessness out making room for some all-powerful optimism.