"THE REAL VALUE OF BLACK HISTORY IN PRESENT DAY AMERICA AND THE CRIPPLING EFFECT OF MENTAL MYOPIA IN THIS COUNTRY"
             by Khalil Somadi

   Let me say this to my sisters and brothers regarding Black History and the importance of it: There are are some people, both black and white, who feel that talking about slavery in this day and age is living in the past. Dredging up old wounds. That slavery as it did occur should be relinquished to some Parthenon of Yesteryear; what Was should not and does not have any bearing on What Is.
   To those people I inform you that you are  suffering from Mental Myopia.
Don't be shocked; many people suffer from it. It's a condition, similar to the eye disease Myopia, where a person sees only things that are near. But unlike the eye condition, Mental Myopia is a condition one adopts willingly, and that's what makes its effects more tragic and widespread. To allow yourself to be mentally myopic is to exist and function in non-reality. Which means people get dealt with according to a view that is warped.
And here We are.
   Black people who are proud of who they are, yet who see no value Today in black history,  which does includes slavery, need to ask themselves this question: do you realize just to what extent you are a product of your environment? You are a product of slavery. Today. Because slavery in this country produced a set of circumstances that actually shaped the landscape in which you presently live.
   Why do you think so many black people nowadays are embracing their heritage by telling one another to love their black skin and black features? Why do you think many blacks speak and teach of African kings and African Americans of greatness?
And by the same token, why do you think racial-profiling happens in this country, and other kinds of racial discrimination happens in this country?
Because slavery marked this country in a way that has not been and cannot be erased. We can build forward from it, but the change did occur, and people act and react out of the environment that was created by the cancer that was slavery in this country.  
   There is something wrong with an environment where a person living in it has to mentally instill it in his brain that he is of worth. It SHOULD be automatically presumed and understood. But it often isnt. Not by blacks. And not by whites either. Our environmental climate and history here in America is so marked by slavery that there isn't a continent or country in the world where the Black Man isn't known and remembered as a product of subjugation on a massive scale, and the connotations are huge and various!
   Black history IS of value. But it must be about more than citing black achievements during the month of February, or chanting black power in the streets, or even remembrance of slaves who lived demoralization, even while building the country they were shackled to.
   Black history should be celebrated each an every day...Mentally... by realizing our behaviors and the behaviors of others-- both black and white-- which are products of this climate that came out of slavery; and once  realized, act to correct your stance in it, one mental occurrence at a time. This especially applies to how you view and treat yourselves, which in turn will dictate how you allow others to treat you.
The landscape that is America can no longer afford Myopia.