I was psyched when I went to the very first Ujamaa meeting. The
entire X-House basement was packed with Black folks of all
different regions, classes, ages and shades of brown. And by virtue of
size and diversity alone, I knew that this was going to be an
amazingly inspiring group, with plenty of activism, debate and cultural
exploration. But by the second Ujamaa
meeting, the numbers had dwindled, and by the third... Well, it's really
not worth mentioning. At other Black organizations' meetings, I found
similar trends of small attendance that were in no way representative of
the true size of the community. With the many students having West Indian
ancestry, you would expect us to be turning out in droves at WISA meetings
now that there is finally an organization specifically for West Indians.
Yet the response to this newly formed group has been slow. And though BWC
attracts an admirable amount of Black women, when taken in conjunction
with the actual size of the Black female population, the turnout is
minimal. So why? We have a collective wealth of knowledge, ideas,
contacts and energy, and I can't seem to understand why we've
done so badly in organizing it.
I scared myself one day when the
thought that maybe Blacks feel that they don't
need Black organizations anymore popped into my head. It scared me
because, if true, it reflects a move from the village-styled community
historically associated with Black cultures to the mainstream American
lifestyle that greatly emphasizes self and individual achievement. And
that's a serious loss in my mind. It's really
easy to live within the boundaries of "Diversity University" with its
utopian-style setting of racial harmony soothing and blurring our many
experiences of racial problems into indistinct memories. It's really easy
to get embroiled in work and focusing on getting the most academically for
ourselves so that tomorrow we can climb the ladder of success. And
finally, it's all too easy to make our cultural differences bland to the
point of non-existence, because constantly "representing" can be too much
of a burden. A combination of all of these has led to a laziness on
our part in relation to our growth as a community.
