The Lost Act of "Rootedness" or How Do We Get From Here to There?

Distractions to Charting & Staying a Course:

The Lost Act of “Rootedness” – Part 1.

By Matthews W. Wright, M.Ed. – Precisely Wright! & Associates

Rootedness – [Rōō’ ted ness] 

1. The ability to remain seated, as a plant with tap roots
2. The conscious act of remaining culturally stable via applied

    values, by means of deliberate and calibrated measures to stay faithful to ones acts,
    beliefs and goals.

For more than fifty years I’ve struggled in the use of the term “rootedness”.  To me, it describes a condition and the conscious means by which generations of African Americans leveraged their resources and applied their minds to create communities that met their needs – against all odds!  As time went on, I found myself needing to be more descriptive about the term each instance it was broached.  I have come to the point of providing a definition for the term and it is number 2 above.

Using the term caused people to think I was saying/meaning “rooted”, as a plant, which is a physical act.  Becoming PC literate in the 80’s was a challenge because each time I typed the word “DisplayWrite’s” spell check informed me that the spelling is incorrect – It isn’t!  It is my means of conveying an act of consciousness and for my purposes it is Fine [at this point I’ve dated myself]!

Now that it is crystal clear to everyone, let me explain the real purpose for this exposé.  Today, it appears to me that we are looking for someone to do for us that we must do for ourselves.  Whether it’s policing, educating, dieting, exercising, conceiving, child rearing, or whatever!  Too many of us are looking for someone else to do the dirty work ­ the planning or the thinking!  How did we get to this pitiful point in our lives?  Why have so many of us taken the opportunity to dropout, unplug and cop-out?

These questions are mainly directed to those of us with money, jobs, the materially addicted and those with comfortable homes in communities protecting them from elements we find appalling – urban, inner city, black and poor elements!  We can no longer avoid issues and conditions that are eating at the very fabric of this nation.  Prepare yourself to face some reality.  Be willing to think rationally about the conditions from which you can no longer afford to hide.  Winter has truly fallen upon America due to its unwillingness to provide equality to all.

Remember your history and particularly your family’s struggle to survive in this country.  Don’t allow yourself to continue saying “everything is alright”!  Stop telling the Emperor his clothes are splendid and of the finest cloth when you know full well that he is butt-naked!  The addiction of materialism is so seductive that we’ve forgotten the meanings behind the fables and fairytales we were taught early on.  The Little Red Hen was looking for assistance in making - not eating the bread, the Big Bad Wolf huffed and puffed and blew down everything except the Brick House and the bone in your mouth is real – the one reflected in the water isn’t!

When I was a young boy, times were slower, people were warmer and families were closely knit.  In the city at that time, neighborhoods were like villages and everyone basically looked out for the other.  Why have we abandoned wholesome experiences for bland and empty relationships and lives?  It is my contention that black people have ventured too far out onto the slippery slope of materialism.  We’ve become so conditioned to instant gratification that two and one-half generations later, demographics reflect that we, as a people and nation are further apart and in a worse situation than since Brown v. The Board of Education (1954).  How is that possible?  The landmark decision for equal education was a culmination of several court battles and one of the significant cases was Briggs v. Elliott (1953) in Clarendon, South Carolina.  Black parents, in that state, filed a suit because the segregation policy throughout the south was “separate but equal”.  However white schools were getting five times more funding than black schools and the parents petitioned the courts not because the schools were racially segregated but because the funding was unequal.  The NAACP (The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) joined in the suit and was surprised that the State of South Carolina, when trying to avoid a court order, relented and offered huge sums of money to remedy the situation.  The unexpected offer created a major difference between what the black parents wanted for their children and what the NAACP wanted.  The NAACP rejected the state’s offer and the initial intent of the black parents¹.  An opportunity to receive lawful state funding developing an economic/political base and maintaining separate but equal educational systems was lost.  Thus, a grip hold was lost and we begin to slide down the slippery slope to integration. Even the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King admitted to his closest associates, in the last stages of the civil rights movement, that he had led his people into a burning building!

Controls over our educational institutions were lost and we embarked on a course that would up-root most of the remaining vestiges of our culture; religion, the ideals of community, family, and employment will join education over the brink and our dismantling has brought us to the present day issues we confront.  Abandonment, confusion, distrust and discontent are just some of the symptoms of being denied rootedness as a people.  I know this history because I lived, breathed, contemplated and was confronted by it.  My intimate relationship to these times allow me to continue the struggle against the rampant racism, self denial and selflessness that destroys the very fabric of family by mis-educating black children, forcing others to an addictions behavior/economy, while imprisoning far too many of our young men and maintaining a 25% rate of unemployment among black men.  All we have to do to correct the course of our ship is choice and change and I ask, “What choices do we have to change our condition?  When will we choose to make the needed changes?”  Once recognized, the choice, as always, is ours!