Copyright 1978-All Rights Reserved
Author's Note: This is an excerpt from my first published writing. The editor asked me to write it for a community magazine when I was living in Evansville, Indiana. All the pieces published on my blog under "The Retrospective Series" are pieces I wrote years ago. You'll be able to tell when by the copyright dates.
Banging Our Own Drum
John W. Vandercook, in his book, Tom-Tom, said: "A race is like a man; until it uses its own talents, takes pride in its own history, loves its own memories, it can never fulfill itself completely."
Black people must explore and keep alive our own cultural heritage. This heritage must be passed on to our children so they, in turn, can pass it on to their children. It's been said that Culture is nothing if it's not communicated. By handing down our cultural traditions, we understand our common desires, values, strengths, fears, and hopes. We discover how much we share--our views about good and evil, what is just and what is unjust, what is sensible and what is ridiculous, what is valuable and must be guarded with care, what is vain or pompous and needs discarding...what moves us to joy or to grief, to laughter, to rage...what leaves us cold and unmoved... what fires us up.
Through our traditions, our cultural legacy, we find the key to our common identity and our humanity. We must pass our heritage on...because it is there that we find the image and reflection of ourselves. It is there that we find our history, our memories--which can lead us to self-love, rather than self-hate. It is there that we can find something denied and lost for so long: pride in being Black.
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