date: December 5, 2021
By Lucius Gantt
When Jesus was a pre-teen aged little boy, he and his parents made a trip to Jerusalem. On the family’s way home, they realized Jesus was not with them.
About a day or so later, they returned to Jerusalem searching for their child and found Jesus in the temple courts, sitting among the elders listening to their teachings and asking them questions.
In African and African American culture, mature senior citizens and respected elders have had positions of honor and status in their communities.
Jesus was smart enough to know elders have vast experience, wisdom and knowledge on a variety of issues including medicines and health care, politics, religion, child rearing, business and more.
Today, young people have been misled, misinformed, tricked and bamboozled by social media. They believe if it’s not on Facebook, it is false, if it’s not on Instagram, it’s not interesting and if it’s not on Tik Tok, it’s not true!
If African Americans and people of color around the world depend on other ethnic groups for our information and education, we will be in terrible trouble!
School systems are using your tax dollars to whitewash United States and world history suggesting that white is right, white “history” should be respected and preserved and everything pale is swell!
Gantt Report readers already know that sometimes we need to go back to go forward.
We need to go back to learning from grandma and grandpa, we have to teach our youth that Black people have an illustrious history. We had palaces, governments, languages, arts and civilizations when some ethnic groups lived in caves.
I’m a journalist. For the life of me, I can’t understand why HBCU media, communications and journalism schools don’t feature classes and workshops that include the Black people that paved the way for journalists of today by demanding increased diversity, equal media opportunities and equal media exposure.
Whatever career of job you have is akin to the career I’ve had so don’t act like it isn’t.
I know who Offset and Cardi B [are]. I know about Lizzo and Ledisi. I’ve listened to Drake and The Weekend. But todays, rappers, singers and entertainers probably don’t have a clue who Son House, Willie Dixon, Robert Johnson and Kid Ory were because we don’t teach our youth that most of today’s most of today’s most listened to music had Black origins. They love hearing Afrobeat music in movies like “The Harder They Come” but they can’t tell you who Fela Kuti is if you offered to give them money to tell you.
We like to exalt modern day Black organizations as worthy and credible but today’s groups can hardly match the Black organizations of the past that had Black, schools, Black hospitals, Black business and more under one roof, so to speak.
You can go back to Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association or Yahweh ben Yahweh’s Black Hebrew Israelite Movement that amassed a $250 million empire, for instance, to show our youth that we can get things done spiritually, financially and many other ways without the direction of our exploiters and oppressors.
If you don’t know, I try to write for our seniors and youth. The seniors can understand and appreciate The Gantt Report messages and the youth can learn from them.
Put away the Play Stations, the I Pads and cell phones for a while and insist that your children spend more time with the family and community elders. Your elders have true stories that will never get told by the sons, daughters and offspring of colonialists, neocolonialists, slave traders and overseers!
Zaria is a young Black person that I have somewhat taken under my wing. I don’t buy her toys and games. I always buy her BOOKS and occasionally I’ll slide her a few dollars.
I want her to know her elders love her and that young Black people can learn a lot from older, elderly Black people.
Put the Play Stations, cell phones and I Pads away for a while and encourage our youth to do like Jesus did and hang out sometimes with the elders in the family and in the community.
Just like the elders in Biblical days, our elders can teach and preach what we need to hear.
