Black Heritage: What else is there to know?

The Buddhists believe that a person should be empty and ready to be filled with additional knowledge above his or her present level. If we as people think we know everything, all the time, we will never be able to learn anything more, and we will be left behind.

I come from the stereotypical broken African-American home where the father leaves and the mother is left with the child. She tries to be the paramount mother, as best she can, while holding the weight of two individuals.

And while this is not the wish of any person, to see their wants fail, I firmly believe all things work together for good.

My mother would work nights and sleep throughout the day so she was forced to let other mother figures keep me a large majority of time until I was 6. Looking back, these strong black women taught me what it means to help your neighbor when they are in need, they taught respect, and above all they showed me love. If my life would not have gone in this direction, who knows if I would have ever learned it to the depths of which I have.

Because I was my mother’s only child, she was strict and kept me away from the outside world often, which I believe was an attempt to keep me from the dangers she had experienced in her young life. As fate would have it, I moved out of my mothers home one month after turning 18.

My mother and I never thought that we could have that type of relationship that you see people having on television. We were always in our own world and trying to put us together was like trying to mix ammonia and bleach; it wasn’t a good idea.  My mother had been bruised from childhood dramas that extended from her brothers and sisters into her community, that at times was racially prejudiced.

After three years past, and I began to try and understand my mother, our relationship began to blossom. Finally this month, at the age of 25, my mother and I had a conversation I didn’t think would ever happen.  It was a conversation filled with the truth of how I see her world and her thoughts of mine.

Our Lotus flower is in full bloom.

Despite popular belief, February is more than an opportunity to remember portions of the “black story” and talk about slavery, and all of the wonderful things African-Americans have done for this society.  It also is a time to remember the story in its entirety. It holds to be the example for life in general, taken to the highest extreme.

It is a story of people forced into a world that they would not have chosen and forced into being separated from their friends and families. In the broad spectrum of things, most of what they had to do was not what they desired to. When they had decided to rebel and get out of the box that was prepared for them, their own people, both black and white, punished them.  And finally, they were judged for thinking the way they did, and their intelligence was questioned.

The answer, I feel, to all of the judgments, punishments, and bigotry, is a change in the conscious of the people. When this happens the land will be filled with the Lotus.

Conflict is always easily solved with a little dialogue, a bit of understanding and a whole lot of truth. With that in mind, we should all be … empty.

—Chavon McMillian

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