Last Thursday, I attended a meeting set to give Charlotte’s Black community a new direction.
Ahmad Daniels (pictured to the left) and his Creative Interchange organization hosted the “Crisis Affecting Young African-American Males” forum, which became even more pertinent after the arrest of 25-year-old Demetrius Montgomery in the murders of Officers Sean Clark and Jeff Shelton. The meeting room was filled with a standing-room only crowd of families and buppies alike intent on finding an answer to the question Marvin Gaye asked years ago, “What’s Going On?” And yes, I was thrilled to be in the company of young, successful Black men and can admit to scanning the crowd for date material.
However, that ended the moment a solution to the breakdown of our community became reinstating segregation. “WTF?!” I thought. I did not just hear what I thought I heard. Not in the year 2007. Comments would be greatly appreciated.
This article appears in Apr 11-17, 2007.
No, segragation is not the solution to the problems of Black America. We do need to support each in ways that occured during segregation when we had no choice but to. I was at the meeting also and was disappointed that in the end it turned into a shouting match without any plan of action to move forward. All the will our people suffer everyday from lack of unity. Ironic that there was no unity at the end of the meeting.