Why have we still not built the “villages” we claim raise our children? Why have we carried the fears that burdened our mothers and tormented our fathers with us into 2023? Why does the list of excuses for pursuing individualism over collective responsibility keep getting longer? 

I accept that the challenges facing the black community worldwide have evolved but our defence mechanisms have not. We have left the next generation to fend for themselves, thinking somehow someone else will teach them the lessons they can only learn from us.

We no longer want to make their lives easier and we behave as if we resent them for growing up in a world that is supposedly filled with more opportunities than we had. Or perhaps we simply have misunderstood our duties as the new elders and underestimated the forces intent on destroying our young. 

This is not an article to overlook systemic racism but a reminder that it has never gone away. This is an article that questions why we haven’t committed ourselves to eradicating the ills that manipulate already vulnerable minds. There are just some things that need to be made history, once and for all.