I was looking over the internet, searching for the population of a particular country that I had been reading about. I wanted to see where this country fit by population into the list of all countries in the world, again by population. A funny thing occurred to me: we, FBAs, are a “nation” within a country called the United States. Furthermore, we should start seeing ourselves as a nation within this country and acting like it. We’ve taken the first two steps:
- Naming ourselves. We’ve done that.
- Delineating ourselves from black immigrant groups so that we’re seen as a separate group, which we truly are in this country, in fact, the largest group within this country.
While searching the population I found that we are 90% of the black population in this country. The remaining 10% is comprised of all other members of other black immigrant groups. We are 90%.
So, what is so important about this? Thinking of ourselves as a nation – a separate complete nation – will help us better guide our future. At the present time, we seem to be a “rudderless people”. Thinking along a nation-building tack will help us focus our endeavors into the future. And there is nothing and no one better at focusing than FBAs.
Therefore, our future lies in “nation building”. We must begin to think only along this line: How do we build the FBA nation within the United States? The answer to this – and how we go about executing it – will determine whether we actually can secure the legacy our ancestors passed down to us and ensure we can pass it to our descendants well into the future.