'Tis Language, Dum Dum

The four of them stood loudly taunting. They were several yards off the sidewalk, in a small dirt lot between a neighborhood corner store and a laundrymat. They looked to be nine or ten years old, two Vietnamese and two Afrikan Americans, standing some ten feet apart.

Suddenly the Vietnamese switched from English to Vietnamese. The raised arms and pointing fingers of the Afrikan Americans froze in mid-air, their mouths open, but no more words spilled from them. They were stunned and, obviously, knew no language -- Swahili, for example -- that the Vietnamese wouldn't understand.

The Vietnamese walked off, giggling and giving each other high-fives. "The cultural crisis is the key crisis of black life," came to mind. It was the statement agreed upon by some 8,000 delegates at a national black convention in Gary, Indiana in 1972, some 38 years before those two Afrikan Americans and two Vietnamese youths were to square off in 2010.

The black convention had been called in Gary by Richard Hatcher, its Afrikan American mayor, because of the crime and violence devestating Afrikan American communities.

Several years prior to that convention, however, Afrikan American "militants" had forced predominantly white colleges to establish courses in Swahili, an Afrikan language. But two or three years after offering the classes , they had to be discontinued because not enough Afrikan American students could be found to attend the classes. If these "militants" had been interested in more than grandstanding why hadn't they forced so-called "black" churches, "black" schools, and other "black" institutions and organizations to offer these classes in the "black" communities?

A culture can't be built around a name -- Afrikan American -- alone or a hairdo alone or writing poetry and prose in a language from another culture. A language is the main feature of any culture; the other features of the culture are transmitted through its language.

A language is a weapon. In World War II when Hitler's boys and Tojo's boys and Mussolini's boys heard Native Americans transmitting secret military messages on the battlefield, they had never heard the Native Americans' languages before, and they didn't know whether to "shit or go blind."

For generations we've heard so-called "black" leaders pontificating about economic, political, and educational needs of Afrikan Americans -- and about Afrikan heritage and black culture -- but they've never mentioned the need for a culture language. It takes brains and sincerity to study and learn a language, and these "leaders" know it. They know it would be the kiss of death for their popularity if they told these carbon-copies that they had to learn an Afrikan language to prove that they truely identified with their Afrikan heritage and black culture.

Resusitate the dead colonizers and slaveholders and ask them how importatnt a language is; ask American veterans who fought in Vietnam and those fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan -- or anywhere -- how important a language is; ask the politicians if they don't wish they could speak Spanish.