I love my community. I love my culture. I love my history. I love it all. But boy…I can’t stand the badmindedness! As much as there is greatness to celebrate and appreciate, I think we can improve in the area of cohesiveness.

It’s everywhere…not just in our community. I know every race and culture has their own qualms about one another, their own pet peeves and their own wish list of things they want for their people. At the top of my wish list: I wish our people would learn to support one another better.

A simple thing. But easier said than done.

So February comes, it’s Black History Month. It’s all about Martin Luther King’s dream and coming together and who invented such-and-such, and big speeches, and even bigger events and corporate recognition, holding hands, and all is good in the world and everyone is optimistic. And then March 1st comes and sometimes all of that positive thinking and community building disappears. The spotlight is off for another eleven months, and some of us seem to quickly forget about the bigger picture: the unity, the history, and the future of our community.

And it’s not just a black thing. When I talk about “our” community, I am talking about West Indian people. Caribbean people—and you know we are all colors of the spectrum from the purest White to the richest Black, we are Asians and Indians and all shades and variations in between, but when we open up we mouth… same t’ing! We cuss the same bad words, we chat the same foolishness, and share the same jokes.

Despite our physical differences, we are one. So we need to support each other. We need to value progressive and positive things. We need to give more. Share more. We need to set a high standard for our people. We need to work to maintain that standard at all times. We need to encourage each other in these areas.

Of course we still need to celebrate our history and celebrate the traditions (like carnival, for example) that go along with it. We need to pay attention to the path the kids are on…and what about the big kids? The adults? We really need to focus more on building our community, and building each other up! We are a small community in this country, and really can’t afford to work against each other. Imagine the power if we could all somehow focus on a bigger goal? Imagine the impact if we worked together, instead of every man for himself?

There are bigger battles to fight. We shouldn’t have to fight battles within our community with the same people who come from where we come from and love what we love. It doesn’t make any sense! I don’t want to even think about “crabs in a barrel” anymore! I’m tired of that old story. I don’t want to have that conversation in another ten to fifteen years, and still gripe about “our” people.

I want to see our next generation have a new mentality. Encouragement. Self-love. High standards. Respect for life. Respect for education. Respect for each other. Loyalty to each other.

I don’t want to sound like I’m preaching the impossible, but at the same time, we all need to sound like this. Every day! We need to keep repeating it and speaking about what we want to see, so that it will happen. We can’t give up until the community is a reflection of exactly what we dream it to be. Unity is a powerful thing.