Black heritage and self-awareness of all our generations in all time begins with all of us all over the African Diaspora taking time to pay homage in daily meditation.

Heritage is largely thought of as the wealth or materials assets legally bestowed to a family member in a legal will or bequest after death by the original owner. Markedly, in the United States, amongst the decades in which the construct of inheritance, the capital gain, known as assets of property as wealth, has largely been beholden to Caucasian offspring. American history is deeply entrenched in overt mostly covert racism in institutional forms, still lingering even with the remnants of free wealth acquired from kidnapped Africans.

What of the African American inheritance? What of the African inheritance of the African Diaspora? Of course, some will say: this is a no brainer. Where in the world do African’s in the Diaspora hold any wealth, let alone any ancestral inheritance in mass?

True, our resources on paper do not amass. However, we must pay our selves first. That is, before one country can pay us our due. We must do for self in memory and black thought collectively.

Collectively, no matter our specific place of origin in the world, planet, country, or region we still have each other for better or worse. Our ancestors everywhere have made their influence abundant. Yes, some of this history, even the recent history, is painful. Besides, the identity “SLAVE” is not our legacy nor was it ever our “NAME”.

Why is this important? Names define existence. Breaking the word “SLAVE” down to a task performed by kidnapped Africans will never remove the pain, but will it somehow remove the subjugation and degradation?

Regardless of religion, when we claim our true identity when we pay ourselves first for who we are. You may ask, where does this identity live? The simplest answer is in the foundation of our identity that lies in the lives of our grandmothers, our grandfathers, our great aunts, our great uncles, our brother, our sisters, our sons, our daughters, our great cousins, our people, our present selves via current presence and so on. Each one of these individuals past and present is a famous “FIRST”, in their own right.

European’s acts of forced bondage towards kidnapped African’s can never be minimized or forgotten. But, the owners of the act, cannot and must not continue to be the occupiers, identifiers, and labelers of people in the African Diaspora.

In all,  we move forward by defining and claiming our own identity. Claim our people! Name yourself! Claim your reparations!