What do you do when the economy has nearly emptied your pockets, while holiday hypes are driving messages down the block to spend what we don’t have, with people who don’t care anything about us, on stuff we don’t need?  Enough is never good enough to  people who have been relentlessly brainwashed to believe that they are somehow  inherently, innately inferior.

But, this year we can flip the script. We can one-up Santa, Chinese manufacturers and “everything-but-black-owned” retailers, starting with our children: By giving them a priceless gift. We can offer them the feel-good, fulfilling experience and heightened self esteem that comes with having the power to give. Not giving stuff and things like what we’ve been doing. But giving something much more valuable: the gift of their presence; the gift of their time; the gift of their kind deed to those less able. However humble the gesture, we can all experience the magic of being the benefactor vs the beneficiary. That feeling can be transforming for anyone who is being bombarded with messages reinforcing his or her “worthlessness.”  The feeling that has us desperately seeking our “somebody-ness” in (or on) a shopping bag.

This holiday season can be a teachable, rather than  the stressful family experience. It’s the experience that causes an empowering moment that can redefine what it means to have vs. have not; wealth vs. worth. Worthlessness is the unspoken price we pay when we buy into the Black Friday hysteria  that kicks off the holiday  buying frenzy. A buying stampede that rushes right past scores of our community-based organizations that are hanging on by a thread.

The great thing about this idea is that it’s totally do-able. It doesn’t require much in the way of money, inconvenience, courage, down-size risk. All we need to do is do it.

Happy holiday.

“Most human behavior is learned observationally through modeling: from observing others one forms an idea of how new behaviors are performed, and on later occasions this coded information serves as a guide for action.”
-Albert Bandura, Social Learning Theory

Over the past couple of years, we’ve had plenty to say about Rihanna’s artistic license: From her interesting choice to sing the part of the victim in Eminem’s domestic violence drama “Love the Way You Lie,” to the “Whips and chains excite me” of her own song “S&M.” Somehow, her newest video, “We Found Love,” has both captured the imagination and redefined the stereotypes of the complete dysfunction of relationships in our communities. Rihanna seems to be upping the anti, so to speak, in the proliferation of the myth of black dysfunction and inferiority. In keeping with the best practices of brainwashing, the message is embedded in the glossiest vehicle: An internationally filmed music video helmed by famed director Melina Matsoukas, slick beats by Calvin Harris and costarring model and boxer, Dudley O’Shaughnessy.
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