The chance to achieve your dreams is given to each American time in and time out.
The opportunity to have the career and family you want is guaranteed for all. Yet, the outcomes are certainly not set in stone as they are supposed to be.
As all Americans are celebrating Black History Month in February, we must continue to rely on our attitude, preparation and effort to help us achieve our goals. In particular, as blacks we must remember to constantly speak to this existence to show that we are the resilient people that our forefathers fought to get equality for.
The insulting terms "acting white," "Oreo," "sellout" and "Uncle Tom" are discouraging our race from reaching its maximum potential. It is this tremendously ugly part of black America that haunts me and many other black Americans everyday.
I had the honor of serving Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer, Gov. Nikki Haley and Texas Gov. Rick Perry. I was the first black to serve in both the Governor and Lieutenant Governor’s office in South Carolina and the first black staffer on a GOP presidential campaign in South Carolina.
It still is unsettling to my mindset to think that I will be ridiculed by many in my race for my unconventional political views, education and social interactions, rather than evaluated by the content of my character. We as blacks must understand that we can be who we want to be in full. We are the authors of our own life story — it is not written for us.
We all have freedom of expression, speech and thought. Moreover, there are many different categories of blackness and it cannot be put into a one-dimensional philosophy that is used to demean and disconnect our culture.
Once we open our hearts, eyes and minds, we will be able to fill them with the intelligence, consciousness and conscience to lead us to our aspirations — like Dr. King wanted.
A black person with a book is not acting white or being a sellout. We are acquiring the information we need to find ourselves and be able to have a stake as good citizens in this land we call America.
It is when we start trying to be what somebody expects of us that we start to lose ourselves. Learning is the master key to any door and those locks will never change.
It is time to be able to walk through those doors.