The lens through which we view our history shapes the way we see our future. This lens has become distorted. 

During the worst days of Jim Crow, there were strong influences within the Black community that championed education, respected hard work, and embraced family values.  All of this was held together by our local community churches.  There was an upward mobility that was broadly supported across our communities.  We sent our children off to college, welcomed them back to help others, and supported our heroes -- in entertainment, sports, business, and education. This is our history of struggle.

Now, we seem to find ways to criticize all achievement.

Our politicians are not black enough; our business people are reviled by some as Uncle Toms in corporate America; our educated bourgeois are regarded in negative terms as elitists who are out of touch with the masses; and now our entertainers are the subjects of the lowest form of entertainment -- hip hop misogyny  and reality shows that reveal our worst characteristics. Meanwhile, the Black Nationalist movement (once rooted in Black pride) is just a whimper on the fringes of our community.  

I can only observe with helpless amazement.  What would Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Sojourner Truth, Carter G. Woodson, W. E. B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, even Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X -- among other great thought leaders in our history -- think of where we have come?  The long view envisioned by King was "the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice." Now it seems that the colloquial version has more truth -- "Not justice, just us."

Those who excel are often viewed as exceptions who are constantly implored to "get down" with those who are trapped in despair, low self-esteem, and self-destructive behavior. We no longer seem to have a long view that is shaped by upward mobility.  The arc of our progress seems to be trending downward.  

The lens through which we view our future is cracked.

Am I viewing our situation through a cracked lens?  Or is there still a strong thread of optimism that anchors our hopes for the future? There is no longer a clear view.  

Our actions are just as fractured as broken glass.  While individual achievement records the success of President Barack Obama, Gabby Douglas, Oprah Winfrey, Magic Johnson and successful Blacks in every walk of our lives -- we see widening achievement gaps for the masses. Our youth are killing each other in our urban streets, the Black family has been completely redefined, and the level of incarceration among Black men is at epidemic proportions.

I watch as the old lions of the Congressional Black Caucus and other Black Leaders fade from the scene, and young bucks like Artur Davis seem to betray everything that we fought for. Harry Belafonte and Bill Cosby are no longer regarded as relevant. They have been replaced by Jay Z, and P Diddy.