Well, it’s a week to Christmas day. And, as always, we have so much to be thankful for. When I was a child, Thanksgiving, Christmas and the New Years were extra special holidays for me. They still have a special place for me, but not like it was when I was a child.

When I got older my attitude changed towards these holidays, especially Thanksgiving and Christmas. As a child, it was all about the special meals, all the food, the visitors to our home, the gifts and celebrating with my five brothers and my mother and father. It was about Santa Claus and the season of giving (even though I was mostly receiving at that time. It was about decorating the house, the windows and the tree for Christmas. I loved decorating the fresh tree my father would bring home (it was eventually replaced with an artificial tree) along with my mother and my brothers. These are wonderful memories for me.

But, I am no longer a child. I grew up. And I learned to give thanks everyday, not just once a year. I learned that everyday is the time or season for giving, not just during the holiday season. Birthdays, especially for my children living with me, became the days of celebrating with lots of gifts, food and celebration.

I know that for many of us, Christmas has been less about celebrating the birth of Jesus and more about gifts, parties, and get-togethers. Well, that’s okay, because Christ never told us to celebrate his birthday anyway. He told us to celebrate his death and his resurrection, and to tell others about it. But, that’s another story...

I still enjoy the holidays, and the spirit of these holidays should extend to everyone throughout the year. That’s the beginning of my wish list. That everyone should try to extend the spirit of the holidays to cover the entire year.

Yes, we should have a spirit of giving and go shopping throughout the year to buy gifts for others. We should be nice to each other throughout the year. We should give thanks throughout the year.

We should observe, practice and celebrate the seven principles of Kwanzaa everyday. That is, we should have unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity and faith. Everyday. We should celebrate the New Year with a commitment to Kwanzaa, a commitment to each other, a commitment to self-respect, a commitment to love all the time and love everybody, and a commitment to God.

Yes, these are the kinds of gifts that we should practice giving each day that could benefit everyone.

I wish for Christmas that we would learn to forgive and resolve. We must learn to forgive the person or persons who have wronged us (it doesn’t mean that we have to become best friends) especially when they repent. We must have a resolve to get things done that will help our family, our community, our people and our nation.

We have a lot of problems to deal with that affect Black and white people. We have to be committed to working past and working through these problems.

Let me say this: everyone has problems to deal with. But Black people’s problems have been mostly ignored or improperly addressed. And, solving the problems of Black people will benefit everyone!

So, I wish for Christmas that white people and Black people get behind a genuine effort to improve the condition of the Black community.

We can start by believing that Black people everywhere are equal to white people and any other kind of people everywhere. We are just as intelligent, just as good looking, just as talented. We can run businesses (even fortune 500 companies) and government as well as everyone else. We can educate just as well, we can fight as soldiers just as well, we can even raise our families just as well as white people and every other race.

We can be trusted to manage and govern ourselves, our community, our economics, our education, and our government. To say that we can’t is the same as saying that we are inferior to white people. And that’s just not true.

Now, we do have ugly Black people. We do have dumb Black people. We do have criminal Black people. We do have lazy Black people. We do have Black people who don’t seem to have any talent. But so do white people. So do all other races of people.

You don’t measure a race of people by focusing only on its underachievers. No, not that way. Because the worst of white people out number the worst of Black people. We may have a higher percentage of Blacks underachieving and in jail and prison, but there are more whites in number on welfare, in prison and in drug rehab.

All I am saying is, we all have problems. But the problems in the Black community is worst. The percentages of Blacks in trouble are too high! A higher percentage of Blacks suffer from poor economic conditions, inferior education or educational system, poorer housing conditions, and poorer family conditions (absence of father).

Black people struggle with maintaining culture and identity issues too. Look at Tiger Woods. He won’t even claim his Blackness or Black women. Is it true that in order to be successful as a Black person that you have to be more like white people? Is it true that you have to adopt their culture, white people’s culture in order to be accepted by them in positions of business, government and stature in the community?

Well, I don’t want to be white, anymore than most white people don’t want to be Black. God made us who we are and I am proud of my Blackness, my Black culture and my Black people. God did that on purpose, that is, making the races different from each other. That is why I choose to celebrate diversity.

And that is next on my Christmas wish list: We should celebrate diversity. We will then understand each other better and I believe we will get along with each other a lot better. Especially here in the South and in McComb.

Embracing diversity is embracing and accepting and adapting to our differences. Don’t force me to accept your ways and become you, and I won’t force you to accept my ways and become me.

So, let’s embrace a Black President who stands for change and wants to improve life for everyone based on his culture and the things that make him at times, very different than all the previous U.S. Presidents.

My wish is that we will embrace the first Black mayor in McComb who stands for change and bringing everyone, Black and white to the table of opportunity in a fair and reasonable way. A lot of the problems in McComb are due to this resistance to change. Too long have a few white people in power controlled the lives of Black people, relegating us to second class citizenry.

All we ask for is a fair chance to govern and participate in a process that has long been denied to us. City leases, city contracts and projects as general contractors, controlling decisions in our educational institutions, especially where we are now in the majority or make up a significant number of the overall population--we have been denied. I wish for fairness.

It has been unfair for Blacks for too long in Pike County. Yes, I remember a South where my brothers and I would visit when we were little boys, where we had to wait in the back of the line at an ice cream stand in Magnolia until the white children were served first. I didn’t understand it then. All I knew was that it was unfair! My father had left Magnolia in the mid-50’s because Mississippi was so unfair to Black people and he wasn’t going to take it anymore.

These unfair rules still linger. Mayor Zach Patterson and others are trying and have tried to change the rules and make things more fair, especially for Black people. So I wish that all of those conspiring against him and others like him who are trying to be fair, I wish that you would move out of the way and let him and his administration govern.

Let him do what he was elected to do. Selectmen, reverse what you have done and give him his powers back.

Sit down with State Representative David Myers and other state elected officials and get the motel sales tax back, to be used by the Community Relations and Tourism Department, urging them to stop playing these political games that have hurt the Black community. Selectmen, acknowledge what a great job Tasha Dillon has done and is doing, and fund her department next year from the city budget. If you are short for money, then fund her department that benefits everyone and stop funding other organizations and activities that only benefit some people, usually only white people. Let’s be fair.

Yes, all the unfair activities Selectmen and others, I wish would come to an end, right now. Don’t run off any other “first” appointments by Mayor Patterson. Like you did the first Black female fire chief, Jean Frye. And the first Black city attorney and the first Black city administrator. Please don’t run off other great appointments by the mayor like you did when you forced out Jim Storer and eventually appointed your own city administrator.

I wish that you would reverse what you did when you approved and executed those illegal amendments, stripping Mayor Patterson of his supervisory and appointing powers, preventing him from governing the city as its mayor.

I wish that you would obey and respect the law. I wish you would stop being so mean and be nice. Your actions affect everyone and have harmed the Black community.

I wish you would stop picking on others in Mayor Patterson’s administration who have been bold enough to stand up against your improper and illegal activities. That includes Police Lt. Mark Anderson and CFO Mary Adams. Please apologize to both of them. Then give Anderson his job back. And, leave Adams alone. Stop using them as political pawns in your efforts against Mayor Patterson.

I wish that Mayor Patterson wins all of the lawsuits that he has filed against you selectmen.

I wish that all of the selectmen who have behaved so badly, including Danny Esch, Robert Maddox, E.C. Nobles, and Wade Lamb are not re-elected.

I wish that Black people will get more involved in matters of the community and politics.

I wish that more Black people would stop being so afraid.

I wish we would stop hurting each other.

I wish that we would love each other. All the time. Yes, I wish that we would love ourselves and each other so much, that we would have more unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity and faith.

I wish we would all have a happy and joyous holiday season.