Within the next few weeks The Roanoke Tribune will be celebrating its 86th year of “Making and Recording Black History” here in the Roanoke Valley. How distinctively different the process of publication is today than that of its origin. Different also are the methods and means of communication. But the motive of this Black media in particular remains the same: To promote self-esteem, to encourage respect – for self and especially for the differences in others, and to provide a vehicle through which diverse people can connect on some regular, voluntary basis across societal divides.
During the downward spiral of today’s economy, many of our nation’s larger publications are struggling to survive as the communication modes continue to shift from print, to visual, to Internet.
Unfortunately, with the quantum leap in science and technology also suffers personal communication among families, friends, coworkers, and other associates. It takes nothing short of a genie in a bottle to get a human voice on the end of any business call today, and if by some miracle you do, the shock makes you forget the reason you were calling in the first place.
Most detrimental however is that parents are not rearing today’s children, especially during the first five (most formative) years of their lives. Whether single or two-parent family, the necessity for each to work to make ends meet results in infants being placed in daycare centers from as young as a few weeks old. Although this scenario may provide the ideal situation for the child’s physical and emotional development, there often remains a parental bonding gap that time can never bridge. The damage is even greater among separated parents that too often splits the child’s innate need for love and often pits the mixed emotions against one another.
With television and the Internet as the number one communicator in most of today’s homes (with or without children), the opportunity for couples or other family members to communicate is practically non-existent even should by some miracle they agree to watch the same channel. The tragic results, becoming more painfully obvious with time, is the lost art of verbal communication among individuals that breeds a degree of intolerance through lack of understanding and subsequent interest, leading ultimately to alienation and separation.
Good communication is imperative to all forms of life, animal, marine and human, as well as to insects, reptiles, fish and fowl. Only among humans is the language so complex and diverse, even among same nationalities, races, tribes and cultures, that it often becomes a greater source of misunderstanding than one of understanding and mutual respect.
It is therefore of utmost importance that we foster good, wholesome communication tht must begin early and, like charity, begin in the home where moral and spiritual training are strongly supported by the dynamic force of example. Such healthy roots provide the child’s best protection through the changes and chances of life.
We have heard it said: “Your actions speak too loud, I can’t hear a word you’re saying.”
We are also warned in the Baha’i Holy Writings: Beware O people, lest you walk in the ways of them whose words differ from their deeds. (Investigate!)
