�And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, come out of her, my people, that ye may not partake of her sins, and that ye receive her plagues.�

�Revelations 18:4

In the song �The Greatest Love Of All,� Whitney Houston sings: �Everybody�s looking for a hero/People need someone to look up to.�  While this theme is universal, it is especially important to the children of a people who have been robbed of their religion, culture, right minds, etc. As they say in the church, a people who are �like a ship without a sail� can be moved by any strange wind that comes along.

While the new movie �Harry Potter and the Sorcerer�s Stone,� lacking a bumpin� sound track and cameo appearances by Ja Rule and DMX, probably will not appeal to Black teenagers, it is sure to capture the attention of young Black children in integrated school systems who will hear their white counterparts promoting the film better than any �Hollyweird� executive. In the coming weeks many Black parents will grow weary of having to answer the question, �Daddy, why can�t we go see Harry Potter? Everybody else is going, huh, huh?�

Having to explain to a 6-year-old the complexities of Satanism, propaganda and mind control can be highly problematic and many times results in blank stares and a barrage of questions. With all the hype, it seems that everyone in America lined up opening night to see the story of demons, witches and heaven knows what else. No child wants to miss out on all that fun.

Mama always told me that there are �some things that Black folks just don�t do� and at the top of the list is �messin� with that devil stuff.� I remember attending elementary school in the early �70s and seeing my white classmates want to become �Knights In the Service of Satan� (members of the rock group KISS) while I was more than happy wanting to be the sixth member of the Jackson 5. But back then we did not have a hundred television channels all seducing our children to become the next Harry Potter.

Even with all the vulgarity of �gangsta rap,� besides a brief period in the mid-�90s of �horror core� rap, very few rappers have wanted to travel the highway of hell. It seems that Black folks just do not have the stomach for that kind of stuff, as it is evidently against our nature.

How many times have we been told as children �if little Billy and Heather jump off a bridge, will you jump, too?� When you are a 7-year-old victim of a massive, multimillion-dollar advertising campaign and you are faced with the picture of Harry Potter on everything from soda cans to lunch boxes, how easy is it to just say no?

For young impressionable minds, the peer pressure to go along with the crowd can be overwhelming. No one at that age wants to be the odd man out. And many parents may want to write Harry Potter off as just a childish fantasy that will have no future ramifications on the mental and spiritual development of their child.

While this excuse may help some adults sleep at night after paying $8 for a movie ticket for their child to watch such garbage, in truth, we as an African people in America cannot afford to let our children become involved in such foolishness. What is good for the goose is not good for the gander. Based on the challenges Black children will have to face in the future, we do not have the luxury to allow our children to engage in the same pastimes as the European. African people  in America are catching more hell now than ever, so we definitely do not need to expose our children to some more of the European�s madness.

Spiritually speaking, it is a real contradiction to have the media urging our children to pray to God one day and to support Satanism the next. In this time of anxiety and anthrax we need to be dispelling the falsehoods the European has given our children in regards to our spirituality instead of creating more confusion. At this time, more than any in the history of African people in America, we must teach our children to become closer to God and not be driven further from Him by filling their minds with tales of evil.

Our children are the victims of the Pied Piper Syndrome, following the culture of white America to their doom and destruction. Our goal should be to create a clear definition of our religion and spirituality grounded in our strong African culture.

We must create a new set of dynamics in the concept of what it means to be Africans in America, so our children will know what it means to be right, when it seems that the whole world is doing wrong.

Unfortunately, when it comes to some issues that affect our children directly or indirectly, we wait for the white so-called �religious right� to be the shepherds to lead us away from the wolves. You would think that our Black leaders have no voices when it comes to moral issues.

While it is all too convenient for this society to limit �Black issues� to police brutality and job discrimination, we as an African people in America must not subject ourselves to such limitations. For too long the white conservatives have been the people sought when it comes to issues of religion or morality even though during the civil rights era, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. manifested the idea of Black people as the voice of reason and true spiritual leaders of this nation.

It is time for African people in America, especially the religious leaders, to take our rightful place as the moral conscience of this country and the world as the European has historically been intent on going to hell in a hurry and taking us along for the ride.

We must become the head, and not the tail, for their sakes as well as ours. The world is depending on us.

(Min. Paul Scott is the founder of the New Righteous Movement based in Durham, N.C., which teaches African Liberation Theology. He can be reached at [email protected].)