Yippie! Today is Emancipation Day, a holiday celebrated in Washington D.C. to commemorate is the day in 1862 when President Abraham Lincoln signed a declaration freeing 3,100 slaves living in Washington. The president’s action happened nearly nine months before Mr. Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves in ten Confederate States.

But here was are in 2012 and we’ve got some black people just begging to put those chains back on, because that gives them an excuse for all kinds of nonsense, from the astronomical out-of-wedlock rate, colorism, the incarceration rate, excuses for not getting the “white man’s edumacation” to reasons so absurd at the justification for why it’s okay for black men to date and mater interracially, but when black women do it, they are soiled “bed wenches.”

How many of us are now prisoners of our own making, putting up invisible road blocks for why we can’t do something, who wants to keep us from doing something, or how all the chips are stacked against us so why should we bother?

If you’re squirming in your seat, you know I’m talking to you, and you need to unlock those chains, chica or chico. The key has been right in front of you the whole time.