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Post by africurious on Dec 24, 2018 12:11:24 GMT -5
Hey what can I say? If you didn't live through it don't interview those who did believe what you will. Problem is there many blacks who lived it and said it was worse. Also what you’re describing is not a rare phenomenon. It’s happened to many ppls i.e. they in hindsight say a past time was better than now cuz they still have probs now. There’re black s afs saying it was better under apartheid, it’s become a trend esp among young DRC Congolese to say mobutu was great for their country, some Haitians say how great papa and baby doc were, some Russians glorify the soviet past over now. The current problem is given most emphasis regardless of actual hardship. And a rosy Jim Crow era? Build a strawman knock him down. I bet you guys think Beatrice was proper Black business. Yeah, for integrationists. To the DO FOR SELF nation within a nation blacks it was the biggest blunder ever. As soon as whites were forced to accept their $$$ negroes turned away from Black businesses. If whites always wanted Black $$$ why were there Black businesses founded? Just about every time I’ve been to a black-owned biz in a black neighborhood it’s been overwhelmingly black patrons there. So black ppl still buy from black ppl. And today there’re black biz that can get $ from all ppl instead of being locked in a bantustan purposely made poor. White biz have always got $ from blacks so integration didn’t start anything new. Integrationist will always dump on internal nationalism of any kind. They place 'i got mine you got yours to get' over internal nation economics. That's why what would be like the 11th richest nation has a high rate of personal poverty and makes no jobs for itself. Every people make jobs for their own, except... ... finacially support Arab immigrants over their own people. Apples and oranges. You can’t compare income of ethno-group in a large nation to incomes in other nations in the way you did. Yes black ams have something like the 11th highest gdp if one could separate it but the problem is AAs have to pay rich country prices when they rent, buy prop, pay salaries, transport, etc. Ex: $25k ain’t much in the US but can go much further in places such as Mexico, Brazil, India, Ukraine, Nigeria. Some of those places $25k would make you rich. So what seems like riches actually isn’t by American standards. Also, if on these forums we seek to understand the past by using proven academic methods of the relevant subjects then why don’t we do that when it comes to economics? What you describe has no basis in Econ at all. Circulating money among poor ppl doesn’t make them any richer. Productivity, capital, comparative advantage are some of the things economists focus on when explaining growth. Many black biz closed during integration cuz they weren’t strong enough to compete with more powerful white ones (and also businesses had been consolidating generally as they grew larger anyway). Black biz in segregation were serving a somewhat captive population and didn’t have access to capital as white biz did. Many were doomed to fail once the restrictions were gone. The thing is now any black biz that reaches any appreciable scale has better tools to compete not just in America but internationally if it gets to that point. That circulation stat is bogus and never originated from UGA Selig Center. Not saying you were being dishonest. You were just misled. See here (http://truthbetold.news/2015/12/does-a-dollar-spent-in-the-black-community-really-stay-there-for-only-six-hours/) for someone who investigated it thoroughly. Selected quotes from the article: |
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Post by africurious on Dec 24, 2018 12:44:10 GMT -5
If black ppl don't buy from black businesses then who are the patrons that go to the roughly 2 million black businesses in the US (https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/business_ownership/cb11-24.html)? It's whites, asians and latinos who primarily go to these places? source: www.nap.edu/read/9719/chapter/10That link also has some good data on progression of black businesses. Black business has changed over many decades but haven't seen data that show it's any worse off now than in the days of segregation. I've seen some black biz owners complain before about blacks not buying their stuff. I can't tell if they're biz isn't being run optimally to attract buyers or not. But I do know that most businesses fail in a few yrs regardless of the owners race cuz running a biz is very tough. I also know that many other black biz thrive and have many black patrons. I also know that if I or just about any other black or purple person get substandard service/product I'll unlikely come back. My aunt used to complain that people who came to her fast casual restaurant didn't want to spend money on her cakes which she made with real butter and various organic ingredients. In her mind her cakes were delicious and healthier than cheap ish. Problem is she didn't realize that her cakes were around the prices that you'd find at a cake specialist and she was trying to sell them at a place ppl go for quick moderately priced food. Business is tough. If someone isn't making it then they should ask themselves some hard questions about why (other than saying its cuz black ppl dont wanna buy your stuff cuz you're black). |
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Post by Tukuler al~Takruri on Dec 24, 2018 12:44:35 GMT -5
I am finished with vapid argument with simplistic minded posters who only reflect white sociology.
Whoever wants to win an argument consider yourself the winner.
Many will benefit from what I posted for thinkers.
A business I had catering to nation within a nation Afrikans suceeded.
A business I had open to all and located in a black area failed.
Negroes patronized the grocery store only after I sold it to East Asians.
Narrow active posting base here.
Other than Anansi and Asante no one posting has had the heavy responsibility of providing a job/career to black people, knowing a black family's livelihood is at stake, or a nation within a nation is very different operating principle. than a minority group within a nation.
Nationism isn't anti-integration nor pro-segregation.
It's about DO FOR SELF.
I really have no time for supposed black people who turn around and put their paycheck back in white hands and who do not respect Black Independence and seek to lower the level of consciousness.
Who manufactured and distributed that Black Santa you display?
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Post by africurious on Dec 24, 2018 13:00:29 GMT -5
I am finished with vapid argument with simplistic minded posters who only reflect white sociology. Whoever wants to win an argument consider yourself the winner. Many will benefit from what I posted for thinkers. A business I had catering to nation within a nation Afrikans suceeded. A business I had open to all and located in a black area failed. Negroes patronized the grocery store only after I sold it to East Asians. Well, good your biz did well. What I wrote wasn't meant to address your situation specifically but just a general response to the argument that blacks dont buy black. "White sociology"? You mean data and reasoning? When it comes to pop genetics and other historical inquiry, you always bring data and findings from professional scholars in the relevant disciplines. Why don't you do so when it comes to econ? Your response is like that of the posters who post their opinion and when shown academic work and reasoned thought say oh that's white man facts/knowledge. You don't have to agree of course but your response was surprisingly dismissive with little thought. |
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Post by Tukuler al~Takruri on Dec 24, 2018 13:11:49 GMT -5
You lie and distort I have nothing to say to you.
What goddamned fool thinks Jim Crow Arpartheid Neo colonialism was good times.
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Post by africurious on Dec 24, 2018 14:18:36 GMT -5
You lie and distort I have nothing to say to you. What goddamned fool thinks Jim Crow Arpartheid Neo colonialism was good times. You ain’t gotta talk to me, cool. But since you besmirched my name I’ll respond to clear my name with other forum members. To answer Takruri’s question above about what fool, it was comments like the below from Asante that I had in mind with my response on Jim Crow: Also Zarahan viewed said quoted comments similarly to me so I guess he was distorting and lying too. Smh. |
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Post by asante on Dec 24, 2018 15:41:00 GMT -5
This is the guy who helped write affirmative action by the way!
AFRICANGLOBE – This week, I took a visit to Atlanta and once again stopped by the birth home of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I reached back into the life of Dr. King to understand what made him great, and what we must do to continue the extraordinary work that he and his colleagues began so many years ago. As I sat on his porch, I closed my eyes and imagined his mother carrying him to the front door. I wondered how many Sundays the family sat on that same porch after dinner, and how many days Dr. King spent wondering if it might be possible for him to fulfill his dreams and personal ambitions. I also thought about integration. I carefully studied the old pictures of Auburn Street, where Dr. King was born. I saw images of proud Black business owners, in their finest clothes, driving fancy cars. Of course not everyone was doing well, but we were certainly better at making our own money. I read about how Martin Luther King Sr., Dr. King’s father, maintained a disciplined household, where education was the highest priority and protecting the family unit was paramount. Most importantly, I walked away convinced that one of the most valuable things that Dr. King’s father gave him was pride. Martin Luther King Sr. taught his son at an early age that inequality was entirely unacceptable, and that the terms of integration should be such that you are able to engage in fair trade without allowing yourself to be subjugated.
So, years later, we have achieved at least half of Dr. King’s dream of integration: We can shop where we want, eat where we want and get almost any job at the big fancy corporation down the street. Many of us earn more money than we could have in a segregated society and are given opportunities that are more consistent with our chosen skill sets.(One of Zaharan's silly points)Was Integration a Mistake
The problem for our community, I humbly submit, is that we did not properly negotiate the terms of our integration. The pride that Dr. King’s father instilled in him is lost for millions of youth who are being educated by people who don’t care about them. Integration, for the most part, was simply prolonged assimilation, like moving into someone else’s home and giving up the keys to your own. You are happy to be moving into a bigger house, but soon realize that you can’t go into someone else’s house and move around the furniture. Also, while you’re renting a room, they are paying the mortgage, which means that their kids (not yours) are going to own the house when all the hard work is done.
Many of us see the golden carrot of a higher salary without understanding the risk that is inherent in allowing your family to depend on the descendants of your historical oppressors. Even the most educated among us are raised to sell our services to bidders who extract our best and brightest like oil being lifted from the soil of Nigeria.
People with six figure jobs are living paycheck-to-paycheck, further heightening the economic dependency that makes you impotent when it’s time to stand up for your rights. Like an intelligent woman who marries a wealthy man, you must ensure that you still have something to hold onto in the event that your relationship turns into an abusive one. Sadly, however, many of us have thrown economic caution to the wind. I argue that integration didn’t work in our favor because there is a difference between giving up a portion of your economic sovereignty in exchange for a true partnership vs giving up nearly everything to allow yourself to become an occupied state. For example, if I were to give up my business and “integrate” myself into the management of a large company, I would probably be a very different (and more highly paid) man from the one you are hearing from right now. In fact, I’d probably be speaking a different political language altogether because few majority White institutions would allow me to speak the way I do in public (just ask Syracuse University, where I put my academic freedom to the test).
So, the conclusion is not that integration is always a bad thing. Integration can be a wonderful thing, since White Americans have hoarded most of the nation’s resources (due to our oppression), and integrating gives us an opportunity to have a piece of the American pie. But integrating in such a way that makes you dependent on others can put your socio-economic security at risk.Years after achieving the “dream” of integration, we have seen our poisoned and misguided financial chickens coming home to roost. When the 2008 economic crisis hit America, Whites took a small hit and soon recovered, but Black wealth dropped by over half.Black unemployment hit levels that we haven’t seen in over 30 years. The young men who should be heading our families are filling up the jails and prisons, and our public schools have become prisons with training wheels. There is nothing pretty about this form of integration, where even our best, brightest and strongest are in no position to help those of us who are struggling.
The fact is that we must critically assess the extraordinary work of Dr. Martin Luther King while simultaneously realizing that his work was not complete. He died at the young age of 39 years old, and was speaking boldly about the importance of economic sustainability as a critical component to achieving true equality in a capitalist society. As a finance professor myself, I am hopeful that we realize that this was probably the most significant part of Dr. King’s vision, and that it is the conscientious and intelligent allocation of economic resources that ultimately serves as the key to many of your most fundamental rights as an American. As a community, each of us has a responsibility to teach our children entrepreneurship as an important part of their long-term economic survival. Learning to run your own business is as important as knowing how to grow your own food. We must embrace educational excellence as if our lives depended on it, but ensure that our children are taught Black history and family values that they are not getting in class. We must target our spending to Black-owned businesses whenever we can, and embrace the importance of saving, investing and ownership. Finally, since many of us spent $200 last month at Walmart without blinking, this means that we can certainly afford to give $15 to our favorite Black-owned organization. It’s time for a new way of thinking as it pertains to money and education. Ownership, wealth-building and self-sufficiency should be part of the consistent Black national discourse. By re-inventing ourselves in a productive way, we can turn our darkest hour into one of the greatest periods in Black American history. The time for us to do this is NOW. By; Boyce Watkins |
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Post by asante on Dec 24, 2018 16:14:37 GMT -5
1. Black Wealth Stagnated or Declined After Integration
During segregation, Blacks were forced to start and support the businesses in their own communities. Many of these businesses flourished and even helped make some Black communities, such as the Greenwood community in Tulsa, Okla., (often called Black Wall Street), wealthier than their white neighbors.
After segregation ended, African-Americans flocked to support businesses owned by whites and other groups, causing Black restaurants, theaters, insurance companies, banks, etc. to almost disappear. Today, Black people spend 95 percent of their income at white-owned businesses.
Even though the number of Black firms has grown 60.5 percent between 2002 and 2007, they only make up 7 percent of all U.S firms, and less than .005 percent of all U.S business receipts. In 1865, just after Emancipation, 476,748 free Blacks 1.5 percent of U.S. population owned a .005 percent of the total wealth of the United States. Today, a full 135 years after the abolition of slavery, 44.5 million Black Americans 14.2 percent of the population possess a meager 1 percent of the national wealth.
2. Black Family Structure Collapsed After Integration
From 1890 to 1950, Black women married at higher rates than white women, despite a consistent shortage of Black males due to their higher mortality rate. According to a report released by the Washington D.C.-based think tank Urban Institute, the state of the African-American family is worse today than it was in the 1960s, four years before President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act.
In 1965, only 8 percent of childbirths in the Black community occurred out of wedlock. In 2010, that figure was 41 percent; and today, out-of-wedlock childbirths in the Black community is at an astonishing 72 percent.
Researchers Heather Ross and Isabel Sawhill argue that marital stability is directly related to the husbands relative socio-economic standing, and the size of the earnings difference between men and women.
Instead of focusing on maintaining Black male employment to allow them to provide for their families, Johnson passed The Civil Rights Act with full affirmative action for women. The act benefited mostly white women and created a welfare system that encouraged removal of the Black male from the home. Many Black men were also dislodged from their families and pushed into the rapidly expanding prison industrial complex that developed in the wake of rising unemployment.
I guarantee that these women did not have strong fathers in their homes.
3. The Unemployment Rate of Black Men Quadrupled After Integration
Since integration, the unemployment rate of Black men has been spiraling out of control. In 1954, white men had a zero percent unemployment rate, while African-American men experienced about a 4 percent rate. By 2010, it was at 16.7 percent for Black men compared to 7.7 percent for white men.
The work force in 1954 was 79 percent African-American. By 2011, that number had decreased to 57 percent. The number of employed Black women, however, has increased. (this was deliberately done to create internal strife between the male and female) In 1954, 43 percent of African-American women had jobs. By 2011 54 percent of Black women are job-holders. Although the earnings gap between African-Americans and their white peers has narrowed, it still persists, with a Black man earning about 70 percent of white mans income. In 1960, Black men earned about 60 percent of what white men were paid. 4. Myth of a Colorblind Society Propagated After Integration
The Civil Rights Movement pushed for laws that would create a colorblind society, where people would not be restricted from access to education, jobs, voting, travel, public accommodations, or housing because of race. However, legislation has been ineffective in eradicating white privilege.
Michael K. Brown, professor of politics at University of California Santa Cruz, and co-author of Whitewashing Race: The Myth of a Color-Blind Society says in the U.S., The color of ones skin still determines success or failure, poverty or affluence, illness or health, prison or college.
Colorblind policies that treat everyone the same, no exceptions for the historically oppressed and disenfranchised, are often used to argue against corrective policies such as affirmative action. But colorblindness today merely bolsters the unfair advantages that color-coded practices enabled white Americans to accumulate over a very long time. 5. Black Community Became Dependent After Integration
African-Americans have appealed to the descendants of our oppressors to right their ancestors wrongs, pay us sufficient wages to take care of our families, educate our children and police our neighborhoods.
As a result, only 2 percent of all working Black Americans work for another Black person within their own neighborhood. Because of this, professionally trained Black people provide very little economic benefit to the Black community.
The Black median household income is about 64 percent that of whites, while the Black median wealth is about 16 percent that of whites. Millions of Black children are being miseducated by people who dont care about them, and they are unable to compete academically with their peers. At the same time, the criminal justice system has declared war on young Black men with policies such as stop and frisk and three strikes.Marcus Garvey warned about this saying:
Lagging behind in the van of civilization will not prove our higher abilities. Being subservient to the will and caprice of progressive races will not prove anything superior in us. Being satisfied to drink of the dregs from the cup of human progress will not demonstrate our fitness as a people to exist alongside of others, but when of our own initiative we strike out to build industries, governments, and ultimately empires, then and only then will we as a race prove to our Creator and to man in general that we are fit to survive and capable of shaping our own destiny.
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Post by Tukuler al~Takruri on Dec 24, 2018 17:22:17 GMT -5
Starting business is a natural thing for those with the talent skill and AMBITION who have decided to never be at another person's mercy for a livelihood. But not just anybody can do it. I guess you do know there were Black businesses before JC segregation without anybody forcing anything.  Eventually some even became very rich. The old money Black upper class was separatist and isolationist not toward whites but towards non-aristocrat blacks. What I wroteup on that has been wiped from ES or crowded out by SpamBot posts eating up Google storage? 1. Black Wealth Stagnated or Declined After Integration
During segregation, Blacks were forced to start and support the businesses in their own communities. Many of these businesses flourished and even helped make some Black communities, such as the Greenwood community in Tulsa, Okla., (often called Black Wall Street), wealthier than their white neighbors.
After segregation ended, African-Americans flocked to support businesses owned by whites and other groups, causing Black restaurants, theaters, insurance companies, banks, etc. to almost disappear. Today, Black people spend 95 percent of their income at white-owned businesses.
... ... when of our own initiative we strike out to build industries, governments, and ultimately empires, then and only then will we as a race prove to ... [ourselves] that we are fit to survive and capable of shaping our own destiny. |
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Post by zarahan on Dec 24, 2018 18:02:07 GMT -5
al-Takuri said:
o the DO FOR SELF nation within a nation blacks it was the biggest blunder ever.
As soon as whites were forced to accept their $$$ negroes turned away from Black businesses.
If whites always wanted Black $$$ why were there Black businesses founded?
Integrationist will always dump on internal nationalism of any kind.
They place 'i got mine you got yours to get' over internal nation economics.
That's why what would be like the 11th richest nation has a high rate of personal poverty and makes no jobs for itself.
Every people make jobs for their own, except...
... finacially support Arab immigrants over their own people.
Do for self could not be a blunder. It was/is the key to black wealth and development.
And whites for the most part welcomed the negro dollar as long as they could maintain
the customary pattern of social dominance. Hence the segregated stores did not stop
black customers from buying. The sticking point was the implication of social equality if
a black could sit side by side with them. The same restaurants that forbid interracial
seating were often only too happy to take black dollars at the takeout window.
If whites always wanted Black $$$ why were there Black businesses founded?
The reason is simple- economics 101. Black businesses were typically stuck in the worse
locations & with the lower end merchandise. At low black consumer spending levels whites
were not interested in low end retailing at that time. But as the black consumer became more
wealthy, whites did make a bid for black dollars hence they again and again entered
black areas to compete with black merchants. The ubiquitous Jewish, Arab or Asian merchant
in black areas shows that these people wanted black cash, and black businesses that once
had a clear field no longer had that monopoly. Furthermore black businesses were often
started with stock from white wholesalers. So whites made profits on the wholesale level,
then once the black market was lucrative enough, descended to the retail level.
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Post by Tukuler al~Takruri on Dec 24, 2018 18:14:52 GMT -5
Lies and distortions.
You the one cutting down DO FOR SELF
acting like I said or implied it.
Of course to do that you had to selectively quote me completely out of context.
Here are my words in context. Dare you address the actual issue I raise intead of building yourself a strawman so you can heroically knock it down.
You wilfully distorted that.
For what?
To win an argument?
But go on and on about what you never lived through to correct those who experienced it.
You integrationists and your dependence on whites and laying everything blacks struggled to accomplish as impossible w/o white aid and direction.
Jews Arabs and Asians certainly weren't the white people who didn't want black anything from 1866 to 1966.
Jews were the first to exploit the zero circulation phenomena of the Coloureds (while chiefly doing business only with other Jews).
Next came the East Asians.
Now the Arab is the one enriching their internal economy on the backs of blacks.
Every racial and ethic group understands recirculating $$$ and having independent business not totally reliant on white government handouts.
They develope their own networks.
The proof is in the street not on the 'net.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 24, 2018 20:29:15 GMT -5
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Post by Tukuler al~Takruri on Dec 24, 2018 21:10:26 GMT -5
Farakhan among others already told us that, so what.
Interesting enough the first thing I tried was a shoe import/export deal with producers in Nigeria back in '74. But New Yawk white Jews held a stranglehold on African imports.
For me it's not an individual's solely reaped lucre.
I'm talking a people's own internal economy.
Like providing social services for its poor and needy.
Recirculating its money enough to reap internal economic benefit.
No doubt Maafa descendants are a people.
A people of one very large minority group and various little ethnic groups.
Whatever either ethny does to advance itself advances the whole people.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 24, 2018 22:03:35 GMT -5
"Interesting enough the first thing I tried was a shoe import/export deal with producers in Nigeria back in '74."
Do tell, give us the gory details, how did the Jews manage to undercut you? What did you learn from this venture and how did you apply the lesson learned?
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Post by zarahan on Dec 25, 2018 0:45:46 GMT -5
Boyce Watkins says:
So, years later, we have achieved at least half of Dr. King’s dream of integration: We can shop where we want, eat where we want and get almost any job at the big fancy corporation down the street.
And that is massively better than the situation prevailing under Jim Crow.
BOyce Watkins also does not note that there are now multi-milion dollar black
corporations, along with many other smaller black enterprises, finally free to
make more money with the demise of Jim Crow.
The problem for our community, I humbly submit, is that we did not properly negotiate the terms of our integration. The pride that Dr. King’s father instilled in him is lost for millions of youth who are being educated by people who don’t care about them.
Agreed that the terms in integration were not properly negotiated in some cases. In some cases it
was rushed by malicious whites destroying black institutions. IN others blacks themselves quickly
abandoned the inferior second-tier situations they had dealt with for almost a century, but in
the process in SOME cases, ditched the good situations as well in their haste to get out from under.
Integration, for the most part, was simply prolonged assimilation, like moving into someone else’s home and giving up the keys to your own. You are happy to be moving into a bigger house, but soon realize that you can’t go into someone else’s house and move around the furniture. Also, while you’re renting a room, they are paying the mortgage, which means that their kids (not yours) are going to own the house when all the hard work is done.
Fair enough but before integration blacks did not have the keys to their own homes, figuratively
speaking in many cases. The brutal "urban renewal" or "slum clearance" programs prior to the
1970s for example destoryed numerous thriving black neighborhoods as whites deliberately
routed major roads and highways thru black areas to grab coveted land or "seal off" the
black areas into newer or fragmented older ghettoes.
Many of us see the golden carrot of a higher salary without understanding the risk that is inherent in allowing your family to depend on the descendants of your historical oppressors. Even the most educated among us are raised to sell our services to bidders who extract our best and brightest like oil being lifted from the soil of Nigeria.
Boyce fails to mention that under segregation there was even WORSE dependence on oppressors.
And why is getting paid what you are worth "selling yourself"? Blacks never sold themselves off
prior to integration? Jackie Robinson and many of the old-time base ballers for example, got
chicken-feed in the old segregated leagues, selling their services to bidders who extracted
the best and the brightest for a fraction of what they were worth- that is, assuming the team even
met payroll that month -some didn't. What? These men were supposed put up with chump-change
wages, pot-holed playing fields and cramped fleabag hotels forever?
People with six figure jobs are living paycheck-to-paycheck, further heightening the economic dependency that makes you impotent when it’s time to stand up for your rights.
But this was often the case under segregation. Low paid blacks were afraid to speak up, or do civil
rights work because they were economically dependent on whites and feared for their jobs.
This is one of the reasons black ministers took the lead in several civil rights campaigns, or let
their churches be used for meeting places, hideouts of civil rights workers sought by the Klan, and
staging areas for demonstrations- venues absolutely critical to the struggle. Their income was not
dependent on whites, and their land was owned by the church community not a white landlord that could
evict them in retaliation for speaking up.
I argue that integration didn’t work in our favor because there is a difference between giving up a portion of your economic sovereignty in exchange for a true partnership vs giving up nearly everything to allow yourself to become an occupied state.
Boyce's argument here is questionable because under segregation blacks never had the economic sovereignty
he imagines, and under segregation, blacks lived in a state of occupation in many areas. Integration
did not bring in any "occupied state" - occupation was ALREADY in force under segregation.
For example, if I were to give up my business and “integrate” myself into the management of a large company, I would probably be a very different (and more highly paid) man from the one you are hearing from right now. In fact, I’d probably be speaking a different political language altogether because few majority White institutions would allow me to speak the way I do in public (just ask Syracuse University, where I put my academic freedom to the test).
Sure- if you are paid by a corporation or government you have to watch what you say versus
being an outspoken independent. BUt this rule applies across the board in all areas of life,
and has little to do with integration per se. White employees of white corporations for example
dare not speak against the corporate brand or get involved in any political conflicts that
would reflect on them unfavorably in the eyes of their white corporate bosses. Life 101.
So, the conclusion is not that integration is always a bad thing. Integration can be a wonderful thing, since White Americans have hoarded most of the nation’s resources (due to our oppression), and integrating gives us an opportunity to have a piece of the American pie. But integrating in such a way that makes you dependent on others can put your socio-economic security at risk.
Again the weakness here is that under segregation, blacks were still dependent on the white man,
and their socio-economic security was always vulnerable. Under integration blacks are still
dependent, but less so than under segregation, because under integration, there are more options
and alternatives to work with, compared to JIm Crow. Just moving from place to place to find
a better job is an example. Jim Crow regimes actually deployed police at train stations to harass and
block blacks from moving north in search of better opportunities at one time in US history. Black
males were set up with bogus charges to dragoon them into the semi-slavery convict leasing system,
ensuring that they could not go elsewhere to better their lot.
Years after achieving the “dream” of integration, we have seen our poisoned and misguided financial chickens coming home to roost. When the 2008 economic crisis hit America, Whites took a small hit and soon recovered, but Black wealth dropped by over half. Black unemployment hit levels that we haven’t seen in over 30 years. The young men who should be heading our families are filling up the jails and prisons, and our public schools have become prisons with training wheels. There is nothing pretty about this form of integration, where even our best, brightest and strongest are in no position to help those of us who are struggling.
All true, but little of this can be blamed on integration per se. Black unemployment for example
was no winner under segregation. IN fact the famous "March on WWashington" led by ML KIng was
officially titled the "March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom," Jobs came first, but that got
little press compared to the "I Have A Dream" speech.
The fact is that we must critically assess the extraordinary work of Dr. Martin Luther King while simultaneously realizing that his work was not complete. He died at the young age of 39 years old, and was speaking boldly about the importance of economic sustainability as a critical component to achieving true equality in a capitalist society. As a finance professor myself, I am hopeful that we realize that this was probably the most significant part of Dr. King’s vision, and that it is the conscientious and intelligent allocation of economic resources that ultimately serves as the key to many of your most fundamental rights as an American.
Agreed
As a community, each of us has a responsibility to teach our children entrepreneurship as an important part of their long-term economic survival. Learning to run your own business is as important as knowing how to grow your own food.
Agreed, but let us be realistic. ENtrepreneurship is only ONE part of the package. Skills
acquisition applied in work- what I call "laborism" - working for soemone else, yes, is
a key component in the rise of American ethnic groups, from the Irish in mills and factories,
to the Jews in the garment trades, to Asians in agriculture and mining. All of these groups
used a DUAL strategy of business entrepreneurship AND laborism to advance. This is one of the
major weaknesses with black males today- they are not making themselves useful to the econmy
as labor in some way. Black females have grasped the game and are doing better. And labor is
always a means to an end, There is no rule that says you have to stay at the same job forever.
Unfortunately, some spin the fantasy of everything being OK if only black folk would go into business.
Business is no panacea. More than half of all small businesses will fail within 5 years. Kids need
not only to be taught entrepreneurship, but laborism- acquiring skill and applying said skill with hard-
nosede labor. They should also be taught the third part of the triad- investment- in property and/or
financial instruments.
We must embrace educational excellence as if our lives depended on it, but ensure that our children are taught Black history and family values that they are not getting in class. We must target our spending to Black-owned businesses whenever we can, and embrace the importance of saving, investing and ownership. Finally, since many of us spent $200 last month at Walmart without blinking, this means that we can certainly afford to give $15 to our favorite Black-owned organization.
Agreed, and black organizations must not take black support for granted but must perform and
demonstrate real value to their supporters. Just "being black" is no longer good enough.
It’s time for a new way of thinking as it pertains to money and education. Ownership, wealth-building and self-sufficiency should be part of the consistent Black national discourse. By re-inventing ourselves in a productive way, we can turn our darkest hour into one of the greatest periods in Black American history. The time for us to do this is NOW.
Agreed.
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