Friday, November 22, 2019

Kyle Phoenix Answers: If Black Americans only supported black businesses as they did during segregation, would this bridge the wealth gap between blacks and whites or has desegregation/globalization made this idea impossible to scale?



Unfortunately no, it won’t work, there are two really harsh ideas that are going to have to happen to truly see these issues clearer.
One, there’s no such concept of Race—-the only difference between us is Blood type and ear wax type. But let’s take that farther—-in order to neutralize racism we have to neutralize race. But if you neutralize race then what happens if you’ve predicated an identity on race (being White being Black, etc.)?
But but but….what about all the folk running around America who believe in these social construct concepts that we've predicated so much of our society on?
One you have to see race as like pancakes—-we’ve added layers after layers after layers after layers year after year after decade after century—-which is why it’s so hard to unravel, it is inherently insane, it both profits and attacks/destroys White, Black and other people.
Ok. But what about the money? the Wealth divide Black businesses, Kyle?
Ok, here’s the Ugly Race truth about Black folk.
Ready?
We’re really just darker White people with a few customs and cultural memories from Africans who long ago, the people who may’ve forfeited us or not come to rescue us—-, not the current Africans—-so we assimilated. However, there is demarcation, skin hue, which has put a pin in those of us trying to assimilate.
Imagine if Black people weren’t darker in hue. Less melanin.
Now imagine the Civil War ends and slowly the two Great Migrations from the South to the North begins.
And we all looked alike.
Now flash forward to 2019.
Unless they historically-culturally identified their family would you know who the “Blacks” were? No.
But but but…..those millions of people no longer as tightly segregated, even as the Prime Blacks in our current reality, weren't always tightly segregated had to move into White dominant societies to survive, to get money, food, work, etc.. They would teach themselves and their children to become accustomed to the products and services offered by the White society and even come to prefer them if people put White labeling on one and Black created labeling on another.
Black people prefer White made things…because White people have had control over essentially creation and manufacturing longer than we have.
Now is preference always indicative of quality?
No, Black people prefer some White things just because White people make it—-which is why Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Hilfiger and the like have a solid Black customer base.
And also the HUGE point Black people, who espouse forget about Black people is that you know what Black people are?
People.
Human.
Ironically the very people who yell, protest and legislate the most for Human rights neglect the fact that Black people are not Black first, they are Human first. And Human’s pursue their preferences first before they pursue their designations.
What about the Civil Rights Movements and such?
The collective unity created by Civil Rights was created by the fact that ALL of us were affected by legal discrimination.
Now financial discrimination is about some of us, maybe even most of us, but not all of us. If you earn over a certain amount, you can move places, do things buy things that other Black people can’t but a very interesting comment I heard from a YouTube video about Black finance was that at a certain level race stops being an issue in the same way. And it’s true. Often in discussions with Black people I have to remind them or hip them to the fact that while I understand some things—-I wasn’t raised in a ghetto, I have never lived in the projects, my parents weren’t poor so all of my years, working and such I’ve experienced situational poverty due to layoffs, unemployment, and paying for higher levels of education but I’ve always done well by American standards of over $46k a year 6 months out of undergraduate college.
Now earning that at 26 meant that I have always had more disposable cash, that I have always been able to afford some of the expensive things that I prefer as a Human.
  • Work/Computer Costs. That then means that I have been able to choose—-I type to you now on a Dell laptop—-I researched my needs and went with Dell $500+ a year I spend on a new laptop as I wear them out, use up hard drive space in traveling/work (I literally have stacks of older laptops and hard drives at home. To edit and produce a single show is about 5 gigs an episode and I do 52 episodes a year; a book is about 1 gig of materials covers and such, another 25 to 50 a year; plus research, reports, etc. etc. etc.)—-however there is no Black alternative laptop manufacturer. The closest I came was the sales guy at Best Buy was Black. Of course, Best Buy is not Black owned. I have probably spent about $20k on computers and such in the past 20 years since I bought my first computer in my teens. There was an Indian and then an Asian computer repair shop I’ve used regularly but not a Black one—-so I can’t recirculate my dollars there.
  • Education, 95% here in NY state, which I’ve paid for to the tune of well over $200k—-state, small, and private schools—-all of them non-Black owned. A lot of my educational needs and preferences have been at places where I can’t focus my dollars to Black AND my needed outcomes.
  • Living Expenses-Housing. I’ve rented my first apartment at 23, a jaunty 1 bedroom that I still have memories of it being the perfect size in Buffalo, all the way to a ginormous space in Manhattan and Queens—-but the majority of those buildings were not Black-owned so my dollars anywhere from $3000 to $20k a year was not going to Black owners. My living locales were chosen based upon closeness to college and then to work here in NYC. I can say that when my mother and I picked out a second residence in the PA mountains, the realtor was a Black woman who also lived in the secured community that we got the house in. That a deliberate action on my mother’s part.
  • My Media Business—-my distributors have been primarily Amazon, EBay, Time Warner cable/Spectrum, and sundry others for services. While I did provide services and products for them I also profited from those sales as well as my personal purchasing of stock in them (I believe that you should make an effort to buy a piece of anything that profits/owns/controls a piece of your work). But the worldwide reach of Amazon/EBay and the local state saturation of TW/Spectrum is not replicable by any Black-owned company. Those relationships-distribution networks are worth millions of dollars to me.
  • Work: Materials & Supplies. There are not many Black owned book and video stores in NYC. I’ve been to most of them and even steered large school sized library building business to one of them when I’ve been in charge of inventory purchasing for school libraries/programs (Hue-Man bookstore in Harlem before it went out of business) but my professional work, my academic work, and my personal interests have meant that the texts I need aren’t always available in Black bookstores or frankly, they’re cheaper on Amazon on through Educator discounts at Barnes and Noble. Often times as a teacher/student I’m confronted with cost issues for myself and students (sometimes I’m buying the whole class or workshop 20, 30, 40, 50 books because some populaces/programs can’t afford them—-but that doesn’t mean I can afford them at full price, s I’m buying used copies for 20–50 students). So I try, but only about 10% of my book/video buying budget is exclusively Black and I’ll add here that it also has to do with inventory and my interests—-my every intellectual thought and interests isn’t Black. Mainly because I’m Human.
  • That leaves Clothing & Food & Entertainment (depends but in order to maintain retail survival, Black Clothing stores tend to be culturally specific or more expensive. I am not interested in wearing Kente cloth to work or in general, more what I personally consider gaudy or gauche clothing, I’m personally much more conservative, not because I lack interest or pride (I don’t even know completely what that -—-”pride” through clothing—-is) but because I personally don’t like lots of flashy SEE ME clothing; Food (I’m not a perfectly loyal shopper—-looking for quality and convenience so I do Whole Food, West Side Market, C Town and FreshDirect—-none Black-owned some based on health, preference, convenience, quality); Entertainment (I spend a very nominal amount here because I don't watch TV and rarely go to the movies—-Netflix and Hulu, $20 a month covers me—-again both not Black Owned); Travel (public transportation, airplanes or trains—-none through Black-owned services).
I offer all of this as my personal average self to examine what is the root problem of Black wealth, Segregation and Globalization.
We’re not Owners of the Systems that customers feed into/need constantly. Black, I suspect as other cultures fall into niche cultural purchasing—-though considerably less—-Black dollars move at the rate of $1 in Black communities, Asian is $12–14 or times.
And it’s not going to close as a gap.
Our only hope has been not just integration, which can feel like the loss of identity, but Focused Inception.
I recommend to my hetero students that they go find some White or Latino people to fuck and impregnate or get pregnant by. It is harder to kill your children or grandchildren than it is someone else’s. (I did a summer work sojourn at Yankee Stadium and saw hundreds of White grandparents with their mixed grandchildren. There’s something there….)
We, as Black people have lost an equality war, that’s never going to change completely but we can be inceptive and become part of the Owners family, wrest control, and influence that way. Whitney Young Nancy Joan Weiss: 9780691047577: Amazon.com: Books encouraged during the Civil Rights negotiations that we not push so hard for legal/voting rights. He was in direct negotiations with the largest corporations and educational centers of America. His strategy was to slow the voting rights progression in favor of educational programs, venture capital funds, jobs, inclusion minimums at companies—-MLK and others thought human rights would mean more and shut him down. And we now see the quantitative and qualitative power that has and has not brought, we’re bluntly, still fighting for voter rights and don’t have any of the other benefits Young was pressing for.
Inception into White companies
(Which incidentally I saw on the TV Show Queen Sugar when Charley tries to create a sugar mill in the South and can’t run it and unite the sugar cane farmers, Black, to compete with the White sugar mill owners that has long standing. Season 2, she inveigles her way and her company into the larger White concern. I haven’t watched Season 3 yet for all the ensuing drama of the move.)
Edit:
Ok, I have since watched Season 3 and the challenge expands for her being a part owners, her plan to be allowed access and understanding of the White corporations machinations leads them to see that the ultimate goal is to buy up the sugar cane producing land and and convert it to a penitentiary.
Yes, fiction but what I would assert from this is that Charley represents the most Alpha and Elite of Black people—-rich, educated, conscious of racial equality and business fairness. But she often find herself tighten with, against, explaining all of this to her family members who are owners, to farmers who are being ground into dust by the White corporation (and never turn and attack them but often attack Charley). Enough Black people in this fictionalized show don’t understand money and business to band together and the White corporation is already occupying and acting leagues ahead of the Black parish in moving assets and profits from one business to not only create another but create one that ostensibly will use Black bodies as fuel for the enterprise.
The whole debacle ends in a form of limbo as infighting within the White family that owns the corporation stalls the prison go ahead and Charley is able to secure small victories in land and production at the sugar mill under her ownership but they’re all still intertwined, limited, broken off pieces of pieces. But Charley, the show, illustrates what we can or could do—-We can buy stocks and companies and pool with other like-minded—-not liked skinned folk always—-to success, because skin hue is not only divisive but too mass poor.
The problem is Black people and Latinos as a mass will watch and cheer the fiction and not take it as an instructive lesson to implement.
We keep trying to defeat when we should be working on infecting and consuming, as a virus, that’s how we’ll create economic parity and control.
The National Plan to Empower Black America: Dr. Claud Anderson: 9780966170221: Amazon.com: Books is someone I’ve been reading, purchased all of his books and even gave some as holiday gifts, as I explore and teach about development on a micro and macro level in Black (and Latino) communities.

No comments:

Post a Comment