Posted by Hey, my business people. In today’s Lessons for Business and Motivation:
To Improve Our Community, Improve YOU First
From your point of view, what are the things holding our community back? Is it reparations? Indeed we have lost quite a bit of wealth in that respect. Is it the loss of property due to racism and related violent acts of ethnic cleansing in history? Is it the lack of others respecting our history? Is it our own understanding of our history? Is it related to poor public policy?
For several decades, we have grappled with these problems, but to what end? Have we advanced any? Because this world loves money and is run on it, we have to look at the bottom line to determine if we’re moving ahead or not. And based on all available stats, our median incomes and net worth is at the bottom of society. No matter what our leaders have done, or what we think they’ve done, everything we’ve tried up till now has failed us.
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In my opinion, we need to totally rethink our strategy for improving our community and tackling our challenges. We have overwhelmed ourselves with too many complex battlefronts, from reparations to black history appreciation and so called civil rights. Over 100 years ago, WEB Dubois said the biggest challenge of the last century was the color line. It sounded noble years ago, but in reality, that was too abstract and vague to be practical. We went from the 1900 to 1920 time period, where we had thriving Black Wall Street communities all over the country, to a dark period from 1921 to 2020 where we no longer have that base of wealth.
So WEB Dubois’ vision, with all due respect, was just academic talk. The true challenge for our community is not the color line, but the net worth ceiling. If you’ve watched my videos, you’ve heard me say this before: In a world that loves money more than it loves people, and that same world hates us more than any other people, we have no voice. We are invisible to them because our median incomes are trash. Our net worth since 1921 has been almost 0.
That is unacceptable.
We can’t change racism overnight, so let’s set it aside and put it on a shelf to get back to later. We ain’t getting reparations any time soon because our lack of money means they don’t care. The Japanese Americans who were forced into internment camps in WW2 got reparations because of their homeland, Japan, which is wealthy. The world loves that wealth, so they eventually responded. So let’s also put reparations off to the side for now. We’ll come back to it, but we don’t have the basics in place yet. Many of us believe in pushing Critical Race Theory because we want zaddy to appreciate our true history and confront their sins.
Again, as much as teaching true black history is indeed important, why would a group that loves money more than us care about our history? And in fact, why do we even care if another group appreciates our history? That comes from a position of weakness. If we want to come from a position of strength, we have to improve us. Trying to force someone to love us is soooo weak, my people.
Why am I saying all this? Where am I coming from? Please be sure to watch my previous videos on how each of us can do better. In short, our so called civil rights strategy for this century cannot be focus on changing other people’s minds. We no longer have time to wait for zaddy to come save us with public money the way we have up till now. No time for endless marches and protests that lead to no improvements.
YOU right there, watching this video, you are the civil rights march. YOU are our reparations. You don’t need big loans from banks that redline us anyway. What YOU do need is to stop picking struggle majors and trades in school. As I said before, if each of us can get into STEM careers as soon as possible, we can propel ourselves forward in as little as 2 years, and even less for those of us with more ambition. With median incomes of black men around $42k, and black women around $34k a year, we can increase each by $10k a year within 18 to 24 months.
But our window of opportunity is slipping away if you’ve been paying attention to the real economic news, not the watered down news you see on cable news. This window of opportunity I speak of is tied to US immigration policy. STEM careers are in high demand, so much so that your favorite president Biden has been trying to lift worker visa quotas to allow more foreigners with STEM skills and experience to come here. Those quotas, therefore, are your window of opportunity since you are here already and are full citizens. There are some major companies right now pouring money into HBCUs to help us get into STEM careers and incubate small tech businesses. What are you waiting for?
Going back to the worker visa quotas, the top beneficiaries of the easing of quotas are from China and India. This is not to knock either group as they are simply responding to opportunities the way they should. We have to do the same thing. Just look at how China and India came up. Both countries were devastated by western colonialism going all the way back to the mid 1800s. Even in the early 1950s, both were very poor and struggling. But education was still a key value for both, and the West rebuilt them, not because they loved them, but because they loved the cheap but educated labor force they could exploit. Again, this world loves money more than they love people.
IBM was in India all the way back in 1950. Even Japan and Germany were devastated after the big war of the 1940s, but they both had people who prized education. So when you look at China, India, Germany and Japan, these are 4 nations with educated societies that are now economic powerhouses, with China and India leading the way in STEM careers and businesses.
Since the 1950s, the rest is history. Interestingly, even South Korea was poor in the 1950s but became a financial powerhouse, in part, due to the transfer of wealth from black women hair and beauty businesses in the 1960s. I did a controversial video about that last year, and got a few angry comments from others outside our community, but I have receipts on the history. I only bring this up because each of us has to become our own civil right leader, improving our community one person at a time. We can’t waste time on big battles that are too complex to fix our immediate income and wealth problems.
Stop picking struggle majors We have to start stigmatizing people who choose majors they can’t afford to sustain. We don’t need archaeologists, sociologists, psychologies, criminal justice warriors, etc. These are generally struggle majors. How many hair and nail businesses do we need? Every major and trade we’ve chosen up till now has failed our community. We’re not rich enough to pick creative writing as a masters degree concentration. Where they do that at? If you’re born a millionaire, then by all means, pick all the struggle majors you want. But the vast majority of our people have the lowest median incomes and almost no net worth. Some of y’all are lying to yourselves when you flex like a millionaire baller. Stop that. Our challenge for this century is for each of us to improve our jobs and small businesses so that we focus on STEM products and services. The world is going digital fast, and we need to stay ahead of that curve to capitalize.
What are you waiting for? If you need help making the transition, let’s setup a video chat. Of course, it can’t be free because any experienced based knowledge that helps you get to a better career or business focus will be valuable to you. But for those who just can’t afford anything, I might be tempted to do a free livestream if enough of you express interest. But either way, let’s set aside all the other problems facing our community and focus on individual improvement in how we choose careers, majors and businesses. Until the next video, take care brothas and sistas.
Please like share and subscribe to keep this channel growing and to help us become number one in median incomes
Until the next video, brothas and sistas, take care.
This is the full “You Can Do Better Playlist” of all our related videos:
AT&T Dream in Black: Return of Rising Future Makers (att.com)
https://about.att.com/story/2022/dream-in-black-return-of-rising-future-makers.html
https://philanthropynewsdigest.org/news/bloomberg-philanthropies-launches-black-wealth-data-center
How to Invest in Black-Owned Stocks and Other Investments – NerdWallet
https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/investing/invest-racial-justice-2
https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/23/us/black-investors-earn-your-leisure-economy-reaj
Prosper Africa: Increasing Trade and Investment in the U.S. and Africa
https://www.prosperafrica.gov/
https://hbcumoney.com/tag/hbcus/
Western colonialism – The Opium Wars | Britannica
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Western-colonialism/The-Opium-Wars
Germany and Japan: A Comeback Story – The Globalist
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