Carter G. Woodson on the State of the Black Union
A confession: I skipped the state of the black union this year. It wasn’t a full-fledged boycott or a deliberate avoidance, I just had other things to do this weekend. Maybe my priorities are jacked. Or it’s part of a late-blooming rebellion against the litmus tests for black allegiance that I was once so concerned about passing (and administering.)
Or it could just be that Carter G. Woodson put my exact thoughts into print 76 years ago:
The race needs workers, not leaders. Such workers will solve the problems which race leaders talk about and raise money to enable them to talk more and more about. When you hear a man talking, then, always inquire as to what he is doing or what he has done for humanity. Talk and resolutions do not avail much. If they did, the Negro race would be in a paradise on Earth.
From Woodson’s 1933 classic Mis-Education of the Negro.
Daddy Rules
Many of our so-called “Black Leaders” have basically sold out to commercialistic interests. Even if you take a look at Tavis Smiley’s enterprises you can see that a certain amount of self-interest comes before any collective agenda to raise the excluded out of poverty and into mainstream opportunity and advancement. Nowadays, the individual is challenged to raise themselves up by their bootstraps to deal with the chains of economic oppression and that is the key. More people are looking to government for help with the basics more than ever before. It is apparent that government cannot solve all of our problems, nor make us feel any more secure when a minimal subsistence is doled out. When the private sector comes to understand that they must stop with their discriminatory practices of exclusion in banking & business participation, then and only then will markets fully open up to African-American entreprenuers. For too long, we have been shut out of major business & commerce and when we do try to compete the monopolistic forces move to shut the doors of opportunity. Basically, in America and throughout the commonwealth lands, there have been some sinister forces hidden within the capitalistic economic model that have worked overtime to ensure that only a select few would succeed and rise above the rest. Whether you call them the talented-tenth or the fortunate few, their power has its limits when it comes to exacting change in public policy and big business. What we have is still an old-boy network in practically every industry of World-Commerce and business that is controlled by the same families dating back to the Monarchs of Europe. Colonialism has held sway and probably will until God’s Kingdom comes and there is not much that peoples of African descent can do about it, especially when an African-American President will not press for reparations or more direct redistribution of the wealth into the hands of those whose forefathers labored for 12 generations without pay. It is no secret that many of the corporations that date back to slavery days accumulated their wealth on the backs of our people and as a result have been able to conglomerize and monopolize major industries and their subsidiary companies. Many are publicly owned while others remain private. Although, benevolent associations have helped to rid the country of poverty, enough has not been done to level the playing field in American towns and cities where African Americans mostly reside. With the influx of immigrants who get off the boats and go straight to their National Banks or collectively pool their resources to get ahead, while we continue to fight and steal from one another, it seems that our demise is inevitable. Unless, we somehow wake-up from our Cognac stupor and return to reading our bibles daily to understand that nobody is better than the other and true-Christians love without hypocrisy while helping their brothers and sisters in deed and truth, we will continue to suffer for following the satanic ways of the larger culture of Christendom and their selfish hedonistic practices of racism and discrimination.
Mar 14, 2009 @ 11:39 pm