Black people, you cannot compete if you don’t have the resources! How can you? Compete with what? As long as the current system of handing out assistance from the bottom up is the process, the black community will continue to be locked in as a permanent consumer class, waiting for the next opportunity to consume.
The help needs to come to and through the black business community. However, if you did that, many of the private sector majority businesses that benefit from our consumption, yes the majority businesses we would compete against, would lose customers to the new black businesses we would grow and create. This is our paradox.
We would like to rid our community of black unemployment, crime, teenage pregnancy, childhood poverty, high school drop outs, the inability to get a loan, political apathy and lack of affordable housing, which are all just symptoms of the real life Monopoly problem.
Yes! The real life Monopoly problem is our black businesses have a critical lack of resources and our black business leadership has not been fighting for you.
The question is and has been, “What do you do with, and how do you control 35 million black people who you no longer need?” This has been America’s dilemma.
In a capitalist society, you must have a group of people whose total purpose is to consume. You must teach, condition and position this group to grow into a mindset that causes them to spend every dime they make, while in the process you control the wealth created from the consumption of the products and services they live to consume. Use your media to teach them that individualism, materialism, greed and violence are the way you achieved your success. They will foolishly try to duplicate what you have done, of course, using all the wrong methods.
The answer is in our black business community. Black business should be the largest employer of black people. However, without the resources it will never happen. The money is being put into social service programs and in city, county and state programs that do very little to help black business to develop to a point where change can come.
The Wisconsin Black Chamber of Commerce stands ready to take leadership on this change.
Ruben Hopkins is president of the Wisconsin Black Chamber of Commerce.
