Buyin Black!!! Feeeeeeeelin it...

Rosa Parks, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, & Martin Luther the King. Thank you. You did not persevere in vain. Because of you, your children’s children can seize & claim their right to life, liberty & happiness – something that the children of your era were denied. But, suffice it to say, most things haven’t changed. Your voices rang loud & clear, & our right to be treated equally in the eyes of the law was acknowledged – but even so we are still treading water. While fighting for these rights was significant, & while desegregation made a large & pivotal statement, the root of our problem has yet to be sorted out – while our rights suggest that we are all equals, in actuality, equality has yet to be seen in the eyes of the world, of our neighbors, & even our own.

Maybe….maybe the answer is, “Who cares?!” I believe the continuous fight for protection & equal treatment under the law was & still is important. But I believe that desegregation may have hurt us more than it helped. While the fundamental principle behind desegregation makes sense – we should all strive to live in harmonious integrated toleration bliss, the practice did not. Desegregation, in my eyes, meant to have what the white people had, to do what the white people did - to equal white people. The message should have been to do US. Still warranting respect, protection, & equal access to resources as we needed them, but striving to become the best people we could be in our own regards, & not in comparison to others. Our resilience would have spoken for itself; our equality would’ve been apparent. We didn’t need to shop at white stores; we didn’t need to go to white schools; we didn’t need to move into white neighborhoods…what we needed was to shop at stores that were just as viable, we needed to go to schools that were just as cared for & invested in, we needed to live in neighborhoods that were just as safe. Unlike the numerous other groups of people who have struggled in this country, found their own ways for their people & communities to fortify themselves & stand apart from the rest (Chinatown, or Little Italy for example), black folks have just wanted what the white people have, & for them to give it to us. Look, white people aren’t gonna give us sh**. We want to be equal? Then we need to take care of our own & invest in our own survival & make them see just how equal we are.

I recently read this article about a black couple that has committed to only buying black for the next year - only frequenting black owned grocery stores, gas stations, banks, etc. That is the ticket people. Black communities used to be all-encompassing & wealth generators. But when we began to fight for desegregation all those decades ago in order to frequent white establishments - trying to be equal to whites - we initiated our own downfall. While other minority groups were beginning to prosper, generating & circulating their money throughout their own communities, & making sure their children were learning what it took to change their worlds for the better – not relying on white people to share it with them – we were waiting for the world to change around us. They fought from within while we fought without.

Rectifying our communities won’t be a battle easily won. First of all, there aren’t that many black businesses in existence. Secondly, for some reason, there is an overwhelming preference to shop at white establishments. But I’ve been preaching for years that this is precisely what we need to start doing in order to rectify our black communities. But really, it’s deeper than regenerating our wealth. Lets show our kids that we love & support one another. Give our children reasons to be proud, & to strive towards success, wanting to become competitive business owners in their own communities, teachers, doctors or lawyers in their own communities, leaders in their communities. We need to breed investment & pride. This is the only route to equality, but in the end, if we’re makin it rain & taking care of home, our successes will demand nothing but the utmost respect…& if we become truly successful & happy, who cares if the rest perceive us as equal or not?