TIME TO GO FOR THE MONEY!
Politics is not the answer by itself.
Neither is education the answer by itself. Combined they have helped some of us African Americans ascend up from poverty, but the masses remain essentially unchanged in the stratification of American economy.
That is the question. What can be done to open this American pod of plenty to the masses of our people?
Booker T. Washington wrestled with this question famously during our nadir, the post-reconstruction era, when he founded Tuskegee Institute, the National Business League and others. Lynching of blacks was very rampant during this time, as the law turned its back on black people and on its only sacred legal documents.
"The Wizard of Tuskegee," was, in life and in death, almost as famously, opposed by such public intellectuals as Dr. WEB DuBois. DuBois called for protest, racial assimilation, and for a "Talented Tenth," instead of the businesses, industrial education for the masses and accommodation to racial separateness in social and economic matters, practiced by Washington. Others like Howard University's Dr. Kelly Miller and Episcopalian priest, Rev. Alexander Crummell, of the American Negro Academy, were in the middle. In the end, Washington died in 1915, while nemesis DuBois lived into the 1960s.
Along the way, DuBois made a foray into the NAACP, following the failure of his Niagara Movement. It won out over Washington's more pragmatic economic and self-help agenda. So, here we are with the consequences of that singular integrationist pursuit!
By a process of elimination, it should now be clear that the middle pursuit for us is best, now. Being pragmatic is better than being idealistic, when it comes to the great bulk of our folk.
Economic self-help is paramount also. A man with a job has no time to riot, rob, steal, kill, waste! He has to maintain and to protect what he has!
Similarly, police tend to prey upon the black, poor, least educated, and most societally vulnerable, as a general rule. Strong economies sell to the world and excite envy not police enmity. Defeat the police by self-help.
We have secured political power and global social and cultural power, if not preeminence, to be blunt . Yet, "we need more" screams Baltimore, MD!
So, much that DuBois urged we now have, or are have become. Yet, Washington's unkept agenda ( which was also Marcus Garvey's and Elijah Muhammad's as well) cries out with Baltimore for consummation. In the end, even Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was pursuing an economic agenda in his final years, and while in Memphis, Tennessee especially. So where do we go from here? Only place for us to go is "For the money, for the money and for nothing but the money; never veering to the right or to the left!"
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
TIME TO GO FOR THE MONEY!
TIME TO GO FOR THE MONEY!
Politics is not the answer by itself.
Neither is education the answer by itself. Combined they have helped some of us African Americans ascend up from poverty, but the masses remain essentially unchanged in the stratification of American economy.
That is the question. What can be done to open this American pod of plenty to the masses of our people?
Booker T. Washington wrestled with this question famously during our nadir, the post-reconstruction era, when he founded Tuskegee Institute, the National Business League and others. Lynching of blacks was very rampant during this time, as the law turned its back on black people and on its only sacred legal documents.
"The Wizard of Tuskegee," was, in life and in death, almost as famously, opposed by such public intellectuals as Dr. WEB DuBois. DuBois called for protest, racial assimilation, and for a "Talented Tenth," instead of the businesses, industrial education for the masses and accommodation to racial separateness in social and economic matters, practiced by Washington. Others like Howard University's Dr. Kelly Miller and Episcopalian priest, Rev. Alexander Crummell, of the American Negro Academy, were in the middle. In the end, Washington died in 1915, while nemesis DuBois lived into the 1960s.
Along the way, DuBois made a foray into the NAACP, following the failure of his Niagara Movement. It won out over Washington's more pragmatic economic and self-help agenda. So, here we are with the consequences of that singular integrationist pursuit!
By a process of elimination, it should now be clear that the middle pursuit for us is best, now. Being pragmatic is better than being idealistic, when it comes to the great bulk of our folk.
Economic self-help is paramount also. A man with a job has no time to riot, rob, steal, kill, waste! He has to maintain and to protect what he has!
Similarly, police tend to prey upon the black, poor, least educated, and most societally vulnerable, as a general rule. Strong economies sell to the world and excite envy not police enmity. Defeat the police by self-help.
We have secured political power and global social and cultural power, if not preeminence, to be blunt . Yet, "we need more" screams Baltimore, MD!
So, much that DuBois urged we now have, or are have become. Yet, Washington's unkept agenda ( which was also Marcus Garvey's and Elijah Muhammad's as well) cries out with Baltimore for consummation. In the end, even Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was pursuing an economic agenda in his final years, and while in Memphis, Tennessee especially. So where do we go from here? Only place for us to go is "For the money, for the money and for nothing but the money; never veering to the right or to the left!"