Tuesday, March 11, 2014

MONETARY ANGST

Larry Delano Coleman shared a link via iOS. 37 minutes ago . Monetary angst There is an angst running through some African Americans about money, whether it is about their: getting it, spending it, saving it, sharing it, or investing it. "Angst" meaning an internal unease or disquietude that is, at once: both spiritual and palpable among them. Perhaps that is why they spend it as soon as they get it, on stuff they do not need, with persons they do not know, for reasons they do not understand, ritualistically, as conditioned, by social programming. Poverty is not the impetus for this. Poor people have no real money to spend. Professional athletes, movie stars, entertainers, even some business owners, and various professional classes engage in this, or, are afflicted by monetary angst. With more economic access and greater educational opportunities, following the 1960s civil rights victories, came this monetary angst. It opened the way to spend more! Diet changed. Housing changed. Wardrobe changed. Vehicles changed. Vacations changed. Values changed. Habits changed. The need to show 'them' that we could afford to do, or to buy, such and such, was a part of that monetary angst. Of course, the best way to show 'them,' was to spend or to invest one's hard-earned cash with 'them!' Aaah, doesn't that feel good! Socio-political justice was the primary focus of "The Movement," of the 1960s and 1970s, to the pointed exclusion of all things smacking of economic or monetary justice. Integration brought about the disintegration of the black business monopolies created and enforced by 'Jim Crow' and legal segregation. All around them, African Americans watched others being paid, in the tens of millions and the billions, while they did nothing but observe, dumbly. Their tax dollars went to enrich these others, too, from government and private concerns. But, historic underrepresentation in Congress and in the Courts and in the Presidency, left them lagging behind. During the first term of President Obama's administration, black farmers got paid a second time, some $1.2 billion dollars, joining those fortunate few, who had earlier been paid a like sum years earlier, prior to President Obama's election. Black farmers had no monetary angst, thanks to their bold, wise, and courageous leadership and to their organization, politics, publicity, mobility, demonstrations and tenacity. Other black economic interests would do well to copy the black farmers' economic example. Black authors, poets, and musicians could help. Heretofore,they wrote, sung, played or performed about socio-political issues and disparities, primarily, to the exclusion of monetary or economic policy's impact or lack of impact on black people in particular. Their cumulative scholarly and creative reticence was additional evidence of monetary angst. Here or there, a half-hearted huzzah was heard in favor of reparations. But, even it lacked conviction as "they ain't gonna" give us no reparations was the implicit conviction and tacit belief of most African Americans. "They" did not give freedom from slavery to our forefathers, either! Our ancestors took their own freedom! They self-liberated to Canada; lectured and preached for freedom from the platform and the pulpit; organized the Underground Railroad; fought in the Union Army and Navy; supplied essential contraband-enabled services by fleeing the plantations and helping the Union Army's advance in innumerable ways. The same can and must be done now by everyone, somehow, someway, somewhere. Activity dispels angst, any kind of angst. So, "Let us move!"