Though the state of black entrepreneurship has progressed significantly in the past decade, successful entrepreneurs with businesses in urban environments lock their doors at the end of the day and proudly drive to their suburban homes located miles away. Thus, revitalization fails as monies are rarely ever filtered back into inner city residential districts. There have been some instances where initiatives were put into place to make inner cities more conducive for inciting black businesses -- creating jobs in real estate, health, finance, and education -- simultaneously building wealth and affluence.
Unfortunately, jealousy, envy and fear are caveats that perpetuate the exhibition of intraracial separation among the black population; amongst the poor and the affluent; amongst the scholarly and the unintelligent, the law-abiding and the delinquents. Unlike immigrants from Hispanic, Dominican, Jamaican and Asian backgrounds, we fail to take advantage of the opportunities presented to us and instead linger diligently with outstretched hands, anxiously waiting on the divine showering of reparation checks accompanied by our just due of 40 acres and a mule.
Even prior to the Civil Rights Movement, highly esteemed educators like Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) and W.E.B. Du Bois pointed out the lack of support and ambition among the African-American collective -- the same variables that contribute to the deficiency of success in our community today. Booker T. Washington was an advocate for philosophies fundamentally centered on racial solidarity -- developing and depending on our own skills and resources to build communities, housing developments and businesses. He believed that becoming educated in the industrial arts and farming while cultivating virtues of patience, enterprise and thrift would prove to be more fruitful than resistance. The ultimate objective in this notion was to win the respect of whites, which would eventually lead to African Americans acceptance and integration into a higher realm of society.
W.E.B. Du Bois on the other hand, argued that Washington's strategy would serve only to perpetuate white oppression and resistance. He advocated for political action and a civil rights agenda. In addition, he argued that social change could be accomplished by developing a cadre of college-educated blacks he called "the Talented Tenth." Considering their debate in today's circumstances, Du Bois' position would mean that professional athletes, doctors, lawyers, entertainers and politicians who make millions of dollars are responsible for reaching back and helping others (blue collar workers, the poverty stricken and homeless) reach a certain level of achievement.
While Washington's argument proposes that living and depending on the affluence of those who attained success indeed cripples low-income blacks, rather than encouraging them to prosper through their own labor. However, would placing the responsibility of overcoming as a people onto those who have "arrived" add unnecessary pressure? Most of us stand somewhere in the middle of the aforementioned points, praying for solutions, and pondering ideas that can lead us toward prosperity.
In respect to black intellectualism, we have battled issues with elitism since the nineteenth century. However, today's "talented tenth" (initially intended to serve as mitigation between underprivileged blacks and white society) seem more socially estranged from disadvantaged blacks than their predecessors were. Practicing Du Bois's theories; building aristocracy, intellectualism and affluence within our own race may have potentially hurt us and prevented our people from learning and adapting to the ways of a mainstream society.
Even today, elitist attitudes and supreme ideologies are held by affluent blacks who have graduated from Ivy League schools; looking down upon graduates of "ordinary" state colleges and universities. Instead of encouraging and assisting in enlightening our underprivileged brothers and sisters, the upper echelons tend to neglect the masses. While other ethnicities carry out the practice of uplifting their communities as a whole; educating, supporting and funding their deprived, blacks are getting further and further behind in the race to prosperity.
Trudging beyond the stereotypes, obstacles and conspiracies that bind us is the key to triumphing, even in regards to intraracial and intellectual discrimination. The Hip Hop movement is potentially one of the greatest tools we have as a tool to reach urban populations and demographics. Potentially, messages of returning to consciousness, supporting education, promoting legal entrepreneurism, and combating health care disparities, could all be dispersed through this platform.
Contrarily, lackluster content glamorizing spending money on cars, jewelry, clothes and alcohol that the average person cannot afford, perpetuating sexual deviance and anti-intellectualism with poor grammar usage, remains popular among our youth. Why have Hip Hop artists failed to use their mainstream media platforms to deliver strong messages of self-determination, rather than perpetuating gang life, drug dealing, profanity and incarceration? Though part of the "talented tenth" in our community, the lack of initiative and efforts made by many successful music moguls and producers who have made it through the trenches remains disappointing.
If we are to win this race, a new generation of leaders must emerge to create solutions that will eradicate social and economic disparities. Hip Hop artists need to stand up and take advantage of their platform and become the activists that God called them to be. Somehow, the passing of the collective unconscious baton failed to be exchanged in a fashion that would position us to cross the finish line as victors. Elders of the Civil Rights era blame the youth for the extinguishing of our torch; while elongated fingers of today's youth point back to those who appear to have failed to properly educate, inform and equip them with the ceremonious ignition to carry out the fight. Nonetheless, it is time we learn that America owes us nothing, not even a pair of track shoes to run the course. However, we owe it to ourselves to run harder, faster -- by any means necessary. Remember, that which I resist, persists; that which I release, releases me.
This is why it's good to travel. I don't think that ideal of giving back to the community and living in the community fits enough situations to bring it up really. Don't it depend on where you are, and what you are calling your community. On the East coast many so call Black communities are really White owned, just rented out or leased to Blacks. How do you think (especially the west coast) get an Asian, Ma and Pop store on your corner if the buildings are Black owned? Or, masses of Hispanics moving in and taking the community over, if it is Black owned?
No, you cannot own your home there only pay them rent forever. Integration, busing and the like has to do with not enough Blacks living in the suburbs and receiving the benefits there of. We owe it for the efforts made, to move out there. Would you have your home in the Black community of south Seattle, WA. You would have what they have now, a beautiful panted home next to an old unpainted deteriorating home. The next thing you know they'll be saying you should paint others house as well. I don't think that ideal of giving back to the and living in the community fits enough situations to bring up really. Another, make the 'n' wrong.
He probably couldn't do it himself, so he had to have some white people recommend it, and they probably got paid to "Manage It." While in the so called community, if the kids don't have school lunch money, they temporally get a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and then nothing.
So now, these schools should have a found for kids lunch. How can you know which ones qualify, well, if they reach the sandwich level the fund kicks in automatically. Then only the school knows how it works, and not likely that one who can afford it might plan to get their kid free lunch.