We're are not going anywhere I find your heartlessness toward low income Blacks a DISGRACE!

PERIOD!

Town, we have another “speshul” one here.

I recall, several years ago, one Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, of all people, saying something very similar. Basically, he called Black Detroiters to task for not having the incentive and initiative to engage local government for various opportunities. He mentioned how Asian groups and Arab groups and Jewish groups were organized, mobilized, and ready for their piece of the business pie. But that Black business was scarce, disengaged and disconnected from sources of opportunity.

I always say that if you don't do something with that you have, somebody else will. In other words, if we don't provide dry cleaning services then Korean Americans will. If we don't provide convenience store services, then Arab Americans will. If we don't provide banking–legitimate, not check cashing–services, then Whites Americans will. If we don't provide janitorial and custodial services, then Latino Americans will. All of these small-scale services are merely foundational. It's a way of cornering a small market so that we can capitalize on larger ones that will sustain us even more. But we didn't. So someone else did.

Case in point:

In a local city where I reside, the population is comprised of 47 percent of Black/AA citizens, YET the city only does business with 1.6 percent of minority owned businesses. Almost half of the taxpayer money is coming out of black folks pockets, yet they see hardly any business moving back towards Black business owners…….and honestly if a newspaper had not published the story, I can guarantee most citizens would have never known…..and many still don't know and aren't concerned.

A local Black journalist wrote about the deafening silence the local chapters of groups like the NAACP had…..but yet these same groups of people will run to a newspaper in a moment's notice and say the President has not addressed “Black issues.” Where are our local and state Black representatives speaking out about the inequalities and so forth? Oh, I forgot, it's easier to blame/admonish. and demand from someone else while you wait and see….uh huh.

Who knows more about our “local issues” than US…..it is LOCALLY where the change truly begins and we all need to remember that.

So the questions is, when was the last time yu visited City Hall, a city council meeting, a school board meeting, wrote your mayor, requested attention to areas your community was lacking, asked for funds to be re-directed to needed areas and DEMANDED jobs and other services be given to those in your community.

I never expected any politician, not even President Obama, to know all that is going on in my corner of the world, to know the unemployment figures in my city, district, or around my block. What I do know is that information can and will be available if I request it and we ALL need to start researching, requesting and HOLD ALL OFFICIALS ACCOUNTABLE, especially those in our LOCAL communities…….WE must build the grassroots movement and continue to make it better from the bottom on up.

Living and doing business in the suburbs, has availed me to a phenomenon that's been a well-kept and well-guarded secret: White and wannabe-White suburbanites are very often just as down-on-their-luck as urban Black and Brown folks. White folks are losing jobs, losing homes and losing access to health care. They're not showing up in bankruptcy court because that's not their style. Instead, they're dealing with the consumer debt relief scammers so that they don't have to sit next to our Black asses in the court house. In any event, though, they're going broke the same way we are; they're moving in with parents the same way we are; they're shopping at Wal-Mart just like we are.

So when the President talks about the “rising tide”, he's onto something that many in communities of color don't often see. But he can't stop there. He–and all of our Black and Brown elected leaders–would serve us well to acknowledge that an economy tilted in favor of Whites will never have a firm foundation, and it will always topple. Now is the time to expose corruption and greed in the real estate industry. Now is the time to make health care affordable for all, rather than a hot commodity for those with “good credit”. And now's the time to make high quality public education available to any Black or Brown child and parent who wants it.

When the nation sees that a President actually cares for and about Black and Brown people on a meaningful level, then and only then will all boats be lifted.

The US is moving to a post-industrial, information age economy. This disproportionally hurts AAs, since, for example, we have traditioanlly relied more on jobs involving low-skilled labor.

To compete in the new economy, we must improve graduation rates at the high school and collegiate level. But we all know the problems we are having in education. This is a huge stumbling block.

One problem I see is this: in the black community, we have a problem with leadership and “followship” at the low-income levels. Black professionals do the talking for them.

There is a need for grass-roots activism among the black poor, where they can speak for themselves, help set the agenda, and do things to address their issues. But low income black folks tend to be the least educated, the least organized, and more significantly, the most stressed and troubled of all social groups in the country.

So there's a conundrum there. We need change from the bottom-up, but all the decsions are being made in a top-down fashion. I don't have the answer to this problem.

In such a complex world, it is necessary to develop more mental agility and a culture of decisionmaking where it is second nature to consider “the common good,” and to automatically include thinking about the impact of any decision on “race,” “class,” “gender,” and “environment” (to begin with). And this is especially important in any decisions that concern the economy.

I research the learning skills that people need to develop in order to make change in their communities. One of the skills that Chicano cultural theorist Chela Sandoval suggests is the capacity for differential movement. What she means is that, if you want to generate effective opposition to the dominant ordering of late captial, then you have to develop the ability to sort of shift mental gears through systems of meaning. You have to have a mental mobility to juggle more than one ball in the air, more than just money as the bottom line.

I have found that it takes practice to do this. One of the reasons I like JJP so much is that you (don't yet feel we, but maybe someday) all practice that kind of differential mental movement together. And as I read and think with you, I feel like I am really expanding how I think. And I know I am learning because the “muscles in my brain” really hurt sometimes from the exercise of trying to hold in all the different points of view here on this blog!

What goes on in Black Neighborhoods as far as Drop out of high school. Have kids you can't afford. Call each other nigga. Rob a liquor store. Go to jail. Get out and go back to to selling drugs. as that idiot Guns 3000 said.

But you know something fam. Growing up in Bklyn NY I really thought the same thing. I will say this it pays to have experiences and see outside of your community. Because when my job relocated to Delaware in 1997….Guns 3000 want to read blacks…HUH

You DUMB MOTHERFUCKER I saw the same thing here in New Castle, and Kent Counties Drop out of high school. Have kids you can't afford. Rob a liquor store. Go to jail. Get out and go back to to selling drugs. And guess what THEY'RE ALL WHITE!!!!

So stupid statement saying that Blacks have their hands out. Yes some of us do have them so does POOR WHITE TRASH, and ILLEGAL ALIENS and your fucking point is??????. Please take your sac-religious ass to a site where your racist, or rather (I HATE THAT I WAS BORN BLACK) stupid comments can be valued.

Because truth be told MOST BLACK MEN ARE NOT LOCKED UP, SELL DRUGS, OR HS DROPOUTS. We know the white based media likes to report that. But thank God for Ebony magazine who actually post the top 300 young Black professionals in America and that's just the tip of the iceberg. There are so many more that they can't put in the magazine piece. WE HAVE MANY SUCCESSES….What's your claim to fame?????? HUH?

Since you're such a hateful critique. Why don't join the many of us that are trying to steer young Black men in the right direction so they will NOT become a statistic. Unless like I said your an Uncle Tom, or just straight up some WHITE troll who thinks he knows about us.

PUT THE FUCK UP, OR SHUT THE FUCK UP!

Now back to our regularly scheduled program…..I digress

And what exactly is a “welfare mentality”? Do whites on welfare have a “welfare mentality”?

Clearly, guns300o, you are talking out of your ass. What do you really know about “blacks in America”? Do some research. It's not our job to enlighten you.

**Taps Plantsmantx on the shoulder**

2 Words—-White Privilege! lol

“And yes it is ok if you organize but as you go organizing don't burn down my neighborhood and steal my TV.”

Well, thanks for giving your permission, LOL. That's funny. With (what you think) is your birthright of hegemony steadily slipping away, you still think you have the authority to actually give permission.