BLACK INTROSPECTION NEEDED:

NEW YORK (AP) — A black actor on the HBO dra­ma series “Treme” said Friday he was stopped by police because of his race while shop­ping at Macy’s — the third dis­crim­i­na­tion alle­ga­tion made this week by a black shop­per against a depart­ment store. Robert Brown, who sued Macy’s in state Supreme Court in Manhattan, said in his law­suit he was detained by police at the flag­ship Herald Square store on June 8 after employ­ees con­tact­ed author­i­ties about pos­si­ble cred­it card fraud.http://​www​.sfgate​.com/​e​n​t​e​r​t​a​i​n​m​e​n​t​/​t​e​l​e​v​i​s​i​o​n​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​B​l​a​c​k​-​a​c​t​o​r​-​N​Y​C​-​M​a​c​y​-​s​-​s​t​o​p​p​e​d​-​m​e​-​b​e​c​a​u​s​e​-​o​f​-​r​a​c​e​-​4​9​2​6​6​1​4​.​php

Two black Barneys New York cus­tomers, Trayon Christian and Kayla Phillips, said this week they were detained by police after mak­ing expen­sive pur­chas­es. Christian sued Barneys, say­ing he was accused of fraud after using his deb­it card to buy a $349 Ferragamo belt in April. Barneys said Thursday it had retained a civ­il rights expert to help review its pro­ce­dures. Sharpton vowed to put shop­ping at Barneys “on hold” if the retail­er fails to respond ade­quate­ly to the alle­ga­tions.http://​www​.nhreg​is​ter​.com/​a​f​r​i​c​a​n​-​a​m​e​r​i​c​a​n​s​/​2​0​1​3​1​0​2​6​/​s​h​a​r​p​t​o​n​-​t​h​r​e​a​t​e​n​s​-​b​a​r​n​e​y​s​-​s​t​o​r​e​-​b​o​y​c​o​t​t​-​o​v​e​r​-​a​l​l​e​g​e​d​-​p​r​o​f​i​l​ing.

The New York Police Department, Barneys New York and Macy’s are all com­ing under fire, with law­suits already filed or pend­ing by the shop­pers who say they were detained by author­i­ties after try­ing to make per­fect­ly legal pur­chas­es. “It’s stun­ning and rep­re­hen­si­ble that black peo­ple should have to fear arrest in order to go out shop­ping,” said Donna Lieberman, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the New York Civil Liberties Union.http://​www​.msnbc​.com/​h​a​r​d​b​a​l​l​/​s​h​o​p​-​a​n​d​-​f​r​i​s​k​-​i​n​c​i​d​e​n​t​s​-​r​e​p​r​e​h​e​n​s​i​ble.

Aren’t these the same issue which were front and cen­ter 50 years ago which led to the march on Washington? Sure there is a black fam­i­ly in the White House. Yes blacks may now use the same ele­va­tors, eat at the same restau­rants , sit at the front of the bus, and it’s okay to look direct­ly into the face of a white man, it’s even okay for the broth­ers to have their tro­phy white woman with­out wor­ry­ing too much about get­ting lynched. So what hap­pened to black Americans, why are we still guilty until proven inno­cent by virtue of our skin color?

I know I will get skew­ered, but a $349 Ferragamo belt. Would these shop­pers walk into a black-owned busi­ness and make a sim­i­lar pur­chase? Some will argue that is com­plete­ly irrel­e­vant to what hap­pened to these shop­pers. Maybe, maybe not. You see, I believe there is a deep­er prob­lem here . Let’s for a moment allow our­selves to dream a hypo­thet­i­cal dream, may we?

It’s the 60’s, our peo­ple are fac­ing an uphill bat­tle, racial inequal­i­ty, sit-ins at lunch coun­ters, free­dom rides, Vietnam ‚Bull O’Connor’s , Bull O’Connor’s thugs and dogs, water-hoses, lynch­ings , Klu-klux-‘klan, King shot, Kennedy shot, Malcolm shot, Kennedy shot. Medgar shot, chaos .!!!! Civil Rights Act signed by Lyndon Johnson. Johnson decides not to run for Office , went back to Texas. Shouldn’t all of that cause blacks to come togeth­er? Shouldn’t blacks take a page from the Europeans who fled Hitler and seri­ous­ly band togeth­er start­ing their own Banks, Restaurants , Social Clubs, Department Stores? Don’t tell me blacks had no mon­ey many have done great things with less than what black America had.

By the year 2015, African-Americans will be spend­ing $1.1 tril­lion a year on prod­ucts and ser­vices. Currently, the Black pop­u­la­tion in the U.S. has a buy­ing pow­er of near­ly $1 tril­lion – a fig­ure larg­er than the gross domes­tic prod­uct of most coun­tries in the world. The num­ber of African-American house­holds earn­ing $75,000 or more has grown by 63.9 per­cent in the last decade, a rate greater than that of the over­all pop­u­la­tion.http://​www​.triceed​ney​wire​.com/​i​n​d​e​x​.​p​h​p​?​o​p​t​i​o​n​=​c​o​m​_​c​o​n​t​e​n​t​&​v​i​e​w​=​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​&​i​d​=​1​0​1​8​:​n​n​p​a​-​n​i​e​l​s​e​n​-​r​e​l​e​a​s​e​-​b​l​a​c​k​-​c​o​n​s​u​m​e​r​-​r​e​p​o​r​t​-​a​s​-​n​e​w​-​e​m​p​o​w​e​r​m​e​n​t​-​t​o​ol-

The truth is, black America refus­es to take charge of its own des­tiny. Even when we earn sig­nif­i­cant sums of mon­ey we have not demon­strat­ed the matu­ri­ty and the judi­cious stew­ard­ship nec­es­sary to keep any of what we earn. In fact we have shown that we are a craven peo­ple dri­ven by com­mer­cial lust. It seem we are uncom­fort­able hold­ing wealth. There have been seri­ous ques­tions asked about this sub­ject, I am yet to see a sci­en­tif­ic study which explains this phe­nom­e­non. Some of you will quick­ly point to Oprah Winfrey Sean(JZ) Carter and a few oth­ers as proof that my state­ment lacks mer­it. Let’s see how far you get pay­ing your bills on their wealth. They are the excep­tion not the norm. Someone pur­chas­ing a belt for $349 Ferragamo may not seem like con­trib­u­tor to the prob­lem. To me it goes to the heart of the prob­lem. The peo­ple who detained that shop­per felt cor­rect­ly or incor­rect­ly that per­son was not wealthy enough to make that pur­chase. That assump­tion may have been race-trig­gered, lets assume it was. If it was as a con­se­quence of race, then it was rep­re­hen­si­ble. Let’s make all the noise we can muster about the evils of that assump­tion. Then let us look at ourselves.

How much wealth does the belt-buy­er have to have made that buy? What a seri­ous eval­u­a­tion of what I pro­posed reveals, is that whether we com­plain from now into per­pe­tu­ity or not, the issue remains the same. The two issues are inter­con­nect­ed, because we have no wealth we get dis­re­spect­ed and pro­filed. Ask your­selves this, would a young Jewish or Asian per­son have been pro­filed in the same way? They are not white right? So maybe there was more to the assump­tion than just eth­nic­i­ty. Could it be that there some log­ic that gen­er­al­ly young black peo­ple do not have that kind of clean dis­pos­able income to be so indulgent?

Maybe Blacks need to start com­ing togeth­er to start busi­ness­es. We should show less incli­na­tion to pur­chase the garbage every­one cre­ates. Maybe blacks need to start sup­port­ing black busi­ness­es and stop show­ing hatred for oth­ers who own and oper­ate busi­ness­es. Maybe blacks need to stop try­ing to buy accep­tance with their hard earned mon­ey. Sure they smile at you before they take your mon­ey, then they talk about you as soon as you leave. There is no real pow­er if it has no eco­nom­ic back­ing. That is the rea­son we get treat­ed the way we are treat­ed . We do not keep wealth, we are mere­ly a con­duit for mon­ey, a well lubri­cat­ed conduit.

There are no short­age of sto­ries depict­ing the plight of black NBA ‚NFL, Boxers and Rap stars who after fin­ish­ing their careers are flat broke. In one instance an ath­lete made as much as a quar­ter of a bil­lion dol­lars over the course of a decade long career. Why should any­one feel sym­pa­thy for these peo­ple who go out and buy expen­sive cars, man­sions, jew­el­er, and oth­er mate­r­i­al things way in excess of what they need. Some throw away tens of thou­sands of dol­lars in strip clubs in a sin­gle night. At some point we sim­ply have to stop say­ing that peo­ple who high­light this idio­cy are haters. It is not hat­ing, if some­one wants you to keep your money.

I have heard all the excus­es . ” Oh they take a lot of tax from them” Oh they nev­er had mon­ey so they don’t know how to han­dle mon­ey, they trust­ed the wrong peo­ple” . These are noth­ing but excus­es . Lets call stu­pid and reck­less what they are. When you are blessed with that kind of wealth you have a duty to be a good stew­ard of it . You have duty to set up edu­ca­tion funds and oth­er invest­ments for your chil­dren. You have a duty to take care of your tax oblig­a­tions. And you have a duty to make sure that you put your mon­ey in a place where you can live off the mon­ey that your mon­ey make for you.

We can­not con­tin­ue to have the pur­chas­ing pow­er of a large indus­tri­al­ized nation , yet invis­i­ble as a force to be reck­oned with . We must stop fill­ing America’s pris­ons, we must guard our right to vote, we must stop hav­ing chil­dren and refuse to take care of them. We must band togeth­er and show we are nobody’s neg­a­tive car­i­ca­ture, or sad­ly we face extinc­tion. These are the issues which should be dis­cussed in our church­es and com­mu­ni­ty orga­ni­za­tions, these are the issues we must face .We can no longer bury our heads in the sand and pretend .