Approximately Forty million Black people are living in the United States. This large population falls somewhere between the population of Ukraine, which once boasted a population of M44,246,156, and Poland, with a population of M37,921,592.
But for Russia, Turkey, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Spain, no other country on the European continent comes close to the numeric strength of the Black Population in the United States.
The next closest population is Romania, which boasted a population of M19,506,114; in 2019, all other countries have populations exponentially below Romani.
In February of 2022, CNBC’s Frank Holland joined ‘Squawk Box’ to report that Black spending power reached a record $1.6 trillion in 2021, although the group’s net worth declined 14%.
On January 25, 2021, BankGreenwood.com reported that a recent Selig Center for Economic Growth study found that money circulates once in the African American community, six times in the Latino community, and nine times in the Asian community. In white neighborhoods, money circulates nearly an unlimited number of times. In part, this explains the wealth gap for Black communities.
Despite the African-American community’s population strength and huge spending power, the community has not found a way to harness its numeric strength and financial spending power as leverage in America. A nation of forty million people with a gross domestic product of 1.6 trillion dollars annually should be a powerful nation regardless of where it is geographically, even if it is inside another nation. In fact, it should strive to be powerful because it is a nation that needs to be so for its own survival. Instead, the spending power of African-Americans is diluted and divided among other ethnic groups within the United States, making the forty million people hapless stragglers economically. The community acts as a well-lubricated conduit for 1.6 trillion dollars annually that flows from it into everyone else’s pockets.
A friend of mine posted an image to social media with the caption, “black people are the only people who purchase an old warehouse and turn it into a church so that they can pray to God for jobs.”
It summed up one of the attitudes within our community. As if we completely missed the part that said we must do for ourselves and not just wait on God to do for us what we can do for ourselves…
That is not to say that, as a community, we are a nation of lazy do-nothings; far from it, the reverse is actually true.…. that 1.6 trillion annually does come from somewhere, and no one gives it to us.
The sad reality, however, is that as soon as we get it, we run out to spend it.
We have failed to master the art of trusting each other, which may be so because we have not bothered to master the art of being trustworthy.
We have failed to come together and form cooperatives to build each other up. Instead, we talk about how well other groups are doing. We theorize that government doles out money to immigrants and does nothing for what is considered native Blacks.
Because we lack innovative skills to create and maintain the businesses we need for our economic survival, we spend all our money with others, jeopardizing our literal survival as a people.
The dollar cannot circulate in our community more than it does because we do not sell the goods and services we consume to keep the dollar circulating. Even if we did produce the goods and services to make that happen, we do not like or trust each other enough to spend our money with our own people, so we must first conquer the hatred and animosity we harbor toward each other.
The psychological trauma imposed upon us because of hundreds of years of enslavement coupled with entrenched and systemic racist laws and practices have made us angry, intolerant, and mistrustful of each other, so much so that rather than lash out at those who offend us, we internalize our trauma and lash out at each other.
Our inability to understand that there will be no ‘they’ to save us, that we are the ‘they’ if ever we are to be saved, has far-reaching consequences for our survival in this hostile environment.
Our inability to recognize our potential strength has shaped how legislation is drafted all the way down to how our communities are policed.
Our inability to coalesce effectively almost as a monolith for maximum effectiveness even affects the quality of the water we drink.
Police murder our children because they know the courts will protect them. The courts protect them because they have no reason to fear the power of the people; we, the people, therein lies the problem. We are forty million weak and a 1.6 trillion dollar well-lubricated conduit that funnels cash into the pockets of everyone but our own.
Before we chant Black power or, worse, chant the ridiculous notion of black girl power, we better learn how to stick together and keep our money in our own community.
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Mike Beckles is a former Police Detective, businessman, freelance writer, black achiever honoree, and creator of the blog mikebeckles.com.