An Inconvenient But Necessary Truth We Must Face.….

“WE NEED MORE JOBS IN OUR COMMUNITIES”

That’s the ral­ly­ing cry we hear from Black Academia. Black Journalists. Black Civil Rights Leaders. Black Clergy. Black Commentators & Analysts.They all have the same ral­ly­ing cry.
It is true but mak­ing that state­ment is a cop-out. It is intel­lec­tu­al lazi­ness and in my esti­ma­tion an attempt to con­tin­ue a pat­tern of vic­tim-hood. A pat­tern which con­tin­ues the mis­con­cep­tion that the sav­ing of a peo­ple is tied to the largess of a Government or a myth­i­cal being.
Let’s assume for a minute that the Government or some­one else could find 20 – 30 mil­lion jobs and lit­er­al­ly drop those bot­tom end jobs into the black com­mu­ni­ty Why in Heavens name would the black com­mu­ni­ty be sat­is­fied with bot­tom end jobs? Why do I say bot­tom end jobs you ask? Well if you are not trained in spe­cif­ic areas what kind of jobs are you qual­i­fied for with all due respect?

We know no one will mirac­u­lous­ly find 20 – 30 mil­lion jobs to drop any­where much less in the black com­mu­ni­ty. First of all I take issue with the entire con­cept of a black com­mu­ni­ty. Where is that and if it does exist why would blacks sub­ject them­selves to com­mu­ni­ties where every ser­vice offered is substandard?
I have been hav­ing this con­ver­sa­tion with a friend of mine who is an old­er man than me he is pas­sion­ate about the issues which affect blacks and though we have argued this issue ad-nau­se­um he seem stuck like a lot of oth­er peo­ple on the word “THEY”.
“They Won’t do this. They won’t do that, They won’t give us this, They won’t allow us that.”
This is where my friend and I part com­pa­ny, as a high school stu­dent who was raised with­out a father or moth­er I lived with my great-aunt, or as we say in Jamaica (mi gran aun­tie). There was no “they” to pro­vide books and in most cas­es not even lunch mon­ey. There was no “they” to pro­vide uni­form so I had to fig­ure out how to pro­vide uni­forms for myself.
As a Agri-sci­ence stu­dent in the tenth grade my sci­ence teacher placed me in charge of the 10 – 11 th grade stu­dent body involved in Agri-sci­ence, I used what I learned in Agri-sci­ence to pro­duce Scotch-Bonnett Peppers and oth­er cash crops which yield high returns in the mar­kets to fund my high school edu­ca­tion as well as to put food on the table.

My point in all this is that Cows don’t eat grass then wait for the grass to regrow they keep moving.
Adapting a vic­tim­hood men­tal­i­ty is the great­est imped­i­ment to total lib­er­a­tion . No President or Policy will change the con­di­tions affect­ing Black-America until we change our indi­vid­ual behav­iors and attitudes.
Black-America is the only force which will change Black-America> Oh I know this is not a pop­u­lar thing to say because it relieves too many of our peo­ple of per­son­al respon­si­bil­i­ty. It takes away the hus­tle of those who live by sell­ing vic­tim­hood to the mass­es. Candidate Barack Obama spoke to that very issue in 2008 vet­er­an Civil rights Activist jesse Jackson took Umbrage to the then Senator Obama’s chal­lenge to Black-America.

In July 2008, Jesse Jackson start­ed chat­ting with a guest about then-can­di­date Barack Obama’s speech­es in black church­es. Jackson was not pleased with them and found Obama’s remarks con­de­scend­ing to black peo­ple. As pun­ish­ment, Jackson said he would like to “cut [Obama’s] nuts off. With all due respect to the Reverend Jackson and all of the oth­er war­riors of the strug­gle Obama was mere­ly chal­leng­ing them to move past the fights of the 60’s and build on the gains of those bat­tles won. Barack Obama;s Presidency is exact­ly what build­ing on those gains accomplishes.
Many African-Americans who have adopt­ed a pol­i­cy of self-deter­mi­na­tion and per­son­al respon­si­bil­i­ty and are reap­ing the rewards of their deci­sions tend to grav­i­tate toward the Political right. That was the mes­sage of the right even though the right has pre­cious lit­tle care or desire to see any­one but White men with power.

Silicone val­ley has already cre­at­ed pro­to­types which will remove even more jobs. Much more than is already lost to out­sourc­ing and the desire to take advan­tage of cheap labor. Experts say than in anoth­er decade our lives will be sig­nif­i­cant­ly trans­formed as a result of the Robot tech­nol­o­gy which for bet­ter or worse will lit­er­al­ly evis­cer­ate a huge chunk of the jobs from the work­force. Already we see cars which dri­ve them­selves and that is just the begin­ning. We are expe­ri­enc­ing tech­nol­o­gy which have Robots cre­at­ing baby robots.
On the issue of self dri­ving vehi­cles alone hun­dreds of thou­sands more jobs will be plucked from the work­force as there will be no need for chauf­feurs and truck dri­vers eventually.
We are being told most of the jobs in the food ser­vice indus­try( once seen as the holy-grail of low end jobs)will sim­ply dis­s­a­pear. This is in addi­tion to the mil­lions of Jobs which have already left America’s shores to Asia where the Business com­mu­ni­ty is able to pay expo­nen­tial­ly less for wages and no health ben­e­fits to Workers.

So as my friend insist that “THEY” are not doing enough I asked him how many unem­ployed Doctors. Lawyers. Nurses. Computer pro­gram­mers. Code-writ­ers . Plumbers . Electricians. Refrigeration tech­ni­cians. Brick-lay­ers or any oth­er skilled pro­fes­sion­als he knew.
He said he did not exact­ly know any but argued there may be some.
I gave him that, but he under­stood the point I was making.
Even though he under­stood that what I meant is that for our own sur­vival we will have to make the change we want to see. Our women will have to make bet­ter deci­sions who they pro­duce babies with. Yes it starts there. It is an incon­ve­nient truth but it does us no good when we pre­tend it has noth­ing to do with present day sit­u­a­tion in our communites.
It does no good to fight the odds when you don’t need to . Of course a sin­gle moth­er can raise her child and do a darn good job of it out of neces­si­ty, but why do it if it isn’t a necessity?

Why fight the odds when all the data shows the dis­ad­van­tages chil­dren raised in sin­gle fam­i­ly house­holds face?
Absolutely there are a whole host of issues which neces­si­tate indi­vid­u­als rais­ing their chil­dren alone. I am not speak­ing to those situations.
The soon­er we dis­en­gage from the tena­cious death-grip of lib­er­al vic­tim­hood the soon­er we begin the ardu­ous task of recon­struct­ing our fam­i­ly units and putting our futures back together.
The empow­er­ment of Black peo­ple in America will not come from the NAACP . Neither will it come from the Urban League or the pletho­ra of oth­er groups and Organizations which mil­i­tate on behalf of the Black Community use­ful though they are.
It will not come from any mas­sive infu­sion of Government involve­ment be it with social pro­grams or giveaways.
The uplift­ment and the fix for Black America lies in each and every indi­vid­ual home of Black America, with each and every per­son tak­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for their own lives. When we do that we will begin to make bet­ter deci­sions on pro­cre­ation which is at the root of the problem.

People can hate you all they want but if you are edu­cat­ed and unit­ed they dare not touch you for fear of the con­se­quences to them­selves. If we build com­mu­ni­ties of edu­cat­ed black peo­ple who under­stand the val­ue of mon­ey who know how to raise our chil­dren peo­ple stand up and take notice. If we begin to learn to con­trol our own des­tinies by learn­ing how to start new busi­ness­es we con­trol ours and our chil­dren’s futures. When we start under­stand­ing the val­ue of sup­port­ing black busi­ness we begin to keep our mon­ey cir­cu­lat­ing with­in our own com­mu­ni­ties. When we under­stand the val­ue of build­ing insti­tu­tions with­in our com­mu­ni­ties which empow­ers us rather than mis­in­form and teach­es us to be vic­tims, we begin to see changes in the way oth­ers react and respond to us. It is a los­ing bat­tle to fight in the streets with Police, we can nev­er change the par­a­digm by march­ing . We effect change in the courts and state leg­is­la­tures where the laws are passed, not fight with cops in front of precinct hous­es.. The great changes which occurred that changed the par­a­digm in the 60’s emanat­ed from the bat­tles won in the Courts by Thurgood Marshall.
Lets fix our indi­vid­ual cir­cum­stances and change our think­ing and we will begin to see even those who despise us try to make friends with us .