One Man Builds School For Kids The Other Places Kids In Cages Away From Their Parents

I have always been of the opin­ion that finan­cial inde­pen­dence was one of the best tools that black Americans could use to effec­tive­ly counter white racism.
You know you don’t have to like me but you bet­ter damn well respect my finan­cial prowess? Okay, I am nev­er­the­less clear-eyed that pover­ty in black com­mu­ni­ties is tied to myr­i­ad issues some of which are out of the con­trol of the people.

In the absence of eco­nom­ic pow­er, the next best thing it seems to me is edu­ca­tion and skills train­ing, not that edu­ca­tion or spe­cif­ic skills train­ing are mutu­al­ly exclu­sive to wealth. I am not sug­gest­ing that every black per­son should go to col­lege, I am painful­ly aware that-that is utopi­an, even though it would be nice.
What I am say­ing is that where pos­si­ble our peo­ple need to get trained in crit­i­cal skills which are read­i­ly marketable.

This is par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant at this time, not only because of how our pol­i­tics have devolved but because of the changes in the mar­ket­place. Innovation has tak­en a hatch­et to cer­tain dis­ci­plines on the one hand and glob­al­iza­tion on the oth­er have been remov­ing oth­er jobs from the economy.
Librarians, toll-col­lec­tors, fac­to­ry work­ers, bank-tellers, super­mar­ket cashiers, typ­ists, sec­re­taries, stenog­ra­phers, cal­lig­ra­phers, Photographers and the list goes on and on. Jobs are sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly removed from the econ­o­my even as we fawn over the lat­est tech­no­log­i­cal innovations.

The choic­es we face are not option­al they are exis­ten­tial, adapt and sur­vive, fail and suf­fer the con­se­quences. The mar­ket­place of the future is high tech, this econ­o­my will require high­ly skilled work­ers to make the econ­o­my func­tion. Silicone Valley has no short­age of jobs, in fact, the tech indus­try is des­per­ate for the US State Department to grant enough work­ers visas to fill exist­ing posi­tions in that sec­tor. These are high-tech jobs which are avail­able but there is a short­age of soft­ware engi­neers and oth­er spe­cial­ists to fill these jobs.

The attack on Basketball phe­nom Lebron James by the occu­pant of the white house is telling on sev­er­al lev­els. As Lebron talks about build­ing a school for at-risk young peo­ple in one Ohio Town and is being cas­ti­gat­ed by Trump it is impor­tant to note the stead­fast­ness and laser-like focus with which James has set out on his life’s journey.
On the one had Lebron is build­ing schools to edu­cate young peo­ple Donald Trump is lock­ing chil­dren in cages to ful­fill his sick agen­da. James seeks to use sports to build bridges, to peace and under­stand­ing, Trump dem­a­gogues, malign, demean and dis­re­spect sports stars who use their plat­forms to draw atten­tion to social and soci­etal ills.

On Sunday, August 5^th I could not help notic­ing that through­out the day lit­er­al­ly, all the net­works out­side of the pro­pa­gan­da arm of the GOP were talk­ing about the sharp con­trast between James and Trump.
I remarked to my wife, “They don’t have to love you but they damn sure bet­ter respect your body of work”, she agreed.

I am not sug­gest­ing that every­one will have access to the finan­cial resources and fame of Lebron James, far from it. In fact, the oppo­site is guar­an­teed. As such we must do the next best thing and get the edu­ca­tion required, the best vehi­cle out of pover­ty and the best bet for wealth retention.

Neither am I say­ing that all of us can have the plat­form of James, Curry or even Kaepernick. Nevertheless, if we make bet­ter life deci­sions and go to col­lege, trade schools find jobs and cre­ate star­tups and spend our mon­ey in our com­mu­ni­ties we become the mas­ters of our own destiny.

If our young men can see val­ue in them­selves enough to stay out of jail they have a chance of mak­ing some­thing of themselves.
Those who invest in jails are cer­tain­ly free to do so, our young peo­ple can choose to become lawyers, doc­tors, nurs­es and sci­en­tists, elec­tri­cians and refrig­er­a­tion tech­ni­cians and yes coders. If we stick to that game plan pret­ty soon those who invest in prison stocks will have to find oth­er stocks to purchase.

Donald Trump seeks to demo­nize James, as he does NFL play­ers because he is a pathet­ic bul­ly. Bullies will not stop until some­one stand up to them. James has the resources and the chops to do so. In every cat­e­go­ry, Lebron James has out­paced Donald Trump though he nev­er inher­it­ed any mon­ey from his daddy.
Donald Trump is ter­ri­fied of suc­cess­ful black men, his lying defam­a­to­ry cam­paign against the first African-American pres­i­dent was only one exam­ple of that fear. There is a long his­to­ry of that fear and inse­cu­ri­ty dat­ing back to the Central Park five and even fur­ther back than that embar­rass­ing débâ­cle for which he has still not apologized.
He only con­ced­ed that President Barack Obama was a legit­i­mate American when he thought it was in his best inter­est to do so in his quest to attain the presidency.
Predictably, as a soon as he was installed in the pres­i­den­cy he went right back to his Obama derange­ment syndrome.

Trump is not alone, he is the mega­phone for the deep-seat­ed ani­mus which exists against peo­ple of col­or and black men in par­tic­u­lar. Trump is con­ver­sant with this, hence his “I could shoot any­one on 5^th avenue and I would­n’t lose a sin­gle sup­port­er” comment.
In fact, his base of sup­port may have expand­ed as a result of his out­right racism. Many peo­ple who har­bor racist, xeno­pho­bic views are now embold­ened to act out those tendencies.
When NFL play­ers kneel to bring atten­tion to police abuse and exe­cu­tion of black peo­ple, white peo­ple know damn well it has noth­ing to do with a flag or mil­i­tary (as if the flag and mil­i­tary are to be wor­shiped as a God).
Creating a false nar­ra­tive serves to dis­tract from the issue, argu­ing that it is unpa­tri­ot­ic is dem­a­gog­ic, it brings hatred to the ath­letes and that’s exact­ly what they want to accomplish.

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