“What Negroes are now being taught does not bring their minds into harmony with life as they must face it. The greatest indictment of such education as Negroes have received, is that they have thereby learned little as to make a living for themselves.” ~ Carter G. Woodson
The severe economic problems in Black communities are a reflection of the massive economic mis-education and ignorance that has caused us to assist in our own exploitation in the past, and continue to the present.
This economic mis-education is a result of Blacks suffering from historical unconsciousness, as Prof. Amos Wilson stated: “Because we have forgotten our history and our tradition and will not identify with it, we can only enrich other people. Then we say, ‘history ain’t gonna make you money.’ No, it the lack of knowledge of history that doesn’t make you money.”
In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, the Black middle-class leadership of the Civil Rights Movement, along with their white liberal backers advocated non-economic liberalism of just voting and pushed education as a social ‘cure-all’; while the real issue was Blacks controlling the economics in their communities.
In his book, “The Great School Legend”, Colin Green demonstrates that education was not a significant means of mobility for the various immigrant nationality groups in America.
Contrary to those who blame the Black economic malady on educational deficiency, Green and other Historians indicate that for every ethnic nationality that has attained any mobility in the United States, economic development came first and was only then followed by educational achievement.
The educational achievement fallacy was pointed out years ago by historian, Carter G. Woodson when he stated: “In the schools of business administration, Negroes were trained exclusively in the psychology of, and economics of Wall Street and are, therefore made to despise the opportunities to run ice wagons, push banana carts among their own people. Foreigners who have not studded economics but have studied Negroes, take up this business and grow rich.”
While Blacks have achieved more education in the post-civil rights era, it did not increase Black economic independence. Blacks with college degrees are like poor Blacks, both are dependent on the government for income.
Over 50% of all Blacks with college degrees work for the government. With the ‘reactionary withering away of the state’, government downsizing, Blacks are losing aid and jobs. Corporate downsizing is eliminating more Black employees with degrees.
Faced with a racist white backlash, downsizing, de-industrialization, and little business ownership, the Black community has left young Blacks caught between a ‘crack rock’ and a 'hard place' to find a job. The Black community must be held responsible for not educating our youth with economic self-reliance.
We send our youth out into a society that is racist, unequal, and hostile with little but a hope and a prayer; hope they can get a job and pray they don’t get killed or jailed.
We spent our purchasing power with non-Black businesses, we did not come together and invest our money to build economic foundations and institutions that would help our youth survive and progress. We’ve left our youth with only degrees on a mantle and our spending legacy of enriching others.
Today, Black youth have been successfully brainwashed by the white power structure’s mass-media to live their one life on earth for nothing more than the latest fads in popular music, sit-coms, dances, video games, cell-phones, sports, drugs, clothes, jewelry, cars, and hair styles.
The only sign of development that Black youth see in their communities is the growing phenomenon of immigrant owned businesses.
Since most of our youth live in economically distressed communities, they provide jobs for themselves by selling drugs, and they create businesses with crack houses; Over 70% of Black males incarcerated in federal prisons were sentenced on drug charges.
The fact that the majority of young Blacks have no real economic future, comes as a result of neglect. The legacy of our struggle for economic development has not passed from one generation to the next.
Lerone Bennett highlights the significance of this legacy when he stated: “The story of Black people in America is, among other things, the story of a quest for the hard rock of economic security. This quest, under girding all, gives shape and body to all the strivings of Black men and women. Behind the demonstrations, behind the petitions and protests and revolts, behind Jamestown and Montgomery and Watts, lies this deeper and more basic struggle for bread, shelter, clothing, land, raw materials, resources, skills, and a space for the heart.”
At the present time, and going into the future, we as Black people must realize the need and the necessity to understand the importance of cooperative economic development.
As a people, for the most part we face the grave, impending reality of economic elimination in a global economy. The severe problem we face today of becoming economically obsolete is just as destructive as the slave trade was to our Ancestors.
Thus far we have ignored the warnings of the present and the past; as Marcus Garvey stated:“I have also held and still believe that it is only a questions of time when the Negro, economically dependent as he is on the white man, would be forced to the wall, and that the solution of the problem in the future would not be so much by wholesale killing or wiping out of Negro populations by fire or force of arms, but by a well-organized plan of economic starvation.”
The failure to come together and rebuild economically at this critical time will greatly affect our future and our childrens’ future. We can’t continue to leave our youth with a legacy of economic dependence and consumerism.
Our youth can no longer grow up with false consciousness, believing that in a racist society you can depend on your enemies for financial sustenance. They must understand that economic power imbalances are the basic underlying causes of political-social conflicts; the struggle over values and claims to resources in which the aims of the exploiters and oppressors are to keep their victims subjugated.
We must re-educate Black youth that they have the right and responsibility to control the economic resources in their communities. We must expose them to great Black leaders, like the remarkable Paul Cuffe, who took up the challenge to create economic development to assist the cause of Black independence during slavery.
In order to create cooperative economic development, we must create the new Black youth who will not promote and perpetuate a self-impose trade embargo which comes from distrust, no trust – no trade!
This sabotaging behavior was analyzed by Prof. Amos Wilson: “If I’ve got the money I can help you, but if I distrust you, I won’t help you and you may not make it. It’s not the absence of money, it’s the presence of mistrust. If I will not cooperate, if you cannot rely on me, then we cannot have an economic system, even though we may have money. In other words, a people must trust, be reliable, be dependable, have respect for each other, if they are to develop a viable economic system.”
To develop a viable cooperative economic system, we must first conduct a massive economic literacy campaign. W.E.B. DuBois recommended that this campaign must organize Blacks for social and economic power by developing effective associations.
The campaign should organize our strengths as consumers and train producers and entrepreneurs. The goal of the campaign is to create, new progressive social relationships among Blacks. These new social relations will create our economic system that can create new social institutions to educate and develop economic self-reliance in Black youth.
We must realize that if we ever needed a plan for economic change and survival in our communities, it is now! Facing an increasing external economic embargo from without, we can no longer accept Black economic suicide from within.
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