For a brief history of Black Self-empowerment, click here www.tonybrownsjournal.com/blog/black-self-empowerment.
Leslie Edmonds’ comment yesterday reminded me of a recent ageist and racist phone scam that has targeted me twice in the last two weeks with acts of economic terrorism. An unidentified voice harshly directs people in the Social Security age group to immediately call the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) “because you are about to be sued,” i. e., a stern warning that you are on the brink of going to prison. Leslie Edmonds’ comment also described a similar act of racist targeting of the Black elderly population: “I got a similar message on my phone a few months back. I figured if the IRS wanted me, they knew where I lived. ‘So, Show up,’ is what I said. Nobody did. Phew!”
This morning I received the April 25, 2016 edition of Time magazine whose cover exhorted: “Tony Brown, you owe $42,998.12,” Time playfully advised all readers. “That’s what every American man, woman and child would need to pay to erase the $13.9 trillion U. S. debt.”
“Make America Solvent Again,” Time reminded us. When speaking to Black Americans, I would declare, “Make Black America Great Again.” If Black consumers have not responded to my call to click www.tonybrownsjournal.com/selfempowerment and if Black-owned businesses have not clicked www.tonybrownsjournal.com/business-listing to join this self-empowerment movement, they have only themselves to blame for turning their backs on their own community because White people cannot save us from ourselves.
I would further advise this systemically-oppressed population that this unfortunate condition requires that Blacks go it on their own and build their own economy with their annual consumer income which equals the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the 11th richest nation in the world.
In conjunction with participating Black religious denominations and Black-owned businesses, self-empowerment for Black Americans could be realized. All Blacks would not participate in such an effort because of the residual impact of hundreds of years of White-supremacy programming that has rendered many of them psychologically unable to pursue group equality in an ethnically diverse society.
“A Partnership With Black America,” is simply the economic unification – not a political alliance, not a cultural statement, not a plank for political partisanship and exploitation. This is a program solely for self-empowerment minded Black Americans who have psychologically and socially evolved beyond the needs and desires of a group dependency on White people for its survival. No hostility is required or desired, just common sense and the will to invest in your own best self-interest.
In that regard, I strongly suggest a reform of Black America’s educational goals and the formation of a new vision of equality that supplants civil rights with self-empowerment. Self-empowerment Blacks would be encouraged to assume the leadership role in the Black community, based on their observable skills and not their social pedigree or academic achievements at White universities.
The new Black vision would emphasize the accumulation of power through wealth and economic liquidity. This power/liquidity would be produced and distributed based on the rewards and punishments of a free-market system.
If Black consumers have not responded to my call to click www.tonybrownsjournal.com/selfempowerment and if Black-owned businesses have not clicked www.tonybrownsjournal.com/business-listing to join this self-empowerment movement, they have only themselves to blame for turning their backs on their own community because White people cannot save us from ourselves.
