As a result of s being cut off from our roots and being strangers in a strange land we are oftentimes the most gullible people on earth...and the most fanatic! We have more liqour stores in our communities than anybody else, more guns, drugs, churches, crime and Jesus freaks! We kill more blacks than anybody else and since Atlanta has become the new gay capitol of America it seems like we are now becoming homosexuals at a faster rate than anybody else. The good news is that our fanaticism shows that once we put our minds to something we can outdo anybody! Unfortunately it seems like we have also been dupped by the Willie Lynch Letter, which is supposed to be a "How to Control Your Slaves" manifesto that was presented to a group of slave owners in 1712!
Fortunately noted Oakland scholar and historian, Professor Manu Ampim, did his homework and researched this paper, as we should have done, and discovered that although it gained its greatest noteriety because of the advent of the internet in the 90s, it can only be traced back to no earlier than the 1970s! Plus there are some obvious discrepancies and language faux pauxs that indicate the paper was written in modern times, my guess is by a Black Studies student and child of the Black Power movement who was trying to do something to wake up his people. But he made the mistake of using expressions like "up front" and "refuel", modern day colloquialisms; because they certainly had no cars, trucks or airplanes to refuel back in the 1700s or any fuel or petroleum products for that matter!
But most importantly what the brother pointed out was that although we have suffered from "divide and conquer" tactics, the effects of those tactics were miniscule especially in comparison to the three main components that have lead to our present day predicament as a people. And those three things that have disabled us the most are: Migration, Urbanization and Intergration!
We have become or have been forced to become so nomadic that it can be difficult for us to build or form relationships, organizations, unity and even friendships. Urban Renewal/Gentrification/Eminent Domain/Manifest Destiny/Freeways thru the neighborhood it's all the same. I once heard somebody say that the expression "Black Community" is an oxmoron - a contradiction in terms! And however false that statement might be still there is too much truth in it to ignore!
Urbanization and migration moved us away from "down home", back south and caused us to lose a lot of natural affection for each other! Northern negroes, both male and female are harder and colder and more independent - more like the white folks and towns they migrated to. When I say Chicago, New York, Detroit and Oakland you think of rugged blue collar toughness, not the soft, pliable, matriarchal, nurturing environments we came from! We left our land and our farms and our agriculture and our ability to grow our own food and build our own homes and towns and cities and wound up in Concrete Jungles! Not only did they take the Sun from us and put him in a book, but the put cement between us and the earth and herded us into ghettos and turned us into Block Monsters, with no one to prey on but each other!
And all that was still managable because we still had each other and our businesses and our communities and neighorhoods and incomes and our own doctors and banks and artisians and athletes and theaters and teachers and schools and students who were performing above the national scholastic averages! But when intergration came we did a jail break from one another, the most talented folks of our communities left to go work for and with the white man, welfare came in to divide the family and without many sheperds to guard the flock the wolves came in with drugs and guns and gangs and forked tongues and suddenly the neighborhoods become hoods without neighbors!!!!
With no land, no businesses and no property we became professional guests, permanent guests in other peoples stores, apartments, projects, hotels, hospitals, arenas and towns; subject to be thrown out, rejected or evicted at anytime. We have become like a sports team without a home game or a home field advantage, always playing on the road and trying to excel in hostile environments - like the Christians versus the Lions in the Roman Coliseum!
So Buy Black Wednesdays is about enabling ourselves to play more home games in comfortable nurturing surroundings in neighborhoods instead of hoods and communities instead of coliseums, with fellow team mates in our own stadiums and businesses and properties and homes, on our own land, where we grow our own food and teach and govern our own children and citizens. And all this simply by changing our spending habits and patterns...and becoming fanatics about buying black, black business and black people!
(Work in Progress)
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