Black America, we are in a critical baseball game-like position. We are in the last inning, the bottom of the 9th, the game is tied. The bases are loaded with two outs, and the last batter is up to bat. The umpire has called three balls and two strikes. As the pitcher winds up to throw the ball, the crowd is yelling, “Let him walk you!” The batter’s instinct is telling him to hit a home run. Which voice will be heard and listened to? The batter is in the old fork-in-the-road position.
Black America is in a position similar to that of the batter. Which voice will we hear and what action will we take? Dr. Claud Anderson’s voice sounded the alarm for Black America to wake up because they were going the wrong way and in danger of being locked into a permanent underclass of beggars and criminals by the year 2010. In his media appearances, lectures, The Harvest Institute newsletters and his four number one best-selling books, Dr. Anderson uses graphic descriptions and time lines to show how nearly 100 percent of this nation’s businesses, wealth, resources, and political power were mal-distributed into the hands of the dominant society, and that Blacks will be locked into the lowest level of a real life monopoly game. It is now 2012. Did we listen?
Anderson’s book, PowerNomics: The National Plan to Empower Black America, offers a groupbased, socioeconomic empowerment plan. The book analyses Black America’s socioeconomic dilemma and lays out blue prints and road maps to guide Blacks to group-based, socioeconomic self-sufficiency and independency. All of Anderson’s writings are loaded with realistic, workable research-based solutions that revolve around having functional physical communities or at least a Black sense of community.
Anderson invited Blacks from across this nation to come to Detroit and help build a Black business community in the same spirit of Detroit’s Asian Town, Arab Town, Hockey Town, Pole Town, Mexican Town, Cork Town and Greek Town. Over one-thousand Blacks attended his meeting. Approximately 20 Black manufacturers and product producers as well as 15 retailers pledged to relocate their businesses to Detroit to give the Black business community a foundation. At no other time in history have Blacks from other cities agreed to invest and relocate their business into one city to show unified support for Black socioeconomic empowerment.
The Mayor’s office and city council took the wrong fork in the road. The Mayor’s office reneged on promises and the city council let itself be intimidated by the voices of Detroit’s media and white, Arab, Asian and Hispanic communities who did not want Detroit to take a new road. They insisted that building an economic business community for Blacks was racist. Dr. Anderson pulled the plug on the development. But his constant warnings were ringing in our ears — that we are in a race and in competition with every other racial and ethnic class to survive and prosper.
Other important Black thinkers have urged Blacks to place our own interest first and to choose a road built on group economic self-interest, just like every other racial and ethnic group. W.E.B. Dubois said: “To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardship. Booker T. Washington said to us over a century ago, that: “Now is the time, not in some far off future, but now is the time for us as a race to prove to the world that we have the ability and the inclination to do our part in owning, developing, manufacturing, and trading. Let’s act before it is too late, before others come from foreign lands and rob us of our birth rights.” Even Dr. Martin L. King, Jr. reached the same conclusion nearly 50 years ago, saying: “The emergency we now face is economic.”
Which voice will you listen to? The ones that urge Blacks down the road to fight for economic rights, group empowerment, and taking their place in America? Or will you be tricked by the voices who say the fight is over, there is no more racism, we are all the same? If you choose the road toward empowerment, you will join the fight.
The two most important legal fights of our times are the Black Farmers discrimination lawsuit and the current Harvest Institute Freedmen Federation law suit (see page 1) against the federal government for not enforcing the 1866 Treaty benefits due Black Freedmen and Black Indians. These lawsuits represent an effort to recapture the billions of dollars that Blacks have been denied over the last 140 years.
How can you participate? You can contribute to the expenses of the Institute’s law suit. You can contact and pressure all politicians, ministers and civil rights organizations and demand they support these issues? Withhold your support from any politician or political party that fails to support the Black Freedmen and Black Farmers’ lawsuits. To find your representatives, visit
www.911forblackamerica.com and click on How to Contact My Representative. Put in your zip code and your representative’s information will pop up.
Dr. Claud Anderson and other historical warriors have warned us and taken us to the fork in the road. Will we listen to them and act accordingly? Or will we turn a deaf ear and take the wrong fork in the road?
