We definitely have a problem in regards to materialism. The worst thing you can be in most black communities across the country is "broke" so because of this you have black folks spending excess amounts of money on things that only depreciate in value such as shoes, cars, jewelry, hair, etc in order to show that we are not broke. Ironically, as a collective we have the lowest net worth and lowest annual take home income of all racial groups, yet if I was an alien who just landed in America knowing nothing about economics and using my eyes to make my judgements, I would assume that African Americans were the richest group on the planet because of all the materialistic things we own.
We need to re-prioritize and start thinking long-term so that we can pass some wealth down to our children and their children's children. We also need to learn how to control the sectors in which we represent a disproportionate amount of the customer base. For example, black women make up less than 7% of the population, but according to the stats above make up nearly 40% of consumers of hair and beauty products. Most of that money is going to korean hair store owners and indians, both of these groups of people hate our guts yet we willingly throw money at them. We need to put an end to that and show how powerful our dollar is.
I also didn't know that cooperative economics was practiced in Kwanza 
