Where Does the Onus Lie?

Reprinted from Black Westchester News

As mentioned, I recently attended the All Black National Convention, in Charlotte N.C, presented by Dr. Boyce D. Watkins, Founder and CEO of TheBlackBusinessSchool.com, which advocates for financial intellect in the black community.

If you’ve ever gone to a typical convention, you were likely surrounded by people that are like-minded, and aligned with your own career, outlook, or agenda. It is incredibly fulfilling and also great fun.

Financial security is key to our success… and the lack of it, is the key to our failure.

I enjoyed being with Black people that are presumably quite successful. I anticipated that they would receive my message with great favor. Financial education falls squarely under my banner… we need full education, and especially for our children.

As black people, we need to look at a few things. We should be gathering up our strengths. We should be looking forward, and not backwards. As God-fearing people not only are we expected to forgive people, but we should definitely also, not be blaming people, for the mistakes of the past… whether guilty or not. We are constantly told that forgiveness is essential. Yet, how long have we been looking back, and dwelling in past injustice?

The folks at this conference most assuredly have the right intention… worry about your current family, and the current state of the Black community. Plan for the future… BE the superior ones.

(NOT ONCE, did anybody mention slavery or oppression.. Quite refreshing!)

If we were more successful at raising fully educated children, there would be a new Black Supremacy, which does not look back or down on white supremacy. We would not have time to worry about the mistakes in the white community, because we would be too busy with our own successes.

What’s more important… if there was Black Supremacy across the land, I’m sure that white people would leave us alone, and respect us more.

They don’t hate the color of our skin, nearly as much as they hate our incessant lack of self-sufficiency.

The fact that we do not have Black Supremacy is… on us.

We’ve got to eliminate the crime. We’ve got to build the education levels of everyone in our community, and develop our ability to commit to being ‘money partners’ in the development of our neighborhoods.

If we say we want success and abundance, we need to develop it for ourselves. Not demand it from others, who have already created their own wealth and prosperity.

Our neighborhoods have indeed been disinvested, and now people are looking to help us. However, outside investors helping us develop our communities, does not take into account, the reason that we are disinvested in the first place.

Right now we are rarely involved in new construction and development, as money partners. There is no incentive for outsiders to come in and finance our every need.

We generally have ‘no skin in this game’. Yet we continue to ignore that, which generally evokes resentment… (which is what racism is!)

What’s more, we tend not to value that which is given to us. I’ve seen brand new neighborhood development, that is vandalized by our kids before construction is even completed!

We have got to improve ourselves, before we can continue to expect assistance from outside our community.

We need to look at the things that are not our fault, and we need to look at the things that are indeed our fault.

Not our fault? The fact that we have no family-building skills. That we have no education legacy to speak of. Slavery has absolutely robbed us of a productive and prosperous legacy.

Indeed we have our standouts. Some of the most interesting people on earth, are black intellectuals, and others among us who possess full educations.

But imagine for a moment if white people only had ‘standouts’ when it comes to educating their people. All their people, presumably, are intended to be educated and perhaps some fall through the cracks.

But in the black community those cracks are boulevard-wide.

Much of the chaos created in the world is caused by two things. Money, (or the lack of it), and greed. Eradicating power, money, and greed, is next to impossible.

No, make that, completely impossible.

There is no solving for that.

However you can improve the lack of money, in OUR community, by being a population of intelligent, well-educated black people. Those people are always self-sufficient.

We need skin in this game. I mean Oprah went to Africa and built a school for girls. We need you to build schools for our kids – in America. Set standards for them and support them. Not wait for someone to correctly educate OUR kids.

That’s what we need…we need to be better, and take control of our own destiny.

In preparation for this convention, I researched the first convention I went to… The National Black Political Convention, in Gary Indiana, back in 1972.

I found some film on YouTube. The man who filmed the convention, is talking to a museum audience, about the film and the historic nature of the convention, and he mentions the thing we all hear…

“Not that much has changed, between then and now.”

Well I’m here to tell you that the reason that nothing is changed between then and now, is because we personally have not changed. We personally have not grown. We personally have not committed ourselves to excellence or taken over our own destinies.

We have put the onus of our repair, upon others. Our livelihood, our well-being, all are the responsibility of others, for a great many of us.

Two hundred forty five years of slavery.

One hundred and sixty years of stagnation in the black community.

Whatever comes after stagnation, it is up to us to decide and achieve.

Eventually, our benefactors will tire of our unrelenting ‘need’… no matter how much guilt we continue to thrust upon them…

Originally published

https://blackwestchester.com/where-does-the-onus-lie-by-cindy-chan