Part 2 of 40 Acres and a Dodge Challenge continues the importance of financial education in black culture. In this essay, we layout new ways of thinking about heritage, family & social structure, and mindset shifting to push us Black Americans into prosperity habits without the expectation of receiving reparations.
Ugly Truths
African culture is not our culture. If you were born in America with brown skin and coarse, curly black hair, you are a Black American.
We no longer have our African names. We were severed from our African language, religions, and traditions. Black Americans have nothing from Africa but genes.
It’s beautiful to discover and reclaim pieces of African culture. But what do we need that we can’t recreate? Why not see ourselves as a new people?
Our history starts after the boat rides, and that’s an ugly, frustrating, heartbreaking truth.
Repair without Reparations
It’s a perfect tragedy that reparations were not followed through with. To be frank, it’s pretty f****ed up (That’s not for dramatic effect. After this post, read about how many blacks had already moved to the designated territories before the POTUS following Lincoln rolled back the order sourcesource). The descendants of slaves will never see those promises. It’s nice to imagine how Black Americans would be prospering now if instead of sharecroppers, our ancestors had become landowners, but it’s a dream.
It’s a handicap. Agreed. How do we recover? How do we put down permanent stakes in our homeland? How do we make it? We’ve been trying to answer these questions for generations.
I don’t know, but I have some ideas: First, we have to talk about money. Let’s meet our children at least halfway in explaining those essential points of finance I mentioned in Part 1. If your child grows up and is dumb about how money works, you’re responsible. Find a source. There’s an awesome number of organizations spreading good messages about financial literacy. Second, let’s own stuff. We buy the property or live on the land our family owns until we can buy our own. Swallow your pride and do what you gotta do. (I’m gonna ask my parents if I can rent their camper when I retire from the military and I’m almost 40.) Next, we build and buy businesses. There are trades that black people dominate. I shouldn’t need to name them. We need those businesses planted in our communities and prospering.
Let’s build a Main Street in our neighborhoods. Let’s enterprise. We plant our businesses then ship them any place they can compete.
Sounds doable to me. I’m not so naive to believe we will fix it all in one lifetime. The small changes we make in what our children understand about themselves and money are the key.
American is Fine, Thanks
‘African American’ bothers me, because it’s used too loosely. It’s more important to sound politically correct than to be accurate.
Serious question: How many more generations descendent of slaves have to be born in America before they’re recognized as just American?
Maybe don’t use the title African American unless the person being described is a naturalized citizen…FROM AFRICA. Since you can’t know a person’s national origin from looking at them, don’t make an assumption. My point is the term cannot be used in America for an entire people that look a certain way.
Pro-Jewish Black Enterprise: Learning From American Jews
My first introduction to Black Enterprise wasn’t the outstanding editorial of the same name or a book by Daymond John. It was a neighborhood saint known as the Candy Lady.
Black neighborhoods knew Candy Lady was a staple especially in areas the ice cream truck routes didn’t run. I recall Candy Lady always being open for business every time we knocked. There was never an Out to Lunch sign on the door. In fact, you could hear Candy Lady watching Young and the Restless and see her chilling through the screen door.
Inventory was always lush with candy laid over a folding table or kitchen counter or top of a cooler with high fructose corn syrup juices inside the refrigerator door. All the favorites were there, and I don’t remember her ever having run out of something. If your Candy Lady was one of the real ballers in the game, she had freeze pops and homemade icees. Every neighborhood Candy Lady succeeded based on two principals: find the market, capture the market.
I started researching American Jewish history after reading Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers. Gladwell talks about the Jews’ foothold in the garment industry and later the growth of Jewish law firms following WWII. It’s a history I admire, because you see a people win after being kicked around the world and systematically hated.
They are living examples of how a group can capitalize on trade markets that were in demand. They taught each other. They worked with each other. They shared wisdom with each other. They kept the keys to success in the family and prospered.
I want to see the same for Black Americans. The answers are in us leaning on each other and lifting each other up. Is it crazy to think that we could build businesses on our own property? Is it crazy to think that we could own every trade in our neighborhoods — every barbershop, beauty shop, grocery store, gas station, dry cleaners, drugstore, laundromat, school, bank, church, hotel, motel, Holiday Inn? Is that crazy? If it sounds unbelievable or unrealistic, maybe we’ve been programmed to think that we’re not supposed to the have those things — or that we can’t have them.
Success: Not About Luck
Black Americans are force-fed the idea that success means sometimes you get lucky. Maybe you dribbled good enough, sang well enough, ran a football fast enough to get invited to the dinner parties. You’re talented enough to catch a break and defy the odds. You made it out the neighborhood. Is success lucky? Why is it such a shock when a certain kind of person becomes wildly successful? Even more so surprising when they’re successful for something not black?
We can create homegrown success stories
Are we asking questions like what kind of come-ups we can make HERE at home, in our neighborhoods? We can create those opportunities that make success a way of a life, not a lucky chance, not a maybe or hopefully – homegrown success stories.
We’re taught that making it and keeping it in America is available to very few people like us. And that’s not reality. It’s just so damn conveniently believable, because so many of us struggle.
Contentment First The Critical Lesson of Having Enough
I want to believe the struggle is solely defined by a lack of needs. But there is too much evidence of envy. I think we can trap ourselves into believing things we want are needs too. And I also think our lists of wants are based heavily on what the neighbors have.
I need to be clear here that I’m no longer talking only to Black Americans. I’m addressing Americans as a whole.
Look how we line up for phones, video games/systems, Black Friday sales. We will sit in traffic for hours during the Christmas season to stock up on more…more of what we already have…more of what we don’t need. Have you ever seen a line on the Donations’ end of a Goodwill Center?
We are masters of turning wants into needs – trusty customers that show up every Valentines, Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. And we’ve never had a wedding without a diamond. It’s all expected behavior. It feels normal and right. But do we have to indulge as much to be good citizens and consumers? So much money for liabilities?
Kids watch us go through the motions. We watched our parents do the same.
I remember having no concept of needs-wants as a kid. My dad regularly told us “You ain’t gotta have everything somebody else got.” He really tried to teach us what it meant to have enough. A lot of the lessons came to the surface after I left home, but unfortunately, I’m still learning in my 30s. Is wants vs needs really so difficult to grasp, or do we just like to blur the line?
Parents’ Active Approach
I wish I had a roadmap to share, but I’m twisted in it all too. My kids can’t be the ones that aren’t showered in gifts, right? How early can we begin teaching a child to be content? What stage in their youth makes sense? I think we can teach children about contentment and having enough as soon as we can show them by example. We teach by being practitioners.
The kids are already watching. They will learn these lessons. But while they are children, you control the narrative. You shape their ideas about money, property, businesses, and, most of all, being content.