A Hard Head
Makes a Soft Behind
By James Clingman Guest Columnist
, , top that ! I ' m not going to tell you again ." I am ssure many of you have heard your parents say
those words more than once . Why ? Because you always repeated what they told you not to do , right ? Now that we are adults ourselves , some of us who are consciously aware of the state of the Black economy in this nation are saying the same thing to our people : " Stop that !" Stop spending so much and start producing more . Stop creating wealth for every other group and virtually none for ourselves . Stop capitulating to the whimsical and dangerous malaise of " instant gratification ." Stop !
The latest piece of information that made me scream at our people when I read it was a well-written article , by Jeneba Ghatt , and featured in the online magazine , Politics 365 . The title itself , " Black Spending Power to Hit $ 1 Trillion by 2015 , But Black Wealth is Dropping ", conjures up an immediate sense of , " Say what ?" and " What the ... ?" The inference I drew from the title comprised a conundrum , an enigma , a paradox , an oxymoron , an irony , an inconsistency , a contradiction , and just plain out of order .
My penchant for yelling , " Stop it !" has come from two decades of writing essentially what Sister Ghatt delineated in her article . And let me commend Dr . Claud Anderson , Tony Brown , and others who have been yelling a lot longer than I have about the foolishness of Black folks bragging about , or buying into others who brag about , so-called " Black Spending ( Purchasing , Consumption , or Buying ) Power ." It may be power , but only for those with whom we spend our trillion dollars ; it ' s definitely a weakness for us .
Can you see the untenable and downright ridiculous economic position Black people are in vis-a-vis having a $ 1 trillion annual income versus not having built a commensurate level of wealth with such a great deal of money ? What sense does it make to even discuss Black spending power if we are not willing to leverage that $ 1 trillion into wealth for ourselves and our children ? It ' s similar to how we brag about how " powerful " our votes are , but we get very little in return for them .
Here is an excerpt from Jeneba Ghatt ' s article : " Although Blacks make up 13 percent of the U . S . population , they own merely 5 percent of all U . S . firms and only 1.8 percent of companies that employ more than one person ... More than half of Blackowned businesses had less than $ 10,000 in business receipts in 2002 , compared with one-third of White-owned firms and 28.8 percent of Asian-owned firms ." Two questions : Where have you heard or read that before ? And , what does that say about our willingness to support Black businesses with Black dollars ?
" Stop it ! I ' m not going to tell you again ." That is , until the next time I tell you the same thing , and the times after that , just as any good parent does out of love for their children . But in addition to my continuing to rave about our economic condition , and offer ways to ameliorate our situation , I will continue to encourage folks like Ms . Ghatt to enlighten us . It ' s the same message with a different messenger , but all in the line of Booker T ., Garvey , Bethune , DuBois , Elijah Muhammad , Luke Edwards , Robert Wallace , and Brooke Stephens .
In his own inimitable style ( If you know him you will understand ), Dr . Claud Anderson , author of Powernomics and President of the Harvest Institute in Washington , DC , responded to the article in part by saying , " Bragging about how much Blacks consume is like a crack addict bragging about how much money he spends to consume crack . It ' s the producers and sellers of crack that have the power , not the consuming addict . All the crack addict has is a bad habit that consumes brain tissue and wealth . Like the crack addict , we as a race , simply consume what others produce . We enrich those from whom we purchase ... we have enriched every racial , religious , and ethnic group on this earth except ourselves ."
I am sure Claud ' s parents told him a hard head makes a soft behind , and he is constantly telling us the same thing , calling for us to wake up and have our dollars start making some sense by putting them to work for us rather than for everybody else .
Ms . Ghatt ended her piece by also offering some wise words : "[ The Nielsen Report ] should be ... a call to arms to better educate ourselves on saving and growing money so that it lasts longer than one pay period ."
I continue to say , " Stop the madness , folks ." It ' s way past time that we grow up , despite what was done to us in the early years of this country ; it ' s time we take charge of our own economic empowerment by holding on to more of that $ 1 trillion a lot longer than we do at present .
" The eagle flies on Friday , and Saturday I go out to play ; Sunday I go to church and kneel down on my knees and pray ." Yes , they call it stormy Monday . I wonder why .
Hard Head Soft Behind James Clingman Orlando , Florida July 2013