Over the last few weeks, I have had many explosive Facebook debates about whether or not Black people need to forgive and forget slavery and pursue life as it relates to being prosperous in 2018. I have tried making my argument, but I will use this blog post to demonstrate what I think Black people can do to work with existing platforms to excel.
Top six things Blacks need to pursue, resisting didn’t make the list:
1) Guiding high schoolers to have stellar college applications/resumes to get into the TOP UNIVERSITIES. Top means the ones that when you graduate you’re looking at six-figures for the degree alone. We should encourage students to focus on STEM subjects, as well as law, accounting, and international subjects. They should be in extracurricular programs. Student government. Neighborhood volunteering. Community service. Religious activism. Healthy living activism. What I learned is that C students get into Harvard over 4.0 students often because their admissions paperwork demonstrates they’d be active Americans upon graduation while carrying the Harvard legacy. Just being a 4.0 student won't get you very far with TOP schools. And to be clear, we need students in top schools to sponge data to bring back to where they're from to show the next generation how to get it done. Eventually, we need our own AT&T, our own FIOS, our own Wells Fargo, our own Samsung, our own Microsoft, our own Power and Gas services. Right now we can all have our cell phone and internet and bank accounts cut and we have nothing. How do we resist them?
2) We need life skills added to every curriculum and courses taught at local rec centers to teach acceptable American etiquette. Topics covered should be manners, respect. The take away is we shouldn’t have trash all over our streets, blowing around like it’s normal. Respect our neighbors and their property. The beauty of being kind.
3) We need college and trade school signup drives at the same level we have the voter registration drives. We keep driving people to vote for these losers on both sides of the aisle. We need to drive people to education and making a way so that they don’t need to rely on the government. The fewer people at or below the poverty line the more politicians lose ground with dangling free stuff for people to ignore the lack of them really doing anything for the community. The more educated you are the more you’re able to understand topics that affect the community.
4) Credit counseling classes to encourage people to budget and teach how to fix/build credit. How to get a first home loan should be a focus.
5) We need to rid our corners of foreign-owned beer delis and stores and laundry mats. Why we allow these people to come from Asia and the Dominican Republic to take our money and send it home to their countries is something I can’t answer. You go to white areas and there’s none of this stuff except on main streets. My corner store doesn’t even accept debit cards. Cash only to under-report earnings and stiff the county for taxes owed to support our schools and other programs that help the poor. This purge can be done through petition, boycott, and blocking entrances to drive them out. We could then have Co-op markets and other establishments put in place.
6) Parenting classes. We have a parenting crisis in our communities and we need to get a handle on it. Right now we have 35-year-old grandparents. We cannot continue like this.
