A major part of the black experience in America is that moment when a head of household finds him or her self with their ‘back against the wall’. It is a moment of desperation, despair, and desolation. There is no avenue for payment of the most important of the three survival and living Entities: Shelter! Facing the fear of where will the money come from in order to meet a very demanding ‘rent’ payment has been a very ‘sick unto death’ experience that has caused the individual to know the truest definition of ‘aloneness’ than can even be imagined. It reaches into a second and a third month of waking up daily with no end to this compounding demand that now occupies all facets of the being. Here and now, ‘forces’ from the institutionalized powers and principalities are mounting and holding full sway over the individual’s life… with no avenue for payment of the most critical of the three survival and living entities: Shelter… in view.
I realized early in my life of providing “Shelter, Food and Clothing”, just as my immediate matriarchs had to do for us as their descendants, that there were no privileges to the economic systems in being black in America. By the time that I carried as a credential for my life a Bachelors Degree earned from an Historically Black College University, I soon realized that even it held no clue to navigating the economic systems in which we are forced to live.
I was already a Pastor in the Church the year that I stood on Jefferson Street with a group of my Alumni classmates and friends when I asked what did each learn about economics in their ‘Four Years of Study’? “Nothing” someone said as he named the Instructor who taught him the ‘single Economics’ course that was required of any and all majors. As I tried to come up with the name of my Economics Instructor, we realized in that space in time that they had all been ‘foreigners’! By the time I served a teaching post at Bennett College, I was now clear that an HBCU Education taught ‘Nothing’ about economics for Black America. One Class. Almost always taught by a foreigner!
Dr. Claude Anderson has been that voice of Black America who has ‘stood on the watchtower’ to give the economics of Black America… or lack thereof —it’s most clearest definition. As Founder and President of ‘The Harvest Institute’, he writes the Summer 2006 President’s Message with a sub-title ‘Running Against the Clock’: “The social systems that locked Blacks, and only Blacks, onto the bottom social and economic rung were ‘Slavery and Jim Crow segregation’. For a brief period after each system was abolished, lawmakers made a weak effort to correct the damage those systems had imposed on Blacks.
The efforts were short lived and each time, focus quickly shifted from Blacks to amorphous and broad groups such as minorities, people of color, language groupings, diversity, multi-cultural and poor people. Not only did Black civil rights leaders allow the hijackings and conceptual shifts, they themselves began to aggregate Blacks with broader groups, forever confusing the issues, social policy and Black people. Once the shift occurred, Blacks could no longer see their own group self interest clearly. They allowed themselves to loose their unique identity, history and suffering. That is why it is difficult for Blacks to lay a claim for reparations, Affirmative Action, Black history and other preferences and special treatment.”
I had to see for myself from Dr. William Barber’s renewal of the mighty protest movement of our inheritance just how smoothly other interest groups could enter with their own agendas and emerge with their demands met.
Anderson continues his President’s Message saying: “Why is there so little progress when Blacks have the strongest legal and moral grounds for justice due, than any other identifiable group in America?” “To a large degree, history repeats itself with Black people because we continue to sue and march for the wrong things. Instead of establishing a sharp accurate focus on issues that would actually correct the results of centuries of government imposed economic exclusion, our Black leaders allowed their focus to be sidetracked into illusory dreams and broad ambiguous concepts.
These leaders invite competitive groups to frame and control Black issues. Competitive groups like immigrants, gays, women and language groups have been allowed to hijack the suffering and civil rights language of the Black struggle. Competitive groups even pretend that their treatment is the same as the treatment of Blacks. These groups paint a picture of Slavery and Jim Crow, but they alter the images and revise the story to suit their goals. They obliterate Black images from the plantations, lynchings and riots and substitute their own images. With no history of systematic exclusion from the economics, education and the social systems of this country, competitive groups then gain unearned benefits and sympathy.“
Email Rev. Barbara at: myfathersmansiopress@gmail.com
