In dealing with the wealth gap that exists in America it is important that one understands why such a gap is racially determined and fueled. There are those who succumb to human nature and would want to shift the blame from themselves and place it in the lap of the victims of the wealth gap. Nobody wants to be reminded of their role in the degradation of other individuals especially if that degradation occurred over a protracted period of time and affected millions of people.
Nobody wants to acknowledge that their grandparents owned slaves or held views that were sympathetic to the slave-owners. So rather than deal with the horrendous acts of her past America has rather tried to block them from her conscience. She has managed to convince herself that nothing untoward occurred and that the plight of the over 40 million Blacks within her borders is mainly due to their own lazy and criminal behaviors. It makes for easy sleep at night, it allows one to go through life without the heavy guilt of having systematically destroyed an entire people.
But when you forcefully make people work for free for about 300 years, deny them the right to read, strip them of their culture, history and humanity, legislate laws that puts a ceiling to their economic advancement and use government institutions to destroy any advancement they may make in spite of the institutionalized racism then it becomes pretty hard to convince yourself that you are innocent and they are guilty.
This is why views such as those held by Williams Rich are a worrying simplification of an issue that took 400 years to unravel and reveal its full stench. It shows a certain ignorance and dishonesty for one to demand that all Blacks need to do is to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and they will be as successful as others. Which others? Which other minority group were brought to America for the purpose of being made slaves?
And what about all those times when Blacks did pull themselves up by their bootstraps only for racists, using the machinery of government, to undo all the progress made? This is why I said it takes a certain level of ignorance and dishonesty to hold such a simplified view of a historical reality with contemporary ramifications. Is William aware of the 1877 compromise that betrayed the progress Blacks were making in America? What about Jim Crow, share-cropping laws, redlining, biased financial lending, decades of disruption of Black organizations and the government involvement with crack-cocaine in Black communities.
Yes, the crack epidemic didn’t just happen and it is no coincidence that possession of crack earns more prison time than cocaine (which is predominantly used by rich White Americans). William would look at all these and say that was in the past, get over it and work yourselves out of the economic quagmire. But all I have listed above is exactly what Blacks attempted to do and how their government reacted to Blacks attempting to do something for themselves.
It is the attempt by Blacks to build their own economy that had White unions use government to set up minimum wage laws, to keep Blacks from certain professions and deny them equal education. The laws that sustained the wealth gap where not in response to Black laziness but rather their industrious spirit which in many cases competed effectively with White Americans. It is that spirit that established “ The Black Wall street” adjacent to a White neighborhood that was experiencing economic decline.
Ignorance has never been a good substitute for facts!
Getting tired of popcorn … /grabbing pretzels
You would do well by grabbing a history book for Williams Rich rather.
Nah … it’s more entertaining this way. tongue emoticon You two are like bookends, with reality somewhere in the middle.
Not really Brett Muir, what Atiga Atingdui has stated here are verifiable facts. His is the reality.
Reality my foot…. Useless blacks, good for nothing. Cant even defend themselves in this Morden world.
My friends. You can’t fix racism and racist rants! It’s worse than Stupidity. Applying wisdom to such a cancer is like casting pearls before swine. African Americans are getting over it realizing that racism is perhaps even more ingrained and inbred in the Other American Psyche than previously thought!
There’s no reasoning with this decadence. Nothing can heal White Supremacy that purports to establish that Blacks are lazy, or act lazy – and in effect inferior, or that whites are superior in hard work – while neglecting every call to play on a fair field under a collective government. Nothing can fix such an attitude, such a mentality, such propensity, hell, such illness borne in a nation that relied on the very backs of this ‘lazy Black labor’ in its rise to an ungodly fame.
Until Africa rises and demands that the right thing be done in America, the Other American Psyche will not bring itself to civilization. It will continue to be stooped in the barbarism that was its founding.
Like a prostitute, America may not realize salvation. Like J Cole, a renowned lyricist once said, “Don’t save her, she don’t wonna be saved. Don’t save her!”
Thanks Atiga Jonas Atingdui!
Absolute nonsense written by my long time friend Atiga Jonas Atingdui. You see, i dont deny any of the horrendous acts and laws that black people endured. In fact they are not the only race to suffer such predicaments. My argument is simple blacks lack resilience, resolve and most of all the creativity needed to overcome these challenges. The jews suffered a more humiliating fate… The total destruction of Israel in 70 Ad, not talking about what Nebuchadnezzar did to the same people. In spite of all this, and immense hatred for the jews, they never lost their language… How can a people be dispersed for hundreds of years and still keep their culture and language. You tell me just 400 years of slavery has made the black race a nonentity (which in fact is an overstretched scenario you paint using bootstraps as an allegory). Blacks should get over it and if they ever think they are a special breed of people, prove to the world they can be better than the Jews. Your post is a disgrace to the blackman. Always complaining, while other races which suffered more horrendous and despicable acts of evil, have evolved. The continent of Africa is such a pathetic place to live in, so even those who never experienced slavery are as useless as those who did. They can’t even defend themselves from external aggression, the least any discerning race would ask of its people. All you just wrote is complete B. S.
I didn’t write the post to debate you or get into a discussion. I have written my words and thoughts, anybody who is educated in this field knows who is accurate and who is peddling misinformation. Cheers!
Atiga Jonas Atingdui… we couldn’t preserve our language in slavery.. What a disgrace.. I am not debating you, all am telling you is history has seen other races rise up from ashes and taken over the world. The jews are an example…. Blacks are still complaining and do nothing. We want a change and until some of us call a spade a spade and not a big spoon, we will be wandering in darkness. Goodnight
Williams Rich who told you the Jews never lost their language? FYI: modern jewish has nothing to do with Aramaic, or the language that was spoken before Jerusalem was ransacked. Modern jewish is really basically Yiddish, an eastern european language with some other mixes. It was created by them, not naturally evolved.
There is no need wasting energy on Williams Rich he is not here for facts.
@nana Akua… Come again Aramaic was never the language of the jews, it was spoken at a point in time but not Jewish language, come again. The jews speak Hebrew and they still speak and write Hebrew.
The comparison racists use when it comes to African American disenfranchisement in America is the example of the Jews. The Jews. I have to laugh. Jews suffered a more horrendous fate than Blacks in the Americas? Was it the Holocaust? Gee…
The Kazarian Army (descended from the Huns) that got destroyed by the Russians when they tried to take the Eastern Roman Empire… and which is itching now to retaliate against Russia by playing games in the Ukraine (in Kiev – Russia’s Ancestral origins) at all costs? These Jews you mean? Interesting!
But let me bother myself a little bit with one quick point.
The Original Hebrew will tell any real student of history, not some dilettantes I have seen here, that Faro Tahaka must be thanked for saving Judea and in fact any remnant of Israeli heritage today. Faro Tahaka was an African King who commanded several Garrisons and Battalions of African Armies from across the continent to put a stop to Persian advance on Judea. Todays real Hebrews understand who Tahaka was and what role the rest of Africa played in restoring and maintaining world peace back then. I wonder if the Hebrews then were too lazy to fight their own battles? I wish they were left to be crashed by the Persian Army! Many of today’s problems will be extinct.
My fellow America historians understand the primacy of Africa in restoring balance. Perhaps the reason why Time Magazine printed a story about Faro Tahaka when Barack Obama was first elected president.
Obama – Man, did this boy, raised by a white woman in Indonesia fool my fellow American historians, the Norwegian Nobel Prize Committee and the rest of us?
But only a student of history would understand the nuances of world history and politics. Only a civilized being would keep quiet and read, learn, listen and be moved by the interstices of knowledge. But I digress! We are after all talking about racism and racists rants here. I see.
Wont waste time on antisemitic comments…..
LOL but you don’t mind making anti-Black comments? Mental slavery is indeed deep
I like to strike a chord with facts, not just bloviating with insults without grounding. But, that too I am more than capable. My grandmother hails from Teshie and if you were Ga you would quickly grasp what I mean by it.
I provided you with a tiny piece of history and it’s making you uncomfortable already. Man, if you knew what was in my head, you will run.
I don’t discuss when people are not interested in facts but would rather deal with fancy tales that make their fragile and false worldview seem real. How slaves can be emancipated with nothing in their pockets but dust and holes can rise to become the 10th wealthiest nation on earth ( if Blacks in America were a separate nation) and yet be seen as being lazy and unproductive defies common sense
The Jewish comparison has really ticked me. The claim that Jews are harder working than Blacks in America and that is what has separated them financially is clandestine at best.
First who is a Jew but one with sub-Saharan genetic ancestory? How is the Jew genetically different from the African American if one is just lazier than the other?
Anyway, today in America, the highest educated group are West Africans (1st, 2nd and 3rd generations). Why? Are whites, Asians, Indians and Jews just that lazy? Gee…??
Well i recognise fairy-tales like these when i read them.. Keep wallowing in ignorance.
Narmer Amenuti: “Anyway, today in America, the highest educated group are West Africans (1st, 2nd and 3rd generations). Why? Are whites, Asians, Indians and Jews just that lazy? Gee…??”
The appropriate question should be: Are whites and Jews just that much stupider?
Here lies the problem with not sticking with facts and the topic. If one stoops to assigning some sort of characteristic to a group of people, to the extent of genetically assigning traits that robes them of their common Humanity, one trudges down a difficult road of no return. No civilized man does that.
Well, this is in fact Dubois’s debate, right? If the ‘Other American’ can accept the equal Humanity of African Americans (as in for example, that there is no difference between who a Jew is and who an African American is), then instead of assigning genetic differences, or even assigning a genetic basis for differences in Cultural Aspirations, one would have to look at the problem of inequality in America differently.
One must look at the social and the political paradigms. Of course, the history provides the lens through which the social and the political ought to be understand.
Once that effort is made, it will take no magic for the ‘Other American’ to accept that African American progress has been stalled not because the African American is not Human, for Laziness (which all peoples demonstrate since other people are Humans too) cannot be reserved for a whole race of people. It will take not time to recognize that the economic, social and political obstacles are real. That the problems are extra-human, that they are not due to the lack of or deficiency in the Human condition.
But, to recognise this Duboisian approach is to first be Human, and not be a Racist. There lies the problem of the color-line!
I believe you are both talking about 2 separate things. One is the historic lenses that gives a foundation to who and what we are today and definitely should and cannot be ignored. It has only been just over 200 years since the abolition of slavery-other continents and countries have been able to go through the Renaissance, Baroque, Age of reason etc eras over a few millenia- we have not had that luxury.
For 300-500 plus years our people were hunted down, packed like sardines and transported to the new world. It is estimated that between 9-11 million died during the passage alone. The number that went insane is probably higher. After the abolition of slavery came segregation which still meant you were still a slave except that you could live in your own house and not a slave master’s stable.
We all know the various struggles and length of time that finally begat the civil rights movement, colonialism, independence, apartheid . The operative word being: struggle, struggle, struggle
We have never been left alone to function. To have an age where we sailed the seas and explored, where patronage was given to our most brilliant minds in monasteries and other communities so we could produce the finest operas, symphonies, poetry and philosophical works. We have never had the research centres solely dedicated to churning and publishing on our herbs, views of astronomy, spiritual and communal lives.
Even after segregation was over we all know how white communities packed up and exited their communities with alacrity when blacks moved in leaving those towns impoverished and without access to the amenities, schools etc that also included the white church.
After colonialism we had every opportunity to change our story however let us remember that not many had been trained in governance, management, agri-business etc and the few who had were those who were trained abroad. It wasnt well organised countries with trained populations with the technical know hows on nation buildings whom the colonialists left behind. They fled after they had looted and could loot no more.
Reparations were never paid unlike with the jews after the holocaust. We never had any form of capital or in kind in the form of scholarships, universities, employment schemes etc to help us get back on our feet.
Having said that there is a fine line between the past and excuses. As a society we should evaluate ourselves in the historical context and not be too harsh on ourselves in the sense that we have not had the length of time that it takes to hone, refine and pass from a medieval gendercide barbaric society to what we refer to as a progressive.
Our ancestors were some of the most progressive people on the earth from calculus to astronomy -their brilliance was unequaled however we therefore cannot excuse the fact that at some time we stopped functioning as a people. Whether it was selling our own brothers and sisters to slave owners to the blatant degradation that our rap stars currently bestow on women to the despots we consistently elect as our president the problems that besets black society worldwide cannot continue to be excused on history alone.
We must take personal responsibility whilst pursuing historical justice through the forms of advocating for opportunities that have been consistently denied us. Whilst picking yourself up by the bootsrap is not an easy thing to do when you live in communities where there are few or little opportunities there is still personal choices. We have the opportunities our forefathers never had and whilst we should never stop seeking reparations on every level we must also begin to stop letting the past define us and become architect of our own destinies. It begins with brotherhood and ubuntu-seeing ourselves as one-both those on the continent and those in the diaspora. To recover our own dignity and collectively say ‘no more’.
Thanks Anatu Ben-Lawal….. When I say this people like Atiga Jonas Atingdui cringe.. Why because the black race hates responsibility of any kind.. All they seek is handouts. You empower the white man any time your covertly or overtly blame him for your downfall. Why give so much power to him? I haven’t denied slavery, jim crow laws etc but the jews also suffered similar fates, yet they have risen above their almost impossible evils and created the envy of the world. All black people do is sit and always blame whites for their laziness ( if you have a problem with the word laziness go into the dictionary) and woes. We are tired of these excuses, if you claim you are not, show the world what you have. Until then stop lying that Jews are sub saharan Africans… A big joke… Try writting the next harry porter series, instead of fables on this post.
Williams Rich as I mentioned earlier, I am not going to debate you on this issue because that would only lend credence to your point of view. I am going to respond for the benefit of those reading this thread who genuinely want to expand their horizons on the matter.
First of all, when people say that Africans focus too much on the past and then use Jewish people as a contrast to this supposed characteristic of Africans clearly shows that the person is not familiar with the faithfulness with which Jewish people hold to the past. In fact Jewish people are the most successful in documenting their past through books, academic articles and even movies and documentaries. They have managed to make denial of aspects of their past an illegality in many parts of Europe. Almost any city of repute has a Jewish Museum where you can find out about their Holocaust. Furthermore, they cling so much to their past that they justify their usurpation of Palestine to a supposed historical connection with ancient Israel over 2,000 years ago. They go on and justify that their special relationship with God is due to a covenant that existed over 4,000 years ago
Secondly. as I stated above emancipated slaves who were asked to go free without a dime in their pockets, no land or property to depend on as an income-generating asset were able to produce so much income that today they are the 10th or so richest nation ( if they were a nation) on earth. To describe such economically robust and productive people as lazy is just plainly dishonest and ignorant to say the least. They are richer than your country so what does that make you?
The sad thing is that you don’t even know how much your derogatory statements above actually make you lose face and credibility. It is one thing to use hyperbole to make your point but to denigrate your own people just to score cheap points with another race is itself symptomatic of Post-Slavery/colonialism trauma.
So you have two types of Negro. The old type and the new type. Most of you know the old type. When you read about him in history during slavery he was called “Uncle Tom.” He was the house Negro. And during slavery you had two Negroes. You had the house Negro and the field Negro.
The house Negro usually lived close to his master. He dressed like his master. He wore his master’s second-hand clothes. He ate food that his master left on the table. And he lived in his master’s house–probably in the basement or the attic–but he still lived in the master’s house.
So whenever that house Negro identified himself, he always identified himself in the same sense that his master identified himself. When his master said, “We have good food,” the house Negro would say, “Yes, we have plenty of good food.” “We” have plenty of good food. When the master said that “we have a fine home here,” the house Negro said, “Yes, we have a fine home here.” When the master would be sick, the house Negro identified himself so much with his master he’d say, “What’s the matter boss, we sick?” His master’s pain was his pain. And it hurt him more for his master to be sick than for him to be sick himself. When the house started burning down, that type of Negro would fight harder to put the master’s house out than the master himself would.
~Malcom X, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan. 23 January 1963.
Anatu Ben-Lawal, you see? When you say you are Human, that you shit too, but that you also eat, that in fact you have to eat first, your enemies might look at it and say, “See!, that’s all she does, shit all day!”
And that is what’s being done here to Black people in America – that whole thing ‘the black race thing…”.
It’s fair to talk about issues, internal and external, incumbent on one’s life. One set of factors does not preclude the other. However, when someone doesn’t like you, when someone partly hates you and partly despises you, they only see one thing about you – your internal problems as if that’s enough to explain away all the external factors that affect you.
Most of the black gangs have nothing to do with American slavery. They are either from the islands (Jamaican posse) or South America (Miami and the Colombian gangs) or other. But then we have the problem with Africa that wants to blame the US for slavery when they were the suppliers. Many of the states in the US were free states long before the African states were forced by the British to end their slavery. Then there is the fact that the US did end slavery in 1865 while even today some African nations still have not outlawed slavery. Now, we should not throw recriminations at Africa or at the US. Rather than whining we should be indignant at conditions today and work to stop the slavery that is rampant in radical Muslim lands.
Thank you Dick Fox, the truth hurts but we will say it anyday.
Williams Rich Thank you William. My prayer is that no one would see my comments as excusing the sins of my ancestors. But I live now today, so I must deal with the problems of now and today.
Dick Fox the history of gangs in the US takes us way back to the founding of the country. You see the European immigrants who came to America did so in waves. The First wave of European immigrants came from North and west Europe such as Germany, England and Scandinavia. These were followed in the 1800s by a second wave of immigrants from Poland, Russia, Italy, Hungary and Ireland. The second wave of immigrants were of course ready to get their stake of the opportunities in the new world and so were the first-wave immigrants so gangs developed among them to protect their “turf”. The earliest gangs were actually White and they grew from the same conditions that the later Black gangs would grow from: poverty and migration. Gangs such as The Smiths’s Vly gang, the Bowery Boys, and the Broadway Boys were White, mainly Irish.
Now with regard to Africans selling other Africans as slaves, yes that happened. So what? The US ended slavery in 1865 and replaced it with Jim Crow and other laws that would preclude economic mobility for Blacks. But through it all Blacks built their wealth in spite of this.
Blacks in America have triumphed against some very daunting odds
Speaking of radical Muslim countries how about the US not supporting and protecting Saudi Arabia the most radical of all Islamic States?
Atiga Jonas Atingdui Thanks, that was the point I was trying to make. The problems you talk about are not racial. It is not a question of racism with whites against blacks. In the US, even with horrible racism, black families were more solid than white families in the early 1900s. Black business owners were thriving. For example Harlem was one of the most prosperous communities in New York City. Today after decades of Progressive rule the black inner city has been turned strongly backward. What you attribute to racial conditions is actually political and economic.Income inequality is much worse in totalitarian societies than in republics. Rather than make excuses for bad political and economic leadership we must focus on the actual problem.
Jesus Christ. The man even misinterpreted what Anatu Ben-Lawal has written as a vindication of his self hating and vulger stance. Anatu hasn’t called blacks rubbish and lazy. Anatu has called for reparations and recognizes that we are the same people, From Nubia, Zimbabwe and Egypt, Dahomey, Shonghai and Mali, that have built empires and invented new arts and sciences and can do it again. That’s a far cry from calling all of us lazy and rubbish because we were enslaved and colonized. See the extra ordinary exposition of our past that’s been painstakingly expended here by Narmer Amenuti and Atiga Atingdui, and it still didn’t register on the man. He repeats the falsehood about the black man and Jewish this and Jewish that.
The Jews did survive pogroms in Europe. Blacks have survived two episodes of slavery. But he has no way of knowing that the Amerindians were all but wiped out. He doesn’t know that the Aborigines of Australian are finished. He only sees lazy blacks who did not make it merely because their nations are still developing after less than 60 years of independence. He would respond that why compare with people who are all but extinct. I would say why not. It defeats his shambolic logic that blacks are to blame for their fate, because others have risen beyond the bloodbath.His idea of others starts and stops with Israel.
What fate anyway? Compare us to others who were colonised but not enslaved, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal. Then let’s go to South and Central America. Forget about the wealthy black Islands in the Caribbean. Forget about the ten or so states in Africa with less than 50 years post independence whose indicators are better than far older countries in Asia. Forget portuguese running back to Angola and Mozambique. He would say hey, look at Korea, Japan, Singapore. Fine. I can also look at Burma, Laos and Cambodia. Are they Switzerland? Together with them we must all be lazy dimwitted guys.
So, filled with whatever it is that he is filled with, he cannot see black excellence past or present and he is blind to worse outcomes for people who are not Africans after their encounter with European expansionism. Does he know who the Arawak Indians were and who made them vanish? Let’s tackle his last myth, that Jews are the envy of the world. That may be true and I am an admirer of Jewish resilience and inventiveness. But a whole lot of people have been resilient and inventive. Amenians, Ethiopians, Iranians, Soviets emerging from penury and mass slaughter to beat America to space, Rwandans after the genocide.
I bet these places would be like Israel if they were created under a British military umbrella, receive billions and billions of military and economic aid from America and are guaranteed protection under a friendly American nuclear shield. What the Germans did to the Jews was horrible. What the European did to us was worse over 400 years, but accidently vast sections of American power see the Jews as God’s chosen people, or a virtual military garrison in the Mediterranean. This is accidental and not the doing of the Jews. Maybe he is referring to Jewish economic and scientific prowess. Though they are again not alone in this(blacks and other races also have several patents to their names), it is not something that occurred overnight.
It took centuries when jews were part of European institutions. Jews were in European, especially German technical establishments over several centuries. They controlled vast sections of finance before the Holocaust. They did this as ordinary residents of Europe, even affluent and influential residents. They simply transfered this to America. You must know that Jews did not go to America to endure the same persecution as blacks, and they rose up by their bootstraps as blacks stood there. Jews came with their wealth and networks.
In contrast how old are most of the black states? Give the Dangotes and others a fraction of that time within their own state framework and we can also point to something and say shhh. ..these people are awesome, even if we have been awesome in the past. It is the visceral self hate you must unburden yourself of first. Then you will see.
You are confused and have your facts messed up. You confidently talk about independence less than 60 years and compare to countries like India etc… Thats too far, in 1960 Ghana had a higher GDP than South Korea for your information, today south Korea is a developed nation Ghana is wallowing in abject poverty? You claim jews transfered their wealth into Europe? You know what, i was told that some people write because they have something credible to say, other’s just write because they want to say something, howbeit anything even if it makes sense to their distorted mind. It intresting, you just affirmed the position of the black race, complains, excuses and laziness. If South korea could transform itself from third world to first world in the same time frame where Ghana is wallowing in the mud, i will advise you not sing lies just to make you feel good as a race. I dont have time for antisemitic comments and lies pilfered by the ignorant. If the black race is resilient and intelligent, they should prove it to me with facts. As i write all they so called black advocates including you, typing and Atiga Jonas Atingdui, can only enumerate past evils but to confidently engage me with real stories that show a black race that has beaten all odds like Jews, will always happen in your dreams. What a shame… I know how to recognise wishful thinking and dreams when i see them.
How could I predict you so easily? I wrote that you would mention South Korea and you have not disappointed. South Korea and so what. South and Central America had independence a century or so before us.Are they developed? These are people of the same culture by and large as their colonizers. Are they also lazy and idiotic? Can you ask the Colombians and Bolivians why they are lazy per your logic? Nothing, absolutely nothing you have written here amounts to a refutation. Just repeatitions. Just Answer me. Are all the other developing postindependent states of the world also lazy? Ask the Indians, who had independent before us and are still not developed. Because your knowledge is limited you are only obsessed with a handful of maginal cases. Ghana -South Korea blah blah blah. I have told you our resilience is already proven by the fact that others have vanished, gone, disappeared. But you can’t even see knowledge when it is being fed you. You are so good at cheap labels. Anti-Semitic you cry. Do you even know what that means? You say Ghana is wallowing in the mud? what does that mean in a substantive way, say infant mortality , life expectancy, literacy rate, etc. Have you cared to look and compare with the world? If you did you cannot exactly conclude that Ghana, Botswana, Namibia, Cape Verde, Zambia and others, not to mention almost all of the black carribean, are in any way wallowing in the mud. My friend you don’t know anything. I can predict that I might as well be talking to a wall.
Johnson Ayoka south Korea and so what… Shame on you, south korea is the exception to the rule…. Thats a big joke … its people like you who will crown mediocrity as king, you confidently say south America has developmental problems and so why dont i call them out. I guess you love comparing your self with failures.. Dont have time for lazy black people, who can’t even defend their own territorial borders and always give silly excuses . What a disgrace, so you overtly admit we are just like south Americans, losers.
No. Per your logic, not mine. Infact, the opposite is true.They and the Indians and us are not losers. The implication of your stance is that more than half the world is lazy, which is ridiculous and imposible. The one percent cannot be the rule. No where is it the rule. If you have eyes to look you will see that the ex-colonized world is doing fantastic, developing at a pace that took the west hundreds of years. The least you can do is not to mistake the undermining of your logic and insults as excuses. They are not.
Ghana is in abject poverty? A lower middle income country is in abject poverty? One would think that some one who is such a fervent admirer of the western world that Williams Rich would at least respect the rational and empirical methods of deduction but instead he is steeped in superstition. Facts mean nothing to him they simply get sucked into his mental Black-hole and are never heard of again.
He says Africans are migrating but is oblivious that of the 15 million Jews only about 6 million live in Israel, the rest are all outside. In fact they have the highest percentage of any country to have a majority of their people outside their country. So why denigrate Africa for also having a few people outside Africa? But if one is lazy why would one migrate? It would seem to me that remaining in one’s country would be the better hallmark of a lazy people rather than to embrace the frontier spirit of economic conquest in strange lands.
Atiga Jonas Atingdui….you seem to confuse my anger with you blacks as a collective race with individuals . There are great men who have defied odds as black people and written history in the face of all odds. There are also people of other races who are good for nothing as individuals. It will be dishonest to mix my anger with blacks as group (majority) with each and every individual. The black race, be it African or American is very reactionary in thought. You tell me more jews live outside Israel. Question, are they migrating because the loathe Israel? Africans are migrating because they hate their countries, they seek so called “greener” pastures in places like Qatar( even Qatar is considered heaven over here in Ghana, the impudence) As individuals there are hardworking blacks, many who seek a better life by breaking their backs daily with hardwork. It will be dishonest to call them lazy. However collectively as nations we are not able to make changes that will lift the population out of economic degradation. There is too much despondency on the continent…. We have what it takes to be the best as a people, we just seem incapable of harnessing our strengths because people like you are always blaming ths whiteman, instead of harnessing our internal strength. The day we become proactive as a people, is when change will be eminent.
This is why I stated on your wall that your posts lack academic rigor, they are too basic. When someone says for instance Africans migrate because they hate Africa it betrays a certain lack of appreciation for facts.
The great majority of migrants from Africa are ECONOMIC migrants. They travel outside like the majority of other people for economic reasons. This is what you don’t seem to get. The same reasons why Europeans are in Zimbabwe, Botswana, South Africa, Australia, South and North America and Asia is the exact reason why Africans are also found outside Africa. It is called economic migration and it is the leading cause of global migration. In all your posts you have shown such a disrespect for facts that it is useless to discuss these matters with you.
Hahahaha…. You lump the investor and the pauper in the same category. They say statistics dont lie, but you can lie with statistics. I rest my case…
A little knowledge is indeed dangerous. Do you think the European populations in Zimbabwe, South Africa, South and north America were investors when they first appeared?? A great majority of them came with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Some were even prisoners such as the Europeans who were sent to Australia.
Which investors are you talking about?
There he goes again with his shambolic logic and disrespect for facts. You are one big piece of work. African migration to Europe or America will never reach the massive European flight out of Europe. One third of Swedes left. The English, the Germans, basically the whole Irish nation. In fact Europe moved itself to Australia, New Zealand, Canada, America. They run away. Did it mean that these European nations as a people were so lazy, stupid, and clueless that their people run away? No. Migration is a part of the human experience. It cannot be used to characterise the lands from which the people fled in far far higher numbers than Africans will ever flee anywhere. Economic degradation my foot! You don’t know what that means and you have no way of comparing the state of Italy in 1880 when people were fleeing and the state of development relatively now in say Namibia, Zambia, Gambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana the era from the 70s to late 80s when these people could go to the UK visa free, and still didn’t go. You have much to learn about the world. I refer you first of all to the Swede Hans Rosling. Then do a bit reading about Africa and black carribean nations like Trinidad. A bit of European history too, especially the 30 years war and the Irish famine. Then come and let’s talk.
I have had it. But, I am thoroughly comfortable knowing full well that this perksnifian mummery put forth by the tartuffes in Williams Rich and Dick Fox has fooled not one of us. The pharisaism of racists rants espoused by whited sepulchers and shrouded in a so called disputation are just cants and bilious slander about Blacks everywhere and African Americans in particular! Nothing more.
Hahahaha.. Blacks are alwys comfortable crying foul, playing the victim and believing that the world owes them. Nobody has had it more than me….. What a disgraceful race. If you put a ship in any African port today and say, free visa to be a slave in America, voluntary jump on the ship, i can promise you the ship, will sink at the African port even before it set sail. A race that will willingly go back to slavery? And you cry foul….. We can’t even manage our own resources our youths in despondency . You write bodly, that you have had it, you should bow your head in shame.
I wonder how this nescience makes you sleep at night? You mean when your benighted Kazarian paupers in the millions jumped on a ship, and nearly sunk it at the port, having consumed most of Europe’s resources without thinking, and not able to live in it anymore, and set sail for Palestine? To take other people’s lands? You mean when Europeans were killing each other and robbing one anothers’ belongings, selling them in order to buy passage to America and to Africa? You mean those days when Europeans had expended their own resources, were starving and had to get to Africa and the Americas in order to survive?
You describe not Africa. You have captured fully the essence, the mentality, the attitude and the level of barbarism of the European. I guess you have amnesia though! Whiteness can do that to a person. You are herewith diagnosed – you suffer from a terrible disease called whiteness. I wish I was there when you first caught the disease. I would have smacked it from your jaws. But hell, suffer!
In the words of William Shakespeare, “Me thinks you protest too much.” There is black racism and just as white racism destroyed the progress of the southern states in the US black racism is empowering tyrants too may struggling societies.
n the words of William Shakespeare, “Me thinks you protest too much.” There is black racism and just as white racism destroyed the progress of the southern states in the US black racism is empowering tyrants too may struggling societies.
What conniption! What ambidexterity! What sanctimony! I will need you for 3 exclusive years to provide you with the materials to fully grasp a word like Racism. Then I would have to provide you with a comprehensive exam to make sure you pass the material. You quote Shakespeare but you fail to understand why you quote him. Should I care? And this is why you fail to understand that a word like Racism rests fully in the grasp of history.
“All our phrasing—race relations, racial chasm, racial justice, racial profiling, white privilege, even white supremacy—serves to obscure that racism is a visceral experience, that it dislodges brains, blocks airways, rips muscle, extracts organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth… The sociology, the history, the economic, the graphs, the charts, the regressions all land, with great violence, upon the body.”
But how would you know that? You suffer from whiteness. So, hell, suffer on.
Dick Fox… Thanks… Tell them to shut up… They have all they ask, they should prove to the world they capable.
Narmer Amenuti To help you understand racism consider the racist content of the following. Black power you accept; white power you condemn. Racism. Black lives matter you accept; all lives matter your reject. Racism. White privilege you condemn; Black privilege you promote. Racism. A beauty contest based on race (Miss Black America) you accept; a beauty contest that would include only white Americans you would reject. Racism. I could go on but the picture is clear where there is racism.
Narmer Amenuti There is a right wing talk show host called Michael Savage. I detest him because he cannot go for 15 seconds (literally, I have timed him) without calling someone a vile name. I think you beat Michael Savage.
That’s it? See? This is not my wall. It belongs to Atiga Jonas Atingdui. I will respect his wall and not indulge in this diatribe of yours and Willies’! You are the Master, and that’s your House Negro. It only gets worse for the both of you. One day I shall invite you on my wall and I shall describe the both of you fully – the Teshie-way!
Some of the comments on this article by Williams Rich are quite troubling. I have no idea if I should respond to them or not. Atiga Jonas Atingdui, Johnson Ayoka, Narmer Amenuti and Akosua M. Abeka tried to beat some sense into the man but alas! Man, some Africans are very very interesting…
I have figured it out. I understand now. It is clearly cognitive. The mind is rigged to think and say the same things 1000 times. That is the thing. A zombie. There is no doubt about this. Fundamentally, zombies know one thing, no curve, bend or reverse, even in the face of new knowledge.
Interesting piece. Didn’t get a chance to read the article this author was responding to but pretty sure I understand all the arguments that guy could have made.
Yes there is a history which cannot be ignored of how blacks have been economically marginalized.
I am of the view that you can’t change the past but you can definitely impact the future both for the positive and negative.
History serves as lessons to draw strength and inspiration from. What am against is using historical facts as escapism for the present.
When we get our pay checks and quickly spend all our money on recapitalizing the global elite and their businesses instead of investing in our communities and self owned businesses as well as education, then yes the wealth gap will continue to grow astronomically.
Black people in America are essentially the only ethnicity that has no understanding of group economics and circulating money within your own communities.
So yes we can keep blaming history but you can’t change your past.
Case in point before the recent financial crisis, there were many black owned banks in the city of Chicago. Most of these went out of business simply because of recapitalization. If only the so called black people in that city including the very wealthy ones had injected a minimal amount some of these would have been saved. You would only do that if you truly understood that black owned banks would be more friendly to lending to black individuals and businesses and not discriminate or profile them but most of us just don’t get how this works.
So while we are busy blaming the past, we are becoming victims of the present and the future as well.
It makes no sense asking the people you believe to be your oppressors to create opportunities for you. What possible incentives do they have for doing this? You need to create opportunities for yourself.
Our troubled past should in no way free us from achieving a better future.
Ares Mars, the debate has absolutely nothing to do with what must be done. As in what Black people must do. The debate is about what has brought more than 30 million people to abject poverty since slavery in a country that seems to boast of the richest collection of whites in the world. It certainly has nothing to do with how 30 million people could not invest in one another.
What your line of argument achieves is this (1) don’t face the facts of the past (2) do not strive to reconcile differences as a nation (3) Blacks should build an economic block separate from that of whites for example.
From the historical context, it will not be for the lack of trying that Blacks still sit at the bottom of the fountain. None of the implications of your suggestion are pragmatic unless the nation splits. In the end, the USA must be analyzed as a nation with diverse ethnicities in which some, particular Black people, are disenfranchised and marginalized by an all-powerful overwhelming majority since slavery.
The talk of segregated economics, segregated markets and segregated finances make for nice and easy chiding of Blacks but achieve nothing. The USA should be judged as a nation that has failed to fully integrate its people. It’s just that simple.
I will give an example in Ghana. After independence our nation was split from an educational achievement perspective. Ghana, although a result of the bulkanization of African states decided to fully integrate our nation North and South, East and West through educational reforms tailored for the particular needs of each region. We’re not perfect, but we don’t throw villagers in jail because they cannot afford a lawyer!
Narmer Amenuti you raise some valid points and questions which am going to quickly address sir.
1) am not implying people completely disregard the past. I clearly stated that one needs to draw from the lessons of the past to create a better future.
2) to the point that the country as a whole must be nation where some are disenfranchised, that happens everyday and is happening as i type and for the most part nothing will change as a result.
3) never implied that black people have a split economy. That would not make any sense as at all so let me clarify myself with some examples.
Investigate Jewish owned business and conglomerates and how they conduct their business primarily to advance their own agenda.
Investigate what the Koreans have done with the beauty industry especially the hair industry which is a billion dollar business where the main consumers are black women.
Let’s not even talk about how Chinese owned businesses dominate every major hood in every state. Investigate how these businesses are setup and how they piggy back off each other to create an eco system for building wealth.
So yes you can practice group economics in the US as well as the global marketplace.
People have been doing this for years. This is just an unintended consequence of diversity.
The article did complain about financial institutions predatory lending to black people and the imbalances in opportunities available to blacks.
In the US one of the key ways to build wealth is by investing in real estate. If you had more financial institutions that were sensitive to the needs of black people don’t you think blacks would have more opportunities to build wealth?
I recommend powernomics by Dr Anderson. Check it out
Ares Mars you think Jews started from the bottom and struggled their way up in America? wrong.They came to America already owning centuries old financial assets, networks and know how through an accident of history. It is not something they planned. The comparison misses the point. You compare Koreans and Jews, who are not necessarily races but ethnic groups, with blacks, a very diverse racial group. Ethnic groups are more homogeneous and concerted than racial groups. A profitably venture will be to compare Koreans, Jews, Punjabis, with Tamils, Italians from the Island of Sicily etc. I get sick when I hear Ghanaians, a nationality, being compared with Lebanese shia business networks, an ethnic operation. Instead compare Kwahu business networks with Lebanese and see if the Kwahus will not hold their own. I get sicker when the broad mass of blacks in America as a race are compared with Koreans from Korea. Very poor methodology. Blacks have been through very exceptional experiences. The least we can do is to stop boxing them up with incomparable groups who land in America already with an advantage at least in terms of ethic mobilization and transnational support. The groups that fit these analogies in terms of an ethnic, not racial, organizational logic are Ashanti, Yuroba, Igbo, Hausa etc transnational business networks. That is when the comparative exercise will be fair. With these advantages, which manifests in most of their parents landing in America with degrees, see how native Africans are flooding the Ivy league.
Nonetheless, my friend Atiga Atingdui has showcased how black enterprise by groups of blacks who resorted to a geographic mobilizing strategy were set upon and crushed. I read about red lining in the housing market elsewhere, and I get the impression that it is not for want of trying. Perhaps, a different strategy is being worked out. But certainly they can’t follow the footsteps of the koreans. They are not Koreans.
Ares Mars your points are valid, but you fall prey to the same direction of argument like the other fellow.
My point was NOT to devise ways of closing the wealth gap. That is an entirely different topic one that I would be amenable to discuss at a later date and time. I was trying to trace the long umbilical chord of history that leads to the mother of causes of the wealth gap, any criticism of my arguments should be along those lines.
This seems to be a problem for Black people, as soon as you present an historical analysis of events one is immediately bombarded with accusations of having an unhealthy love for the past. I can proffer a description of the past without being neglectful of the present and future. That was and is my bone of contention with the other fellow.
Johnson Ayoka makes a very valid point. Most people who use Jews or Koreans as an example forget the homogeneity of those ethnic groups as opposed to the diversity of a nation such as Ghana. The Ashantis would do business first with a fellow Ashanti and the same goes for the other ethnic groups.
But let’s not also forget that an Ashkenazi Jew would be less amenable to do business with a Falasha Jew or a Sephardim Jew. The notion that Jews are just open to do business with fell,ow Jews is not entirely accurate. Go to Israel and see how African Jews are treated.
Ares Mars, Powernomics by Dr Anderson is an interesting book. I think we should make time to discuss some of its unnerving deliberations.
That said, you would also notice a thread in this book that clearly marks how the ethnicities (which are important in forming business relationships even in the modern world) were stripped off Africans when they were forced against their will to work for free on American Plantations – building the foundations for America’s Industrial Revolution.
The point Atiga Jonas Atingdui, Johnson Ayoka and Narmer Amenuti are making is not exclusive to financial success of Blacks in America nor is it exclusive to their integration into the vast expanse of the American economic milieu.
But, 400 years of cutting the “umbilical chord” as Atiga would put it, that connects Africans in America to even a common ethnicity (or various ethnicites, if that were to be) stripped them of a valuable assert in business and commerce – Trust and Relationships. Do not also presume that Blacks in American haven’t worked to mend these palpable cultural fractions. If anything, one must admit that the States and Federal Governments of the US have worked tirelessly to make sure this cultural mending actually did not happen fully.
Add to this the casual everyday happenings of a violent White Inferiorist ideology upon the innocent lives of a poor community of African Americans.
This 400 years of history is important to understanding how African Americans seem to drop harder during economic downturns to the bottom in an undulating economic terrain that the US has been for the past 100 years.
To say that all African Americans need to do is MORE! WORK HARDER! TRY HARDER! And still, if not enough, MORE! This is unfair especially when we fail to also critique the extenuating circumstances why African Americans must work HARDER!
However, to do better, or more, which Ares, you do hope for, in order to advance and forestall any eventualities that White Inferiority might throw at them, there’s the need, we must admit, to fully document, understand and teach the historical reasons underlying the lack of substantive progress in the African American community.
Again, it is not for the lack of trying, if they have to just try harder. There are as we can appreciate, extenuating circumstances.