This may sound like a silly quesion, but I think that is very important to ask this. What color is money?
After you take a second to think about it, let me explain to you why I ask this question.
Africans in America seem to have a warped idea of what the color of money really is. In school we are never really taught its true color, nor does our neighborhoods inform us. Where am I going with this? Here’s where:
The Jewish: Owns a lot of the media you and I watch today. They understand the color of money. When you go to a popular movie funded by Jewish money they aren’t pushing the movie only to Jews.
The Asian: Produces a lot of the technology you and I use today. They understand the color of money. When you purchase a Sony television it wasn’t manufactured to cater to Asians only.
The European: Owns just about everything else that is tangible. They understand the color of money. There’s no discrimination when money opens its mouth.
The African (American): Everything we make we want it to cater to, or be a ‘black’ product. We usually open the same types of businesses, too (rib shack, clothing line, rim shop, barber shop, African influenced product store, record label, etc.) There’s two major problems with this thinking.
- Unlike everyone else, your money has a color other than green. You are seeking ‘Black’ dollars. Even if you say you aren’t, you are subconsciously. Black dollars don’t exist! Dollars are green.
- Black people haven’t reached a point of really liking themselves yet. So while the idea of Black dollars is good, Black people usually love to buy White products over our own (e.g. Ralph Lauren, Louis Vuitton, etc.)
WHAT ABOUT OUR ENTERTAINERS?!
This is the MOST important part of this post. The Asian, the European, the Indian, etc. all make money off of goods that benefit their communities. The African American gets paid off of entertainment, but it’s sort of like a circus side show. You’d pay to see a man swallow a sword! You’d pay to see a man wrestle with tigers or be fired out of a cannon. You’d also pay to see a man destroy himself. Every other nationality is paying us to see us destroy ourselves. We talk about killing each other. We talk about cheating on our wifes. We talk about using and selling drugs nonstop. We have become and international phenomena! Everyone else is getting paid to provide products that people feel they need. We get paid to look like clowns and show our stupidity.
I guess at the end of a hard days work any other race can throw on some black music and say to themselves, “Yeah, today was horrible, but at least I’m not as messed up as these people. Thank you God!”
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
on the one hand, i don’t see much issue with us having businesses that are targeted to us, because every ethnic group does the same; however, i think it’s imperative to also diversify and offer goods and/or services that are desirable to a larger percentage of the entire population. it’s also important to make sure that we ourselves have control. if we can agree that our “talent” (or most desired commodity) as a group is entertainment, then we should educate ourselves in how to make sure that we’re not being exploited, either by others reaping the bulk of the economic benefits or by being forced by them to provide a destructive product. if we’re the best entertainers, we should be running the entertainment industry, whether it’s sports, music, or dance.
i do think that we’re entering a time where we’re beginning to be more educated about the business side of entertainment, though, so i’m glad about that. we’re starting to see more Black sports agents/managers, instead of just athletes, and production/distribution labels instead of just artists.
i hope that as this trend progresses, the exploitative and destructive images will decrease because we’ll be more knowledgeable and there’ll be more people behind the scenes with a vested interest in the message these performers are sending to their people.
Excellent post! check out the book by Dr. Chika A. Onyeani, Capitalist Nigger, The Road to Success..it talks about this theory as well.
Thanks! I appreciate the book link too. I’ll have to check it out.
I don’t think this is necessarily true. There are several factors that are not being taken into account in this article, including but not limited to:
1. MANY MANY of the inventions that have come out of the African American community are not/were not marketed strictly to the AA community, such as traffic lights, open heart surgery, the cotton gin, rock and roll music, etc.
2. MANY MANY of the inventions that have come out of the African American community, whether they were intentionally marketed to AAs or not, were misappropriated by other groups and credit for intellectual rights to these inventions was never given. For that reason, a sort of mistrust of ‘the other’ created an interest in focusing on products and services for us by us.
3. The other groups listed have the same issues, but are in a different part of the process. I VERY OFTEN feel that certain entertainment/products/services do not include me in their target market, and I agree that I have no interest in that movie/gadget/service. And I don’t lose sleep over it.
4. I live in Seoul and the majority of my clients are sales reps, business strategists, and engineers for Samsung, SK, LG, etc, and please allow me to assure you that although they use Korea as a base/test market, they definitely have the ultimate goal of expanding sales to foreign markets. These biggest markets are other “the Asian” markets, like Japan, China, India, Singapore, and other Southeast Asian and Central Asian populations.
5. This isn’t really a factor, it’s more an example. Isn’t BET owned by white ppl? Better yet, weren’t Morehouse, Spelman, and my own alma mater, CAU, started by white ppl? THEY definitely see/saw black dollars. Do these institutions ‘destroy’ the AA community?
6. If you think Europeans, Asians, and Indians don’t offer products and services that destroy their own communities, you should DEFINITELY get out more. Read some Russian history, learn about the Indian caste system that is alive and well today, study up on Japanese and Chinese imperialism on the Han peninsula, esp. the state of North Korea today. Visit the Killing Fields in Cambodia and spend some time in Scotland and Ireland to see the way that religion and alcohol have been used to slowly poison the communities from the inside out.
Moral of the story: We ALL have a common foe, and this foe HAS no color, nor speaks a certain language. By dividing this issue into cultures or ethnicities, we are distracting and dividing ourselves enough to allow the foe to continue. This is part of the problem, not part of the solution.
The destruction, as I see it, is from the inside out.
When I made mention of other ethnic groups I plainly stated that they know the color of money. Example: Most of the African American hair products sold today were not made by an African American company. Therefore, whoever it is who is in fact making these products understands the law of supply and demand. They seen an opening in the market and went in. Their nationality has no relevance because a product speaks for itself. Knowing this and the color of money helped them to grow healthy businesses. Whatever the institution is, be it educational or not, ultimately the color of money remains the same, green!
A common foe?
The division is a tool of analysis to make a correct judgment (or at least attempt to.) In any formula we have to look at all of the elements within it. We have to compare one amount to another in order to come up with a correct solution. In any sport, one team will spend countless hours viewing another teams performance, why? Observation is and always has been a tool for learning the best possible way of approaching things. For us to look beyond us and see what it is that is helping other groups to find success I don’t feel is a problem. I actually feel that it may be the solution.