Recently, in a YouTube video, an African American, Dr. George C. Fraser, cited a study that said that if nothing changes, it will take African Americans 228 years, if ever, to close the wealth gap between Black and white Americans, but it will take Hispanics 89 years to close that gap!
Dr. Fraser said studies have shown that Black people will have no money in a market-based economy in a Democratic capitalist society and that we are working our way into a second slavery, if we don’t act to do something about it. The video was short, and did not give detailed reasons for why this conclusion was reached, nor did it name the study! Fraser said that Black people need their (our) a$$es kicked and that our ancestors and forefathers must be rolling over in their graves. The question remains though: is he right?
When we talk about a market economy, we’re discussing the means to attain economic self-sufficiency. It is no secret that the United States was able to leap-frog over a number of other countries in the accumulation of wealth due to the fact that they had free labor for over 240 years.
Moreover, they either stole or flat out took land from the indigenous population, giving them a distinct advantage in the real estate arena. After all, if you don’t pay for land, and you have free labor to work it, you have a very, VERY great advantage over others who did not use that strategy to acquire wealth. White Americans, the colonists and interlopers, were able to reach great economic heights due to nefarious practices.
In addition to this, during their plundering and pillaging activities, they enacted as many impediments as possible to keep others from playing on the economic field that they created. They took the Native Americans’ land and stuck them in small corners of the country called reservations. They kept their slave population handicapped, and the miraculous and precious few were able to acquire some modicum of wealth, but the vast majority has been hopelessly locked out.
So, when we look at the differences between the projected accumulation of wealth between Black and Hispanic people, it becomes perfectly clear that the Black communities were at a far greater disadvantage when compared to their Latin counterparts. American chattel slavery was a particularly cruel institution that sought to deprive Black people of their humanity. This conditioning has had an impact that is observable to this day.
The Black community has been subjected to psychological warfare, and has been fed a steady diet of white supremacist dogma that continues to thwart Black progress. We must remember that in some arenas Black people were considered 3/5ths of a person, and if the truth be told, some white supremacists still see the community as almost quasi-human, which provides them with the justification for treating Black people the way they do.
This situation is not all doom and gloom, however.
The reality of life is that resistance makes us stronger; diamonds are created under pressure. When we exercise, it is the resistance that makes our muscles develop. The oppression that the Black community has experienced is creating Black human “diamonds” who are achieving on every level of society.
Of course, there are the laggards, the ones who, unfortunately, have not been able to break out of the prison mindset of self-hatred and, therefore, turn inward on the community like destructive human viruses who seem hell-bent on killing and maiming Black people. They garner a great deal of attention. But that’s only half the story.
We must not lose sight of the fact that Blacks are achieving in spite of extreme oppression. We have accomplished miraculous feats even as we have endured huge obstacles. It is almost magical. If we can accomplish what we have with the obstacles that we’ve faced, just think of what we could do if we were compensated for all of those years of free labor and maltreatment!
Actually, this is what is needed: Black people need repair, and this should take the form of REPARATIONS! If we push for that on a unified front, the prediction that Dr. Fraser made about doom and gloom will go up in smoke! A Luta Continua.
