I often wondered just how deep did White hate go for Black excellence. And while I haven’t gotten to the full extent of it, having done research for the past two months, it is crystalized in my mind that they hated Us. I mean damn, if you take some time and look into the annals of history, you find that there are sooo many successful Black entrepreneurs. You see the success of a Maggie Walker, C.C. Spaulding, Dr. Aaron Moore, John Merrick, Walter Edwards, Granville T . Woods, Henry Boyd, Francois and Julien Lacroix, Jean Baptiste and Augustin Metoyer, Lucy McWorter, Henrietta S. Duterte, Elleanor Eldridge, CeCee Macarty, Marie Thereze Coincoin and so on. I can continue to list the names of Black male and female entrepreneurs in the annals of history. So many that it disgusts me to see just how under-represented and under-reported Black business history is and has been. What it does is make crystal clear just how much White America feared and despised Black people.

I said that I was going to be writing a series of stories to promote and uplift the Black community, and in particular the Black business community. See what was known about Slavery and Jim Crow doesn’t really begin to tell the detailed story about just how perverse and intentional White America was with belittling, devaluing, embarrassing, delegitimizing, suppressing, dehumanizing and disenfranchising Black people. Did you know that back during the Antebellum South days, because of the laws on the books that didn’t recognize Blacks as people and citizens of this country, if a Black slave invented something they could not get patent credit for it. The credit for the invention went to the White Slave owner. History has shown that Blacks invented many things that we use today. Maybe, just maybe some of the credit given to White men for creating inventions we consider revolutionary, doesn’t belong to them at all. Because of the system of suppression and oppression and enslavement, Blacks never got their full credit for the things they invented.

I think back to the free Blacks and the Slaves during Colonial times in the United States and I wonder how they really felt about having to scratch and claw for everything they earned. Having their dreams and creations taken away from them. To have credit given to a White man who didn’t do a damn thing and you have to accept it because the laws and customs of the country precluded you from having your say. You couldn’t go to court, you couldn’t testify, you couldn’t hold political office. None of the levers of control you operated, you were just along for the ride. And yet, with knowing all of this they persisted. Black men and women didn’t quit when they were stripped of everything. When racist and prejudiced Whites destroyed their businesses and homes, they didn’t quit. When the Slave master raped women and forced them to have their babies, they didn’t quit. Black people kept fighting and kept finding ways to succeed in a country designed to destroy them.

Take a look at what happened in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Atlanta, Georgia, Chicago, Illinois, Harlem, New York, Durham, North Carolina. These places were epicenters of Black business ingenuity and success. Places where Blacks built significant wealth and showed themselves to be equal to their White counterparts. And places where Whites, disgusted and outraged that Black entrepreneurs were maintaining, and in most cases, significantly growing their wealth, that they had to destroy the business community. They had to try to eradicate the Black businessman and businesswomen. In Tulsa they effectively destroyed the Greenwood district. Although, little by little the descendants of that once thriving Black business district are working to try and restore the lore and prestige of that hallowed land. The Black business district in Durham, known affectionately as Hayti, is still producing quality, sustained Black business and the descendants of their once sprawling, thriving business district are working to lift it back to similar stature. After the Atlanta race riots, the city leaders didn’t back down and Black business has continued to boom in Atlanta and expand. It is thriving and continues to be a place that many potential Black entrepreneurs come to get their foot in the door. All these places Whites tried to destroy because it ran counter to the narrative they were so skilled and persistent with delivering to the masses of this country. That narrative being that Blacks were ignorant, we aren’t intelligent enough to establish and run successful businesses. That we can’t be trusted and that we are animals, barbarians that need to be contained and controlled.

These are the words used to describe us when Slavery was brought to this country and kept in tact for hundreds of years. The same refrain was used post Slavery, during Reconstruction, when Whites didn’t want to integrate freed Blacks into the economic, social, and political mainstream of America. This narration was used to justify the need for Jim Crow Laws in the South and Segregation in the North. These reasons were used when the New Deal was being crafted, made law and excluded Blacks because of Southern insistence that Whites were superior to Blacks. This refrain was used during the Civil Rights Movement to explain why it was okay to allow police dogs to maim Black people. To explain why lynching Black people wasn’t a crime and why it was humane, because we were animals with no souls and we deserved this treatment. It is used today when Whites want to try and delegitimize the push by the Black Lives Matter Movement because we refused to protest in the manner they thought we should. Because they want to change the dynamics and don’t want to accept White talking points with little action.

Let me be clear here, notice I have not separated White groups in this writing. Because all iterations of the Republican and Democratic parties have been racist, prejudicial and demeaning to the Black community. Neither party has truly followed through on the promises of full equality for the Black community. Reparations is something that needs to happen. Look at history with a clear eye and you can see that, damn what these dumb asses say. Let that Booker T Washington mind set go. Proving your success doesn’t get you shit but more challenges if you’re Black. The race can’t continue to be ran when we’re starting a mile behind. Business equality still isn’t any closer to a reality than it was at the end of Slavery, and every era that followed. Consumer equality has never existed in this country, despite the half assed laws on the books that aren’t stringently enforced. I want this to be a clear message: History has never been fully, nor correctly told by White America or by the mainstream media of America. If you want to earn the trust of the Black community and want our support, start by fully supporting us. Give us an equal bite at the apple and level the playing field. Then, you might just stand a chance at earning back the trust that has been destroyed at your own hands.

Speak to me America.

One way to really get a Conservative White person mad.. tell them that you’re going to teach Critical Race Theory in history classrooms across this country. I mean that will “chap their ass” faster than anything. See from everything that I keep reading, and seeing on this topic, so many parents are outraged that schools want to teach real American history, and not this hyper Patriotic bull shit they taught for so many years. They make the Civil War seem so Black and White, when it wasn’t. They love to make it seem like it was a choice for us to be in this country. And conversely, they make it seem to so easy for us to just leave the country and go back to our motherland. Knowing that the resources have been depleted heavily and the access to good and quality healthcare isn’t the same. Maybe if you give us back all the gold and minerals and resources back that were taken when we were enslaved we can leave this country is peace.

I am always tickled when the discussion comes to teaching real American History just how much White folks get mad at that idea. They love to say that the way history has been taught for decades is just fine, why do we want to further divide our kids and this nation. It is my opinion that this fucking country has always been vastly divided because of the poor and distrustful way that American history has been taught in classroom through history books in this country. The fact that White people get credited with so many inventions, yet they love to tell the stories of how they had they slaves, Black people, making and building everything. If that is the case then how the fuck can they be responsible for all of these inventions? Yes, I think there is a big fuckin omission in history, as presently told, for the full contributions of Black people in this country. I also think that history is slightly distorted when discussing the Civil War. Yes, in part the war was over the North and South trying to “free” the slaves, but to be clear many of those in power in the North owned slaves as well as. There were and still are portions of the North that weren’t very friendly to Black people. Yet that doesn’t really get covered much in the telling of American history in classrooms across this nation either.

I get very annoyed when I hear so many of the supposed to be outraged parents spewing ignorance because they don’t want their children to be taught equality. They just want them to be brainwashed to thinking that how history has been told is the only way. That their people had a moral struggle to determine what was the right thing to do and in the end only they made the decision to free Black people during that Civil War. Then they casually gloss over the fact that even after being “freed” we still had to deal with Jim Crow and Segregation. We still had to deal with “separate but equal”. Which we know full damn well won’t shit equal about that time period equal. They’re satisfied with there being only that weak ass month in February for Black History. That is enough in their minds. They don’t really want the true trails and challenges put before Black people to become known. Because if we do that, then they have to accept that they were racist and prejudice. They have to answer questions from their children as to why they treated us unfairly. They would have to come to grips with the wrong doings of their Grandfathers or Grandmothers. Great grandparents that may still be living and they can’t do that.

They want to preserve their history and the place that their families have in the rich story that is America. They don’t want to look at the facts that they took the land from the Native Americans and forced them to retreat to smaller plots of land throughout the country. They don’t want to accept the fact that they brought and traded people for use and to pay off debts. Indentured Servants was something that was very pervasive and popular during and through slavery. Human Trafficking, the crime as it is today, was legal and practiced without prejudice then. Imagine having to explain to your child why their grandparents or great grandparents were selling people to each other to be used for labor and to rape in order for them to have their babies. They don’t want to discuss how because of the slave trade and the raping of the resources from Africa, how America became an even stronger power and dominant nation. Telling the full arc of American history requires busting through that façade that American has always been a place for the displaced and down trodden. That may have been the case for some ethnicities, but for Black people, this was the place where we were forced to live and be prisoners. The place where we made and developed so many things, but weren’t allowed to have ownership or possession of them. This is place where when we figured out how to run their system better than them they burned our shit to the ground. Making sure that we would have a much harder time trying establish and maintain generational wealth for our families and communities.

The thing about history is if you don’t know it and learn it, then you are doomed to repeat it. But what happens when they erase your history from the books. What happens when they take your stories and make them into their own because they control the machine. They run the system so they can always make the narrative fit into the imagination that they have planned out in their minds. Only recently has there been a movement to become more real with the history of this nation. Telling stories as the facts really bare them out. Acknowledging that race is, was and always will be a divisive force in this country until it is sufficiently acknowledged and atoned for by those who put us in this position. The day may come where we have to address these dark underbellies of American history and I hope instead of running from it or getting defensive and wanting to destroy facts and truth of history, we give the kids a chance to know the truth. We give the nation a chance to learn the truth and come together. Maybe then we can heal some of what has always ailed this nation. Accept the truth, put truth to power and then maybe American history won’t be so toxic to discuss in all it’s glory and all it’s failure.

As this country continues to open back up and companies look to rehire and staff up as a result, it’s funny to me how many companies are having a hard time filling the job openings they have. It’s almost like they’ve forgotten just how pathetic the money they were paying people prior to the pandemic. I think something that was lost in the this pandemic was that when people were receiving their unemployment benefits, plus the federal matching dollars, it allowed many people to get a taste of what real middle class living is like and they don’t want to give that up. Now yes, to some extent we all understand that those benefits won’t last forever, and as a result people will have to go back to work. The thing is though, this pandemic has pulled the scab off another one of America’s hemorrhaging social and financial issues.. the living wage in America isn’t being paid by a majority of these companies. You can start with whatever industry that you choose to and you will see that what companies pay most workers is bull shit. It’s like they’ve been stuck in 2000 for the past twenty years and every day folks are getting tired of not being paid a salary that lets them live in peace.

Do you realize that most people in this country either have a second, or third job just to make ends meet in their lives. Just so they can pay bills and have a little something left over to treat themselves. People are out here scamming and using their bodies sexually to make money or extra money because the “normal system” really isn’t paying them shit. So why not turn to something that doesn’t take taxes out and you can monetize yourself far quicker. I was watching one morning show and I found it laughable that one of the small business owners was upset that he had to raise the pay and offer signing bonuses to get employees in the door. He said that it was going to be harder for them to make profit doing that as well. I sat and I wondered to myself, how long have you been fucking people out of a real salary before this pandemic. People had no choice but to accept those jobs pre-pandemic because they didn’t have easier access to assistance that allowed them to pay their bills while obtaining a higher paying job. Think about that, you want to make more money, but the job you have uses job classification loop holes and phony “cost of labor” numbers to dictate pay, rather than the real cost of living to determine what to pay someone.

I just really wonder how long companies thought that they were going to continue to get away with just paying people low middle class to high barely above poverty wages? And let’s not forget Congress. You know them “Conservative” ass Republicans who don’t even want to let wages be standardized at $15.00 an hour. I mean that’s not even a living wage, but damn, it’s much better than the current minimum wages across most all states in this country. Quite honestly, with the current prices of food, gas, clothing and housing, paying $20.00 an hour isn’t enough to live with comfort in most places. I can literally remember when I started working seriously and I was making salaries similar to what they’re still paying today and it makes no sense at all to me. Like where do these people get their numbers from when it comes to salaries? It just feels like all these corporations have done is made record profits quarter after quarter, year after year and haven’t reinvested that money into their people. They’ve kept it in their pockets. Meanwhile, everything has continued to increase. The things we need to survive have gone up in price, why can’t our salaries match that? Why are so many Republicans afraid to let people make a baseline wage? They claim to be so American and being the party for the American people, but all their policies are geared towards rich ass people who don’t need the shit.

You know I really don’t understand the argument made against paying people salaries that lets them not need to rely on the Federal and State social/financial assistance programs. I wonder if enough of us think about just how much more beneficial it would be if we made enough money to only need one job and not two. That means it’s even more jobs out there to be had. It means that younger folks, like teenagers and college students can have jobs that aren’t being taken by someone who needs the extra pay check. If we actually changed the tax code so that rich people paid actual taxes. Not some bull shit amount that barely amounts to a tenth of their earnings. But they pay actual income taxes like regular folks do, and give tax breaks to middle class people so that we’re not losing a third of our checks to taxes then the another third to health insurance. Why the fuck do we have the most expensive health care premiums in the world? We can pay upwards of 300 to 500 dollars a month for insurance premiums and still have to pay co-pays and deductibles for services. Why the fuck don’t the premiums cover the co-pays? Talk about a monopoly on the system. The shit is rigged for you to go broke taking care of yourself if you get any type of illness.

This pandemic is waking Americans up to the need and desire to make more, while not constantly over-extending yourself. Make a living and not be so tired that you can’t have a life. No one is saying that they’re opposed to hard work, but we are opposed to hard work with nothing to show for it. So I say keep pushing, keep holding out and force these companies to have to increase their wages in order for us to work for them. Make them compete for our services. Clearly, Congress ain’t gone do shit to help us get the salaries we deserve, so we have to take it upon ourselves to get what we deserve. Secure your bag the way you want and live the best way you can in the process.