One of the Key components of a community is the ability to control what comes into, and exits out of your community. If you are unwilling or able to do so; you don’t have a community. If you don’t have a community, then you live in a ghetto, racial enclave, or Bantustan: areas set aside for you by those who seek to contain, control, and exploit you.
We allow hostile and racist entities to set up businesses in our communities and provide us with substandard products and services. We allow our local governments to provide inadequate services to our areas, while allowing public servants (including the police) who are paid with our tax dollars to abuse and disrespect us. We allow corporations to extract profits from our communities without any level of reinvestment in our community infrastructure. We don’t have any communities in this nation any more.
We lack community for the simple reason that we have been taught and accepted the notion that our individual preferences and goals out weight our collective interest and agendas. We have all of the skills, money, ingenuity, and justification we need to build African Communities throughout the US and the world; but our resources are disorganized and spread thin.
The wealth of our people in going to sate the broken egos and the psychopathology of the Black elite and middle-classes. The warriors needed to defend our communities are losing their lives over petty materialism, (gang) conflicts, and addiction. The mothers needed to nurture and cultivate our youth are working to nurture and cultivate profits for corporations while our youth are stored for 8-12 hours in poorly run child care facilities, being fed unhealthy processed diets; both mentally and physically. The fathers needed to guide and protect are stuck in a state of perpetual adolescence; pursuing status and safety within their Master’s House. The wealth of our communities is squandered on church tithes, toxic cosmetics, overpriced mass-produced products, da club; and other shit that has no investment or accumulative value.
They only solutions given us over the past half century is to: go to school (and be indoctrinated into the dominate system), to work hard (for Whites, or any one else but your own people), earn some money, and move out of the Black enclaves (a.k.a: Makin’ it out). These solutions have weaken us because they extract the most ambitions from our community, only to have them suffer the psychological abuse that is inherent to living in a racially hostile environment. They isolate themselves in racist White communities and then wonder why their children grow to be insane or reject their racial heritage; they wonder why Black professionals develop mental illness and stress related diseases at a much higher rate then their White colleagues. Black Flight/Makin’ It Out: is not, nor has it ever been a solution.
These circumstances were created by design and imposed through deception and force. We can overcome and reverse them if we so chose. The first step is for the few who still see the value in having a vibrant African Community to come together. We understand the obstacles ahead and the lack of support; but we can’t allow it to discourage us. We can create oasis of functioning community within the greater Black enclaves. We can set the example at the same time we build our levels of power and influence. We can combat the enemies of our people from within and outside our enclaves. As we demonstrate the viability of our ideas, more will join our ranks.
It takes less than 2% of a population to spark actions that will move the other 98%, if you don’t believe me just look at the global White elite. All we need to do is define the task, organize, and begin the work.
Forward.
The Bloom Cooperative.
(I know I’m speaking in generalities, and that there are those who have been working to build community since before we lost our communities in the Civil Rights Era. We simply need to consolidate and expand. The stakes are too high for isolated works, we have to be much more ambitious.)
