Universally Speaking
Rahim Islam is a National Speaker and Writer, Convener of Philadelphia Community of Leaders, and President/CEO of Universal Companies, a community development and education management company headquartered in Philadelphia, PA. Follow Rahim Islam on FaceBook(Rahim Islam) & Twitter (@RahimIslamUC)
Rahim Islam
“If you can control a man’s thinking, you do not have to worry about his action. When you determine what a man shall think, you do not have to concern yourself about what he will do.
If you make a man feel that he is inferior, you do not have to compel him to accept an inferior status, for he will seek it himself. If you make a man think that he is justly an outcast, you do not have to order him to the back door.
He will go without being told; and if there is no back door, his very nature will demand one.” Carter Woodson
The Black community is in a perpetual socioeconomic decline, which requires a different type of approach than those waged by our ancestors. Today, Black people dominate every negative demographic and are invisible in nearly every positive demographic. They are experiencing some severe disparities (i.e. wealth, incarceration, education, etc.) which if not interrupted, will threaten the future of Black children as they become permanent second class citizens in this country (21st Century slave). This is mainly due to what white American institutions (racism and discrimination are structurally woven within) are doing to Black people, and equally what Blacks are doing or not doing to themselves.
After nearly 460 years of brutal treatment, I think it is very clear what America thinks of Black people, and if Blacks don’t accept this by now, we will never be able to address our issues because we spend far too much of our valuable resources and time assimilating and trying to gain their acceptance.
Why is there no sustained outrage? Over the past few years, the whole world has come to know of the unjustified murders of defenseless Black men by white police officers, which has spurred the development of the “Black Lives Matter” movement. There are two key points that I want to make regarding this movement:
1) The same level of outrage has not been targeted against the tens of thousands of Black on Black murders.
I do believe that these conditions have been created and Blacks are carrying out the plan of our enemy perfectly.
The movement should not only address the murders, but also the socioeconomic conditions that help to foster the murders.
The movement would then begin to address the historical issues of the Black man in America.
2) While I am impressed with the energy of the youth and their frustration and anger about the general American attitude that Black lives don’t matter (the police killings are just a symptom of much bigger issue that they feel and experience), many are unaware and uninformed as to how well cooked this plan is nor are they aware of its origins.
What many of our youth lack, when compared to the youth of previous generations is a basic understanding that the American institution of slavery was coupled with adaptation to its legal abolishment (America has morphed into other forms of slavery). This innocence and ignorance has not given them the needed “filter” to spot and separate themselves from those that seek to enslave them more, and the Black Lives Matter agenda has and will continue to be hijacked by white liberals, which has been the playbook prior to and since our emancipation.
Today we live in a society where the principles of freedom, justice and equality are at the foundation for our democracy, which stands as an example for the world.
Yet, America is the biggest violator against a group of people that it has legally and constitutionally enslaved, murdered and terrorized. America is now incarcerating (warehousing) Black men like no other country in the world.
No minority in the world is more maligned then the Black community in America.
This same America recognizes the power of stimulating and fostering economic development as a catalyst for “free” enterprise, another staple of democracy, when it comes to foreign countries and foreign people by providing billions of dollars in aid to other countries annually.
Yet it creates every obstacle known to man when it comes to repairing what it has done to Black people.
Basic government needs are never addressed in the Black community. The Black community needs a real investment in its education system and economic infrastructure to ensure full employment for everyone who wants to work.
If this could be done consistently for the next 50 years, Blacks would move from the bottom to the top, and this is what white America fears.
Why is there no sustained outcry (Black struggle) for the massive disparities that the Black community experiences?
Yes, Black people have made tremendous individual progress in America since emancipation and this should be viewed as an awesome accomplishment.
However, individual accomplishment does not equate to group accomplishment, and when individual accomplishments become too big, measures are taken to slow the process down because most people will see this potential strength as a way to help their group.
Because many successful Black people have almost completely removed themselves from the struggles of most Blacks, no benefit has been achieved.
Freedom, justice and equality are what our ancestors fought for and they were on the front line because our physical freedom was not theirs.
Even when we became free from slavery, America adopted racist and discriminatory policies against Black people that made freedom, justice and equality just words for many Black people.
Let us make something clear: not all white people are rich. There are a significant number of poor White people in America. However, when compared to Blacks, Whites enjoy all of the America’s privileges. Why?
While America was doing everything it could to keep Blacks in some form of slavery, with no compensation or economic gain, they amassed trillions of dollars of wealth and infrastructure.
There is fierce competition in the white community for resources, but whites have a huge advantage because of the standards needed to compete (i.e. track record, net wealth, capital investment, etc.), which disqualifies most Blacks from the start.
In America, freedom is economic freedom and with nearly 90 percent of America’s wealth inherited and all of the economic infrastructure either owned or controlled by white people, specifically mass media and communication, worldwide transportation, industrial agriculture, manufacturing, real estate, banking and financing institutions, energy, philanthropic foundations, colleges and universities, etc.
The likelihood that you can become economically free is very low.
In America, justice is when your systems are truly color blind.
For America, because of sustained historical prejudices, special conditions must be made to make the playing field equitable (i.e. affirmative action, set asides, preference, etc.). With nearly 460 years of persecution and injustices that now underpin all of American society, America, with fidelity, addressed Blacks special conditions for approximately 20 years before it dismantled this approach.
Today, many white people (Black people know better) believe that racism does not exist and they can point to the election of Barack Obama as proof.
This is merely theatrics, and today’s institutions remain structurally racist (invisible but lethal racism) and have intentionally forgotten their origins.
In America, equality is about the numbers, the percentages.
In a free society, everything can be seen in the numbers.
Your population represents the percentage of the total population, and if things were equal, you could make the argument that Blacks, which represent 13 percent of the nation’s population, should reflect the same percentage in both good and bad demographics.
This is where the term disparity originates. Basically, if Blacks represent 13 percent of the nation’s population, if equality was real based on equal quantity, Blacks would own 13 percent of the nation’s wealth and good demographics and own 13 percent of the nation’s problems.
For example, Blacks should have nearly 13 percent of the nation’s $110 Trillion in wealth, yet Blacks own only one-half of one percent (0.5 percent).
This disparity is nearly a $14 trillion differential. This disparity is lethal and influences every aspect of Black American life.
These disparities exist for business ownership, access to capital, net wealth, CEOs and Board members of major corporations, equal pay and job opportunities, etc.
On the negative demographics, Blacks are misrepresented.
For example, Black men represent nearly 5 percent of the nation’s population, but represent nearly 55 percent of its prison population.
Alleviating this disparity would mean the release of more than 1.3 million Black men from prison today.
In nearly every other negative demographic, the disparities are massive ranging in 20 to 40 points.
These disparities represent the struggle for Black America and they undermine every aspect of achieving Freedom, Justice and Equality for Black people in America.
I ask again, why is there no sustained outcry (Black struggle) against the massive disparities that pervade the Black community?
In addition to an extraordinary level of hopelessness and the fact that we are more segregated than before integration (75 percent of all Black people live in nearly 60 cities in America), I believe there are two critical factors that contribute to this phenomenon: 1) External actions – the media has done an unbelievable job of masking the magnitude of our problems while at the same time portraying the Black community as inferior heathens; and 2) Internal behaviors – the level of disunity that exists throughout our community, especially amongst our leaders, is at an all-time high and continuing in the wrong direction.
It is no longer, what they are doing to us; it has become more what we are not doing.
In 1963, Malcom X stated that Blacks did not have the moral right to challenge whites for what they are doing to us when our behavior is so self-destructive.
That statement continues to ring true today. We already know how America feels about Black people. Will they reverse nearly 460 years of oppression and correct the past and current harms inflicted?
I don’t think so. Will another group immigrate to America and solve the problems of the Black man?
I don’t think so. Will there be a people from Mars or some other planet that will come to America and solve the problems of the Black man? I don’t think so.
The only people who can address the issues of the Black community are Black people.
Like all people, Black people need leaders. You cannot expect 38 million people to magically, not only understand what to do, but to know how to do it.
So if the Black community in America is to transform itself, the Black leaders must lead the effort. This is where the work must be done.
I contend that even though we have hundreds of people and organizations working on behalf of the Black community, if they are not working together strategically, then we do not have leadership.
Today, because of their lack of knowledge about our history, many of those who are in leadership positions have failed the Black community.
They have not used their positions to advocate for Black people in spite of the inherent divisions that exist within the American society.
Nothing should prevent Black leaders from crossing “party,” “agency,” “religious,” lines when it comes to the Black Agenda. As Black people in leadership positions, they have been fearful that speaking out for Black causes is invoking the “race” card.
This is not about a race card but it is about a country that has oppressed people simply because of race.
To act as if race is not a factor is to deny your own history.
Too many Black leaders have inherited the majority approach and model in the implementation of their leadership.
Their predecessors were white and, therefore, the Black leader now implements an approach that is similar that of his or her White predecessor.
This can be seen in many places, especially in government and politics where the majority of Black people have either just given up or are just overwhelmed by the conditions of life on a day-to-day basis. Black people could care less why.
They see this as just an excuse. They want to see solutions that will benefit them.
As I mentioned in part one of this series, throughout our brief free history, we have had some great individual leadership and most leaders, if not all, were giving us good guidance, especially when it came to looking at what whites were doing to us.
Not much instruction was aimed at what we, as Black people, were not doing, which was to unite under the Black flag.
We now have history on our side indicating what has and has not worked. We have the luxury of seeing the pros and cons of all of our great thinkers and leaders, even though they never truly worked together.
What is our excuse today? Why is it that we know that disunity is at the heart of our failures yet we are unable to mount any campaign to unite?
I recently heard that the Black community is not so much divided as we are disconnected.
If that’s the case, what we need is to reconnect. I recently attended a conference on Boys and Men of Color which was being led by Jeffrey Roman.
Not only did he give a good overview of how the concept has evolved over the past 30 years, but he focused on trying to aggregate all of the talent, individuals, agencies, organizations, and supporters of this effort into one room.
This is the beginning of what I describe as functional unity and connecting the dots.
Our community needs so desperately to see that government works for them and it cannot operate at its highest level if it is in a silo and separated.
This type of effort will allow you to look at the continuum as a whole and ascertain if the right strategies are in place; where our weaknesses and strengths are; distinguish between prevention strategies versus intervention strategies; how to become more effective through baseline and measurement (are we making progress); and how to impact public and private policy and resources to support our efforts.
We can march all day long. We can picket and we can act up, but unless we take a new and sober approach to these issues, we will not be able to move the needle.
Our issues are extremely and mature and will require our brightest and most talented working side-by-side to analyze exactly what is going on.
I applaud the organizers of this effort and pledge to work with them to achieve functional unity.
I know that, if they are successful, young Black boys and Black men will be the benefactors of this effort and real change will begin. Many, if not all, of these issues are the legacy of slavery in America.
Where you start matters and because we have allowed our history and our start in this country to be marginalized and, in many aspects, to be removed from the public opinion we have the appearance of being inferior.
There is no “Boys and Men of Color” for white people because it is not needed.
Many of the issues we face are not part of the white community. While white communities are not without problems, they cannot compare to those of Black people.
Just as white leaders advocate for solutions that are pro-White, our leaders must advocate for solutions that are pro-Black.
Black leaders must defend Black people and if they do not, Black people will remain defenseless in a society where everybody can be described as winners and losers.
The Black community is at a crossroads in that if there is not an interruption of the massive disparities that exist over the next 20 to 25 years, these disparities will become permanent and these physical, social, and economic realities will cement second class citizenship (21st Century slavery) for future Black children in America and further impact on the decline of the morality and culture of Black people.
More and more abnormal behavior will become normal. When this grows and includes the majority, Black inferiority will dominate.
Correcting this will be nearly impossible because very few will understand the problem and even they will follow the current trend of disunity or disconnection.
We can no longer afford this level of tribalism. We must all ask ourselves, “What are we really doing to help our people and are we effective – are we making a difference at scale?” Sure, many of us can justif
your existence if we place the lens on ourselves and not our people.
If we place the lens on our people, none of us can justify our existence while we are not working with others on the issues that impact the very thing you say is your mission.
How can you focus on public education and not focus on community and family?
How can you focus on mass incarceration if you don’t focus on re-entry, job training and job placement?
How can you work on small business creation if you’re not working on Black spending behavior?
If your individual efforts cannot measurably reduce the mass incarceration of Black men, decrease the senseless violence and deaths of our children, raise the level of Black men gainfully employed, increase the number of successful and thriving Black owned businesses in our community, remove the blight and decay that overwhelm many of the neighborhoods where Black people reside, reverse the nearly 60 percent of Black students who are academically failing in public schools, increase the number of Black children living in stable families, eliminate or decrease the wealth gap between Blacks and Whites, significantly increase and restore Black pride at a level that could counter the massive media campaign that has defined Black people as inferior and deserving of the socioeconomic position we currently hold, your efforts aren’t going to stop the bleeding.
Will any of America’s systems magically begin to support Black people equitably?
Will the legal system, left alone, interrupt or stop the school to prison industry using our young boys as its raw product? Will the public education system, left alone, all of sudden begin to educate our children?
Will the financial system, left alone, begin to distribute its wealth equitably?
Will the mass media system, left alone, start to portray Black people in a positive fashion and contribute to Black empowerment?
Will the political system, left alone, produce the correct public policies needed to support the plight of Black people?
These systems will not correct themselves without us making the change. The change we need is to change our own behavior of Black disunity.
There are three things that I want you to consider if we are to change our behavior of disunity: 1) we all must begin to champion unity as our new mantra. It is going to take the highest level of unity (connection) to challenge years of inactivity; 2) our progress will only come when we become more organized. Every sector must begin like the Boys and Men of Color; and 3) we will have to earn the success that we envision.
There is no quick fix, no magic bullet. No one will give it to us; we must do the work.
Please stay tuned for an upcoming announcement for the launching of the Milwaukee Community of Leaders.
