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Black Capitalism, part I

By Lorenzo Komboa Ervin <komboa@yahoo.com>, 18 January 2001

I keep hearing this garbage over the airwaves, in private conversations, and seeing it in books and the newspaper about Black capitalism going to "free us" Black folks. They present it to us by Black conservative commentator Tony Brown and his TV show, by that Negro who put out that book about our "choice" to be free if we all start small business and so on, and in the pages of Entrepreneur magazine. And we can now add that Matah stuff to it. We'll be "free" alright, free of our money, into the hands of some petty capitalist traders. With these programs, we are deluded into thinking that if we sell enough deodorant and other consumer goods, invest in Multilevel marketing scams, or other scams, then over 25 million oppressed people can just buy their freedom.

This is one brother who ain't sniffing what they'se defecating!

The system does not work that way: a class of exploiters will emerge who will exploit the rest of us on the bottom, while they live in comfort. For the masses of us we will not get wealthy, rich, or liberated, just suckered into giving up our money.

It's interesting that for the most part, none of the petty capitalist "solutions" that have been offered have been about rebuilding the economically depressed communities most poor Black folks live in, or building some sort of inner city collectives for basic food and housing for poor folks. It's about a middle class, upper crust dream.

Capitalism is a system of exploitation of the poor and working people, and it does not matter that a class of entrepreneurs have arisen to sell us things. I don't feel any loyalty whatsoever to some trader just because he is Black, and I know that our trade whether with each other or with a mass distribution system generally will not free us from the clutches of this economic system. In fact, all the Black businesses combined constitute less than 1/2 of 1%, a piddling economic base for sure.

The reason there is a Harlem (in NYC), Hough (in Cleveland), Watts-South Central (L.A.), and other poor ghetto communities in this country is because capitalism creates racist social, economic and ethnic divisions, the better to exploit us all. Buying stock in a Black company, or brotha-man's toothpaste ain't going to free us.

Cast away illusions and prepare to struggle!

Copyright (c) 2001 Lorenzo Ervin. Redistribute Freely.

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