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As such, that dollar is not doing double or triple duty
by staying within the black community and alas, it is
quickly taken out and serves the white purveyors of goods
and services including banks, restaurants, clothiers,
mortgage companies, pay day loan companies, liquor stores,
car dealers, insurance companies and a host of other
suppliers whose only goal is to transfer your dollar from
your pocket to their pocket.
Pure and simple. That is the name of the economic game
that we as black people are playing with a stacked deck, one
eye closed and one hand in a sling! We simply do not "count"
when it comes to the power of the dollar working its
benefits in and amongst us.
On any given payday, those earned funds bounce around in
our community for a few "minutes" but those dollars land and
make a home at white-owned and controlled malls, car
dealers, restaurants, clothiers, loan companies, grocery
stores, and on line shopping, just to name a few outlets
that gladly accept "our" dollars in exchange for their goods
and services.
Since we apparently do not respect ourselves enough to
band together and make our dollars do double and triple duty
for us, those dollars find ways to leave our communities and
go elsewhere, where they are put to hard labor.
That is the nature of money. It will go where you tell
it and do what you tell it to do.
"Money," you say, "go and get me a car!" And that money
obeys you and finds a car dealer that will charge you
hundreds of dollars a month for X car and you gladly pay it!
If you say, "Money, go and buy me some groceries!", that
money bundle will seek out a local Kroger store or a
Meijer's or a corner carryout and it will bring back to you
bread, milk, bacon, lotion, aspirin, batteries, baby food,
fruit, fried chicken wings and anything else that you want
or need.
Money does not care if its handlers are white, yellow,
pink, purple or black. Money listens and obeys. If you have
the bucks, you can call the shots!
Arguably, we as black people have forgotten that vital
lesson in this 21st century. If you tell money to go find
its sister or brother (sound investments), more money will
come to you so that you can have a family of greenbacks
doing your bidding, be it funding a political campaign,
funding a scholarship, vacationing in Aruba, buying a rental
unit to make money or having a re-do of your kitchen.
The Bible says, "Money answereth all things!"
(Ecclesiastes 10:19).
Yet, we as a people are seemingly tone deaf to that message
by the way that we spend or do not wisely spend our money.
The so called, "inner" city is called that because
oftentimes, the goods and services that are made available
to those "inner" city residents is not as appealing or cost
effective or top shelf as the goods and services in the
"outer" (where white folks live and shop) cities.
Tony Brown once said that we as black people have
conducted the most effective boycott against ourselves than
anyone in the world! That means, we do not intentionally
choose to engage with ourselves and for ourselves but rather
go elsewhere and spend our dollars and then wonder why we
have inner cities that economically resemble war zones after
a cluster bombing!
White folks know the above. Do you see them coming into
the "inner" city to spend their monies with our providers of
good and services? (Except possibly for clandestine drug
trafficking and prostitution).
Truth be known, there is practically nothing for them
to come to the inner city for since what they have
accumulated in their outer cities means there is no need for
trips to, "Darktown" (also a name of a novel at the public
library).
So, where does that leave us? It means that if we want
to (and that is a BIG if...) we can slowly reverse this
economic bedevilment by banding together and start making
sound economic plans for our inner city communities.
So, where is the largest storehouse of accumulated wealth
in the inner cities? No, it is not the drug houses! It is
where Black America goes each week and sometimes during the
week and at those times and places, they pay, tithe, offer
and donate huge amounts of monies.
Answer: The Black Church! The Black Church in Toledo is the
collective and local but temporary depository or bank of
hundreds of thousands of dollars per WEEK.
I say temporary because as you know, when those dollars
are deposited at the glad and smiling white banks, those
funds stop working for the very black people who initially
deposited those funds at their respective place of worship.
God does not keep or get those funds except for minor
head nods to missionary causes or feed your neighbor
programs.
No, the overwhelming bulk of those collected funds go to
white institutions for their benefit since those funds allow
those white banks to lend out those "black" dollars to
others and they in turn, the white banks, make a nice profit
off of black folks giving at their black church! What a
racket! Somebody buy me a bank...quick!
So, what is the answer you say? Give to self for self.
Simple. Each week, have your church, along with other
churches, give 10 percent of their weekly take into a common
fund. That common fund would be headed by an elected board
of directors who will be bonded and who would have expertise
in investing those funds in your community or in money
making projects that would fund what the inner city
residents would decide is important.
Each church would "tithe" their weekly take to this
fund. The mechanics to set this up is child's play. What is
missing is the concerted will to do it.
This is a very simple concept. Oh, so simple but yet,
the overwhelming majority of black pastors are totally
clueless on this age old concept of collective economics.
The Koreans do it. The Asians do it. The Mexicans do it. The
Dominicans do it. The Jamaicans do it.
But, black Toledoans sit on the sideline and wonder why
everyone is leapfrogging over them in economic advancement.
There is no wonder and awe to this concept. Books by the
dozens have been written about this age old concept but
somehow, in Toledo, black people and black pastors are in a
fog as to how to get, "that donkey to plow this field!"
The longer we wait, the more dollars will go to the outer
cities and the inner cities will be famished and we sit and
wonder why we can't make our own bread and draw out our own
water! Shame on us!
Contact Lafe Tolliver at
lafe5x@gmail.com
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