(ThyBlackMan.com) During one of his brilliant rhetorical flourishes, Malcolm X advised Blacks to do the following, “go outside and look up your block and down your block and tell me what it is that you see. I don’t want you to think that you are some hard luck case or something.” At the present moment, this quote is particularly appropriate for the entire nation as there may not be any more succinct way to inform all Americans, regardless of their unique identities, careers, and educational attainments that they stand on the precipice of untold economic calamity that most have never seen.
Despite what many have Americans who have convinced themselves that hard work is the primary ingredient in socioeconomic uplift, such economic prescriptions are not only foolish and myopic, but also historically unsupportable. If hard work and diligence were the primary ingredients in economic success, Black folk, my folk, would rule the world. I do not need to tell you that we do not live in such a world.
I will tell you that debunking folklore ideas such as Horatio Alger and meritocracy are particularly daunting when dealing with the collegians I teach on a daily basis. They want, rather need to believe that if they work hard in school, they will secure a career that will serve as their primary path to a house with a picket fence, well you know the rest. Such thoughts tend to evaporate during discussions revolving around the Great Depression and the more recent Great Recession.
Unbeknownst to the majority of Americans, the perfect economic storm that wrought both of these 20th Century calamities is forming again. Consider for a moment that the alluded to economic downfalls were preceded by an unprecedented concentration of wealth in the hands of a small group of elites.
Apparently this nation has learned nothing from prior economic struggles as at the present moment the top 1% of earners take home nearly 20% of the total income — even more egregious is the fact that they also own over twice that amount of America’s wealth. Such a concentration of wealth reminds one of the moments prior to the economic downfalls mentioned above. As Presidential hopeful Ross Perot stated during his campaign, “When America has the flu, Black America has pneumonia.” Economic struggles and strife for Black Americans have always been more concentrated and prolonged than for other groups with a robust entrepreneurial class.
Although there are racial elements involved in this matter, this is America after all, the most essential portions of this discussion rest on class issues, not racial matters. Put simply; the entire nation, meaning non-elites should be concerned with current economic trends that have been activated and exacerbated by Trump policies that are informed by little more than his “gut.”
While Trump continues to advance an economic truth that more Americans are working at the present moment, he continues to ignore the fact that the referenced jobs are not good paying jobs that have kept with inflation. According to wealth coach Shawn Hill, Trump’s culpability in this developing mess is undeniable. According to Hill,
The market continues to slide into dangerous territory. The Dow and the S&P 500 are on pace for the worst December since the Great Depression. Globally, world markets have lost nearly $7 trillion in 2018, making it the worst year since the financial crisis.
Why have the markets soured? Trump’s tax cuts, which at first fueled a temporary frenzy in the stock market, have already worn off. Corporations plowed most of their savings in buying back shares of their stock — lining the pockets of executives, but providing no real benefit to the economy.
Meanwhile, Trump’s trade wars have made matter worse, causing the entire global economy to shake. His clash with China has been especially damaging, pitting the world’s two largest economies against each other. In other words, brace for impact.
Put simply, there is little room to debate against data that states 80% of American laborers are living paycheck to paycheck. The vast majority of such workers are unable to purchase the very goods that they produce on a factory floor.
Of course those who benefit the most from a disorganized working-class and toothless labor movement go to great measure to explain the alluded to economic misery. According to them, the economic misery of the poor, particularly Black America, is attributable to their lack of impulse control and being a good steward of the monies that they earn. “If only they would manage their money and plan their lives better.” Such shibboleth seeks to slyly place the blame for economic collapse on the backs of workers who have little power to stop elites from taking far more than their fair share of income and no power to force them to put that money back into the economy; any economist will tell you that it is the withdrawal of money from circulation that guarantees economic collapse. So, it is a startling, yet growing, inequality between elites and the working-class — I do not believe that there is such a thing as a middle class — that explains the looming economic problems.
So, it is time for all Americans, regardless of their Race/ethnicity, to take Malcolm X’s advice and go out into the street and look up the street and down the street so they can get a better understanding that they are not some hard luck case. If the working-class does not join together soon, we will all be out on the street or close to it.
Staff Writer; Dr. James Thomas Jones III
Official website; http://www.ManhoodRaceCulture.com
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