Money, Entertainment, And Black Lives Matter.

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(ThyBlackMan.com) Black Americans are not poor. Black Americans are among the wealthiest people on Earth. According to Hollywood’s number one rating and advertising standard, Nielsen- African Americans will spend $1.3 trillion dollars in 2016 http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2013/african-american-consumers-are-more-relevant-than-ever.html.  That is an amount greater than the total economies of Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland combined. These are three of the wealthiest countries on Earth http://www.businessinsider.com/top-countries-on-oecd-better-life-index-2013-5?op=1. This amount of cash alone makes Black Americans the 19th wealthiest “nation”  in the world out of 230 countries that the CIA ranks  https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2001rank.html. This places us in the top 8% of countries as a global economic super power. We spend so much money that our consumer spending dwarfs the economy of the entire continent of Australia.  So why do we “think”  and insist that we are poor while everyone else on the planet KNOWS we are rich?

 
The direct answers to why we think we are poor are two equally important reasons: 1) Leadership  1) Entertainment. I will address entertainment first. When I say entertainment, I mean any media, be it television, magazines, online outlets, or movies. Blacks think we are poor because the White media constantly tells Blacks they are poor, and portrays Blacks as being poor. It is as simple as that. This is why we MUST have our own unfiltered news sources like Thyblackman.com, our own movie production and distribution corporations, our own Apples and Googles PERIOD.  Think about it, as long as we “think” we are poor and give away over a trillion dollars a year, “they”  don’t just get rich, but WEALTHY off of our ignorance-very wealthy. Their kids become doctors, engineers, millionaire business owners, and  what do our kids become? Victims, prisoners,Trayvon Martin’s, Mike Brown’s, and Freddie Grey’s.
 
Example: The total value of Disney ($172.2 billion), Caesars casinos ($1.38 billion), and Viacom ($17.85 billion)  (http://www.viacom.com/brands/pages/default.aspx) is $191 billion. This represents less than 15% of what we spend annually, and it took each of these corporations nearly 100 years to get to this size. Blacks could OWN Caesars, the largest casino corporation on Earth for 1/1000 of what we spend in a year. Blacks could own every network and studio Viacom has for less than 1.5% of what we spend a year. We could have hundreds of thousands of Blacks in the industry as actors, singers, dancers, set designers, camera operators, executives, and most importantly OWNERS with the same money we waste and give away. We can do what our fellow Africans are doing in Nigeria, the 2nd largest producer of films in the world after India http://mic.com/articles/54609/3-countries-with-booming-movie-industries-that-are-not-the-u-s.  So the TRILLION dollar question is WHY don’t we?  The answer is so obvious Stevie Wonder can see it, an unpleasant answer, but a truthful answer. LEADERSHIP.
 
Which brings me to Black Lives Matter. I admire the protesters for standing up for themselves and Blacks saying “enough is enough.” However, I have seen this movie before. Blacks march, protest, and shout, and end up worse off at the end of the day as in Baltimore http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/05/23/violent-crime-surges-as-arrests-drop-in-baltimore-post-riots/.  Marching “ain’t” owning a movie studio, protesting “ain’t” owning a network, you can shout for days, it is not POWER.  Power in America and the world is ownership, it is economics. Ownership is jobs, opportunity, college graduates…it is protection from being shot in the back in broad daylight like a runaway slave as  Walter Scott was. When you don’t get this in America, you and your children die.
 
Examine the case of Sureshbhai Patel, who was body slammed by an Alabama cop while visiting his family because the police thought  he was a Black American http://www.cbsnews.com/news/feds-indict-fired-alabama-police-officer-who-slammed-indian-man/. Once the police, and more importantly the Governor and the White House found out he was Indian,  immediately they called the family and apologized, fired the officer, and the Department of Justice (DOJ) indicted the police officer in a New York minute.  Put this up against the opposite behavior of these entities in the deaths of BLACK teenagers Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown. Why did authorities triljoenOneand politicians move so swiftly in the case of an injury, and not in a case of deaths? Sit down, and get ready to be shocked.
 
MONEY, ENTERTAINMENT, and BLACK LIVES MATTER. You see when Bollywood, India’s greatest movie star, and second wealthiest actor in the world was racially profiled by the Department of Homeland Security TWICE, Indians all over the world made it clear that they would not tolerate the $600 million star’s treatment http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2129442/U-S-apologizes-Bollywood-heartthrob-Homeland-Security-detained-HOUR-AND-A-HALF-airport-AGAIN.html.  Immediately India threatened economic sanctions, and Indian Americans followed suit. President Obama personally apologized to the Indian Prime Minister and the Indian people because he is aware that Indian Americans are the largest motel owners in the US, among the largest hotel owners in the US, produce the highest number of doctors per capita in the US, have one of the highest business ownership rates in the US, and are major players in Silicon Valley and feared their economic reprisal. Simple as that. The insane aspect of this double standard is that  it is Black American money that feeds the Indian American economic juggernaut?  Indian Americans have this power because Blacks won’t give the very same power to themselves. We supply the money to them and their businesses, and they use the power of our money to protect their community from the police.
 
Not why, but HOW is this happening in 2015? It is like Donald Trump continuously says about White American leadership, the opposing foreign leadership is smarter, more cunning, and point blank more LOYAL to their people than White American leadership. Ditto for Black Americans.  We, like  White Americans have bet on the wrong people with the wrong plans for the past 35 years and look what we have-more poverty, more violence, more everything negative. This while our leadership is wealthier, living like kings, and are not LOYAL to us, but to those that they have cut side deals with from other communities.  Just examine Jay Z and Beyonce’s infamous charity that gave less than $7,000 to the Black community after the Black community gave them $150 million in a year http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2013/07/harry_belafonte_jay_z_feud.html. I say we are responsible for ALL of the money because we invented Hip Hop and supported them when the people that they now are loyal to didn’t and wouldn’t. Black Americans gave them a chance and GIVE them the unbelievable lifestyle they have, not anyone else, and I assure you most of the celebrities don’t appreciate it one bit. I know these people, have discussed helping the Black community in the way Indian stars, White stars, and quite frankly all other stars help their communities, and without exception their response was and is the same, “I don’t give a F*** about NWORDS”- literally.
 
It is time for us to grow up, every dollar counts, jobs just don’t fall out of the sky, they are created by the investment of trillions of dollars (for every $1 billion spent 29,000-50,000 jobs are created).  We create almost 30 million jobs a year due to our consumer spending-we just don’t create them for Black people.  This must end. Our money needs to go where it does the most good- to Black entrepreneurs, college students, and Black families . We ALL should be living well, very well due to our status as a global economic powerhouse. According to the laws of economics the average Black should have twice the amount of money and wealth that we have. It is insane any person or group would make the decision to live in poverty rather than no when all they have to do is behave “normal.”
We donate at least $11 billion a year to charity (I say more) and get NOTHING for it. We don’t even know where the money goes and what is done with it http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/23/us-usa-blacks-donors-idUSTRE81M1WI20120223.  Although the source of the recent report stating that Blacks donated $420 billion to churches between 1980 and 2009 is questionable, the numbers are extremely accurate http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/news/49615462.html.  A breakdown of the figures shows that Blacks donate over $230 million a week to churches and over $1 billion a month, which holds up based on our verified charitable giving.  What was the result of buying preachers Bentleys and luxury jets? Our kids getting mowed down in the streets by the police and ignorant Blacks, while simultaneously sentencing Blacks as a whole to ultra poverty.
 
This is why police, America, and the world have no respect for us, this is why we are shot down in the street like dogs, this is why we are in the position we are in.  Everyone knows these economic facts about us, but us. We are dying of ignorance. That ignorance has following  people like Jay Z and Black Lives Matter, although what they espouse does not work, cannot work. The proof: If their plans are so great, WHY don’t Indian Americans, White Americans, or any other SUCCESSFUL group in America follow them? The only people other than us that are willing to follow this road to hell are poor Whites that live in trailer parks, and you know what other Whites think of them…they despise them. So just imagine what they think of us. They think that cops should not get indicted for strangling Eric Garner right in front of your face on camera- that’s what they think.  However, ain’t no victims here, just volunteers. We put enormous energy into be weak by how we deal with our great economic wealth, and in America the weak get attacked. If these leaders are so great, ask yourself why THEY didn’t tell you the information that I have told you in all the time they have to do so. It’s like this the Gay community got done in 3 days what Black leaders have not in the 3 years since Trayvon Martin’s murder http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/02/indiana-lgbt-protections_n_6992184.html.
 
As I warned the Trayvon Martin and Tamir Rice the ONLY way they would get justice is by following competent leadership and doing what the Gay community did when faced with their issue.  The thing is I warned them of this BEFORE the Gay community enacted their economic sanctions against Indiana.  Get it?
 
Finally, only thing America and life owes anyone is opportunity, and we have the opportunity to be powerful and in control of our own destiny. If we CHOOSE not to take advantage of this opportunity by using our money in a fashion that is best for us that’s our fault. If we choose not to own entertainment companies, banks, tech companies, and  choose not to support those leaders that are most loyal to us, then pay your loved ones burial insurance…you’re going to need it.

 

Staff Writer; Jerome Almon

One may contact him at; tracy@caligirltracy.com.