(ThyBlackMan.com) Too many African Americans spend way too much money on consumer goods they don’t need. It’s an Achilles Heel, a weakness known by every entrepreneur and businessperson in the whole country and abroad. Blacks seemingly will buy anything made and offered to them by White folk. Even while the legal system in America was discriminating against people of color, manufacturers of tobacco products, alcoholic beverages, luxury automobiles, beauty aids, sexy glamour, and expensive clothing were busy advertising in Black-owned magazines and newspapers. Pick up any Jet or Ebony magazine from the Civil Rights Era and you’ll instantly see what I mean.
Too often modern-day slave descendants justify their actions by reasoning that everyone else is buying this, that, and the other, or 
that the item is the latest thing, a must-have to keep up with modern technology or the changing times. So it goes. Giving our dollars to the same people that we say treat us unfairly doesn’t make sense. Since we’ve always been allowed to freely buy stuff, obviously, in our collective consciousness, this point must not be important enough to matter. Those wooly-haired afro revolutionaries of the 60s and 70s never stopped to consider that a White or Chinese company made the ‘black’ gloves worn on their raised fists.
To call all African Americans hypocrites would be an injustice. A small minority refuses to go along with the status quo, most notably the afrocentrists, Muslims, Black southern farmers, and progressive urban dwellers. The late, world-renown Islamic leader, Warith Deen Mohammed, saw materialism as a form of idol worship:
“Today, man is not making physical gods (idols) to represent the things that he worships, but the problem in the world today is still the worship of idol gods.
If we do not worship the True and Living God, we are worshipping idol gods because we have associate gods. The associate god might be carnal love (love of the flesh) for the male or the female; it might be the love of wealth (the dollar); it might be the love of violence, the love of beauty, or the love of many other things. We have to see ourselves as people that still have the problem with idol gods”
He further described the world as simply “pomp and glitter” and chides those who have no restraint.
“We are 30 million Bilalian (African descended) people here in America, but we don’t have representative power in the economy. It has been a wise trick of Satan to feed you fads and ideas that make you waste your money on superficial, perishable things. You don’t have any firm roots in the grounds of economy.
Things like El Dorados, Mark IV’s, the Mercedes Benz, the Rolls Royce, $2,500 rings and stick pins, and $500 suits are all play toys for children…”
To tell the truth, Imaam Mohammed comments of the 1970’s are much easier to swallow than what I would tell Black folk here in the 21st century. It seems that our Caucasoid friends are right to say that we are under their control. Behind closed doors and at dinner tables across this great land, they’re still saying that we’re selfish, materialistic, greedy, and downright unconcerned about how we live and what history will record about us. For the quick enjoyment a shiny, new toy will bring, we waste material resources owing to the blood, sweat, and tears of our demoralized and oppressed ancestors. Their Achilles Heels were ignorance and captivity; ours today appear to be even worse.
Staff Writer; Mu Octavis Taalib
May also connect with this brother online over at; http://www.bigrivermumin.com.
