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Fool on the Hill
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, July 24, 2003 - 08:28 pm: | 
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This post has to do with books, yes, but with movies, music, with us as black people in general. Time after time we say there's nothing wrong with making your money. Get money! Go for yours! Got to do what I got to do? But what we're left with is a culture based on relentless self-promotion and shameless greed.
How many times have I seen a brother or sister at the Grammy's who, before presenting the prize, go on and plug their record or single. Now look, I love the finer things in life, but aren't there times when we have to give it a break? I mean, if we keep going this way we'll have people standing up in church, climbing right up on the pew, interupt the minister just to tell the congregation about the novel they're selling out back after service! So my question is: when is enough enough? |
Cynique
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, July 25, 2003 - 12:28 am: |
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We like to think that cream rises to the top, but apparently you have to churn out the publicity to get people to check out the fruits of your labor. Fortunately, too much hype can result in the overkill that turns people off. Ideally, word-of-mouth will generate interest in a book or an album or a movie. The only problem with that is that it's is only effective if the product is good. I guess enough is enough when too much is too much. |
ABM
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, July 25, 2003 - 05:58 am: |
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Fool on the Hill (Can I call you F.O.T.H. for short?),
I am afraid that in this era where seemingly EVERYBODY is desperately scrambling to claw out a big chunk of the "American Pie", the only bad publicity and promotion is NO publicity and promotion.
BTW: That's a clever "handle" you've got. |
Fool on the HIll
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, July 25, 2003 - 11:44 am: |
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I guess it's true that everyone is scrambling, but what's interesting to me is to also note that even as folks get more and more money, we, as a group, still poor mouth it like we were just emancipated thirty years ago. Does this make sense? What I mean is that for all the truly hideous ways that racism still ruins and runs our lives, we ignore all the ways that our acquisition of money and so on gives us power. It's like we choose to ignore the responsibilities of money and only enjoy the items that come with it.
For instance, I spoke with a black woman who worked for a major company (that got in trouble about two years ago, big time) and her job (along with the rest of the people in the company) was to create lobbying groups for various organizations (farmers, Korean barbers, Arab pencil makers, whatever) and then lobby politicians to get laws passed that were good for those groups. She told me about how many times she'd go down to community groups or small black business organizations and tried to explain that if they banded together they could, essentially, buy up politicans the same way that oil men and computer companies do. Maybe not as many, but they could get a few. She tried for years, but was always faced with the same two responses:
1) We can't ever win against these white folks so why try?
2) We've been through enough struggles, why should we have to buy our way into power? It's owed to us.
Now the second one makes more sense to me, it's also true on a moral level. But it ignores the fact that this is exactly how the Irish, Italians, Jewish and more recently Latino peoples have made great inroads into gaining power for themselves (forget acceptance, I'm interested in autonomy).
So, I wouldn't even mind all this money-money stuff, if it seemed like we were using it smartly. Instead we're buying Acuras and going on expensive trips to the islands. It's like we're stuck in the same old pit, but just because we got a couch and television in here now, it seems like a comfy little home. That's the part that bothers me. We're running to stand still.
Also, ABM, glad you like the tag. You can, in the future, abbreviate the name however you like. |
Chris Hayden
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, July 25, 2003 - 11:47 am: |
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Fool on the Hill:
Have you ever known anybody who had enough money? Has Bill Gates or Ted Turner or Donald Trump ever said he has enough, he's satisfied?
In a perfect better world, you are right. But this is the United States of America in the 21st Century. Until they change the rules you better get all you can while you can.
Look at it like this--at least they aren't pimping, selling drugs or breaking into somebody's house. |
Fool on the Hill
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, July 25, 2003 - 01:49 pm: |
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Chris,
Are those our choices? Pimp or perish. And besides, I think you're missing my real point. Bill Gates was about to get into a lot of trouble, Microsoft was about to be broken up for being a monopoly by the government, then Bush gets into power, Microsoft buys themselves some newly elected Republicans and all of a sudden the judgement against them has disappeared.
What most people assume is that the laws changed or the ruling was simply reversed by a thoughtful judge, but clearly Microsoft USED their money and power to effect a change not in their daily lives, but in the long life of the entire company.
To be honest, you make my point perfectly. By getting all you can while you can you destroy any long term goals. You can dig a mine relentlessly for a year and get 100 tons of iron or you can take 20 tons every year and by reducing the damage done to the mine you actually let the iron replenish and can get iron from the mine for the next fifty years.
This "get what you can" mentality, I'm not the first to say, will utterly destroy black people in the United States and this time, it will be our fault. Sure lots of people do it, but lots of other people aren't as vulnerable as we are. New immigrant groups, in my opinion, use us to climb the American ladder and what do we do? We bend over so they can get a better stance. We do this by acting stupidly with our money and then refusing to be wise about our future.
It's like the riots we spark off sometimes, we are angry and with good reason, so what do we do? We blow up our own neighborhoods. Now, yes, whenever it happens it's because we've been pushed too far, but in the morning the supermarket has been burned out and looted and while we did eat very well the night before, we're hungry all over again when morning comes.
And of course, with your "get what you can" mode, none of us have stocked away anything, not even one little can of beans. Starvation and death are soon to follow.
Get money!
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Cynique
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, July 25, 2003 - 02:13 pm: |
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I think when Chris says it's the 21st century that says it all. The old rules don't apply. It's a whole new ball game. I agree that materialism can be as detrimental to black folks as racism. But, white people are on a collsion course with diaster, too, only they're operating on a global basis. So, to predict what all of this portends for the future is to not realize how fluctuating our times are. |
Fool on the Hill
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, July 25, 2003 - 02:30 pm: |
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But one thing has held true since the dawn of recorded time. Civilizations are built by people who think ahead and plan. All of us live and die, empires crumble, the question is how your people live for the next five hundred years. The unimaginable fights and successes of earlier generations give us the freedom to buy homes and build schools, but they KNEW they were doing it for us. They wanted to. Who are we working for? What are we going to give to them? |
Cynique
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, July 25, 2003 - 02:39 pm: |
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Who knows the anwer to your question, Fool On the Hill. Who knows? A species often survives by mutating into a new breed that is able to survive in a changing environment. Hopefully, that which is superficial will perish because it is not viable. |
NeeCee
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, July 25, 2003 - 02:49 pm: |
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F on the H
I have a feeling that one day it will be normal (or common) for black people to be millionaires. Scores of them, not just a few. Maybe we are preparing future generations for that day. |
Chris Hayden
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, July 25, 2003 - 03:01 pm: |
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Fool On the Hill:
Pimp or perish? No those are not our only choices but they seem to be the ones folks are opting for.
We have looked at separation, nationalism, back to the land, back to the motherland, socialism, communism, utopianism and rejected them all--not all of us. I recently met some multiracial back to the land people who have a Christian agricultural commune in Tennessee, but for the most part we have.
I think I have said it here before, but let me say it again--everybody is going to have to find what works for them. I see black folks all the time talking about what WE ought to do, but we have no way to make US all fall into line-a leader must be able to reward or punish and our so called leaders seem to only be able to rely on moral suasion.
Blacks folks on the whole have bought into, for better or worse the American Dream. I don't think everybody has to, and probably it would not satisfy all. But the decision to take other paths will be an individual or small group one. |
ABM
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, July 25, 2003 - 03:50 pm: |
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FOTH and all,
I agree that we often seem to exaggerate our plight and either ignore or underestimate our good fortune. Many of us live in a perpetually myopic state of "Seeing the glass as 1/2 empty".
Part of it is many of us are either ourselves just or only 1 or 2 generations away from cross-burnings, pickin' cotton, sharecroppin', etc. So we are understandably prepped to be the "Cynique".(Interestingly, that is also the reason why our art seems to resonate more than others. We can more easily peer thru the gilded mask that other Americans blindly march around it.)
And how much people enjoy or begrudge about their personal circumstance is often relative to how others in close proximity to them live. AA's are by far the wealthiest person's of African descent on Earth both collectively and on a per capita basis. But when compared with other Americans, we, sadly, bring up the rear in almost every educational, health, financial, crime/punishment category. For instance, AA's have 13% of the US population yet possess less than 5% of American wealth.
So, again, how much we should or should not complain sort of depends on whether we should compare ourselves with Ghanaians or with Asian Americans (ethnic group with highest per capital US income).
And the Jew comparison doesn’t work either. Jews, in spite of all their troubles, have a collective, uninterrupted history of working together for 1,000's of years. That is embedded in nearly everything they do from the moment they are born. (I mean, you are talking about a people who gleefully gather together to celebrate the unanesthetized circumcision of newborn child!). It's no accident that almost all of the real players in Hollywood (almost ALL the major producers, directors & writers) are Hebrews. If one Jew owns a bank, ALL OF THEM own the bank. That's a difficult concept for Blacks, many of who were from differing tribes/languages, who have been forcibly enslaved, debased, dehumanized, degraded, disbanded, kidnapped, separated...etc. to grasps, much less practice.
Actually, and I know this is not a common refrain, but I think we are progressing REMARKABLY well consider where we have come from over the last 300 years and even as recent as just a few decades ago. And I know that this won't do those of us who are currenly living now much good, but I imagine that before this world is done, the survival and rise of the African American will be consider the greatest feat every by an entire race of people.
The dilemma now is how do we meld the lure of individual feelings/interests, which is repeatedly lauded via American business, culture and folklore, with what all of us need to productively/peaceably co-exist.
To start, we have to teach the benefits of cooperative alliances among our people at the earliest stages of AA lives. You can't take a 55 year old who has never learned diddly about working with others and instantly mesh him or her into an interdependent group. It won't work, especially if he or she doesn't (& feels she or he has little reason to) trust others. But if he or she started to learn at 5 how to cooperate with others for a greater good, when he/she reaches 55, he or she will be likely have so many mutually-beneficial alliances, that working with others will be as easy as breathing.
I would recommend to your lobbyist friend that if she really wants to help Black folks to work together to beat the system, she should volunteer at local elementary/high schools to teach youngsters how the political system work and how they can start to influence it. Because, the great thing about working with kids is if they really know what they are doing pertaining to something fairly sophisticated and important, the press, and thus, politicians, will listen to them. And kids are in general much more optimistic than are their parents and grandparents. So, if you explain something to them and show them how things work and how they might benefit, they are often less inclined to despair than are their elders.
Hey FOTH, tell your lobbyst friend she should meet with and organize not the adult farmers, but with their kids. |
Kola
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, July 25, 2003 - 03:58 pm: |
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I "NEED" money. And I pray for the day when I finally get some.
I so truly deserve every penny...and I most certainly expect to be a fabulously rich (multi-millionaire)....eventually.
Of course, if I had sold out...I could already be a millionaire, a far less controversial writer...and I could be loved and adored for giving people "what they want"....rather than giving them what I think they need...which is "Confrontation".
Black folks NEED all the money they can get. Don't hate on them!
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Yukio
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, July 25, 2003 - 07:22 pm: |
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Diddo to most of what Mr.ABM stated. Also, I would add that black americans need to know that they are part of an ethnic group/tribe/nation called African America with a history and culture and they are part of a continent, of Africa, of course. In other words, as some of us attain our wealth, we need to know who we are....not just US citizens. I don't think everyone is meant to be wealthy, so for me culture is the missing link!
Of course, folk should get an education, family, etc....which is what we're doing, but culture....culture is what we've forgotten!
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Chris Hayden
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, July 25, 2003 - 09:03 pm: |
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All:
What do we do until total consciousness is reached? |
lurkerette
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, September 17, 2003 - 08:15 am: |
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Chris - Each one teach one !!! |
A_womon
Regular Poster
Username: A_womon
Post Number: 42
Registered: 05-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, May 08, 2004 - 09:04 am: |
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fool on the hill:
I know that I may really be stretching things trying to reach you nearly a year later, but where ever you may be, reading your post, i want you to know, i feel you and what you were trying to say. I fear that some of the others missed your point, with the exception of ABM. But you echo my sentiments on this thing precisely. I have thought for years with all of the money that has flooded the community via hip hop and rap, those that have been blessed with it should be doing more. I think that is/was your point. Not that we should ever stop trying to make money, but rather expand our economical base more when we (the aa community)make the money. for example: where are the aa banks? how bout something as basic as our own publishing company where we decide who gets published.How bout our own grocery stores, clothing stores? how about our own community lobbyists? etc..ect..
No one can rightfully argue we don't have the money to do this, yes we should definitely "get mine" but do we realy need 100 top of the line vehicles or so many fur coats that you have to build another closet just to hold them?
and I have said many times, that no clear leader, and no clear goals for the future of our community has emerged sadly to say since the death of Dr. King. Some may say that we don't need a new leader, but clearly we do. When our children are still at the bottom of the learning pool, while as FOTH pointed out, others are climbing up on our backs as they did in out great great great granddaddy's day. And either Chris or ABM pointed out that black people have been ingrained to work in opposition to each other through years of hardships, but i say that is merely and excuse to keep doing what we are doing which is not progressing as a group. we are generations removed from the massah's house, but we still appear to use that as an excuse for not coming together and pullling together to affect change in our community ourselves instead of waiting on others to do it for us. I may take a simplistic view of this problem, but i say we have to begin somewhere don't we? FOTH if you are around, i'd sure like to hear from you.
Peace. |
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