WE HAVE BEEN INDOCTRINATED INTO POVERTY AND DESPAIR AND NOT CAPITALISM.

What is the cause of poverty?

Prior to 1655 there were “no legal slaves” in the colonies, only indentured servants.  During this period, all masters were required to free their servants after their time was up. Seven years was considered the limit that an indentured servant could be held. Upon their release, some were allegedly granted 50 acres of land. This land arrangement also included any Negro purchased from slave traders. Indentured servitude became a contractual arrangement whereby, when an individual or family could not afford the cost of passage to the new world, they would contract themselves into a period of “indentured bondage” to pay the costs of transport.  This arrangement did not work out too well because the whites when they arrived, could just runaway and could easily blend into the white communities forming around them in the growing townships. After awhile the concept of indentured servitude became permanent when it was applied to black's. I read that it was a Black person who brought the original law suit, which changed the condition of black folk from indentured servant to permanent slave status. This could also be one of those revisionist history stories that are beginning to pop up. However, our own people in positions of authority can be our worst enemies in order to be rewarded by the white establishment. The female preacher mentioned above, had that mind set. This time it appeared not to work out too well for her.

However, two hundred and eight years (208 years) later (1655 through 1863), white folks of the Southern slave states were forced to give up their prized black gold, over which they were willing to kill each other, and family members, in order to preserve their Southern way of life. As a result, a bloody civil war engulfed the nation as Lincoln vowed to preserve the Union, enforce the laws of the United States, and end the succession.

Most African Americans were “united” in this effort to be free, however, many blacks, did not know that they were slaves and wanted things to stay the same. African Americans fought against former slave owners and literally and physically won the war for their own liberation on the side of the federal government “North”, thereby ending the war and uniting this country on paper.  President Lincoln with his war counsel came up with the brilliant strategy of freeing slaves behind Southern enemy lines. This strategy would arm the slaves and allow them to fight for their own freedom, which history shows, they did valiantly. This left the South morally and physically devastated after the civil war.

The Emancipation Proclamation was an executive order issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, as a war measure during the American Civil War, to all segments of the Executive branch (including the Army and Navy) of the United States. It proclaimed at least on paper (but not in the minds of white southerners), the freedom of slaves in the ten states that were still in rebellion, which applied to 3.1 million of the 4 million slaves in the U.S. at the time. This left approximately .9 million Americans still in slavery. However, the momentum of freedom in the African mind took hold and could not be stopped. 

The proclamation was based on the president’s constitutional authority as commander in chief of the armed forces, and was not a law passed by Congress.  So, does this mean that President Obama could end mass incarceration (1 million) and establish laws to educate instead of incarcerate, just by signing an executive order to do so, since the laws used to enslave by “military/police” action were unfair and unjust and not being equally applied to all Americans, therefore, unconstitutional on its face? Slavery through the back door of the constitution?

In the history of the United States, the term Reconstruction Era has two senses: 

The first sense covers the complete history of the entire country from 1865 to 1877 following the Civil War.

The second sense focuses on the transformation of the Southern United States from 1863 to 1877.

President Lincoln was re elected on November 8, 1864, because Northern voters overwhelmingly endorsed the leadership and policies of President Abraham Lincoln when they re elected him to a second term. With his re election, any hope for a negotiated settlement with the Confederacy vanished. Five months after Lincoln’s re election, the collapse of the Confederacy was complete. A brief fourteen year old period in our history, called “reconstruction” began after the assassination of President Lincoln on “Good Friday”, April 14, 1865.

However, after Lincoln's death, a back room deal was made among the new Presidential administration of Andrew Johnson, considered to be the worst president in U.S. history and white Southerner’s, which deal gave them back control of the South, from the former slaves.  History tells us, that this new administration feared that there would be another civil war. So, the federal government abandoned the American Negro legally and physically, by withdrawing federal troops from the South, who assured the safety and protection of the Negro from Black Codes, harassment, intimidation, mayhem, murder, sharecropping, lack of decent facilities, poor health care and employment opportunities, causing many Africans to leave the south. If the parents did not leave, as soon as their children were old enough, they themselves would leave.  This drove many blacks throughout this country to the major cities where we find ourselves concentrated today.  Black labor was once again in great demand shifting our country and economy from an agricultural to an industrialized nation. The African with little or no education were now able to find jobs, buy a home and raise their families, too many times under less than ideal circumstances.

Unfortunately, southern whites refused to give up control over their slaves and continued to conspire for control over them. So, in order to control Blacks after slavery ended, so called, Black Code laws were enacted which were considered notorious.  

In 1865 and 1866, after the Civil War, these laws had the intent and the effect of restricting African Americans freedom and of compelling them to work in a labor economy based on low wages or “debt”.  In the South, “slave codes” placed significant restrictions on Black Americans who were not themselves slaves. A major purpose of these laws was maintenance of the system of white supremacy that made slavery possible. With legal prohibitions of slavery ordered by the Emancipation Proclamation, acts of state legislature, and eventually the Thirteenth Amendment, Southern states and the North adopted new laws to regulate Black life. Although these laws had different official titles, they were (and are) commonly known as Black Codes.  The defining feature of the Black Codes was vagrancy law which allowed local authorities to arrest the freed people and commit them to involuntary labor.

“Soon after the end of slavery, white planters encountered a labor shortage and sought a way to manage it. Although Blacks did not all abruptly stop working, they did try to work less. In particular, many sought to reduce their Saturday work hours and women wanted to spend more time on child care. In the view of one contemporary economist, freed people exhibited this “non capitalist behavior” because the condition of being owned had “shielded the slaves from the market economy" and they were therefore unable to perform “careful calculation of economic opportunities.” Whatever its cause, the sudden reduction of available labor posed a challenge to the Southern economy, which had relied upon intense physical labor to profitably harvest cash crops, particularly, King Cotton.”

Black Codes restricted black people’s right to own property, conduct business, buy and lease land, and move freely through public spaces. A central character of the Black Codes were vagrancy laws in which states classified not working as criminal behavior.  Failure to pay a tax (ticket) or to comply with other laws (appearance) could also be construed as vagrancy. Nine states updated their vagrancy laws in 1865-1866. Of these, eight allowed “convicting leasing” (a system in which state prison hired out convicts for labor) and five allowed prisoner labor for public works projects. These laws were designed to ensnare many Blacks in the legal system. For example, previously, Blacks had been part of the domestic economy on a plantation, and were more or less able to use supplies that were available. After Emancipation, the same act performed by someone working the same land might be labeled as theft, leading to arrest and involuntary labor.

Jim Crow Laws were enacted. These were federal, state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965, which mandated racial discrimination, which stated, that an African American had no rights, a white person had to respect.  This was the prevailing social climate throughout the South, and it also applied to all public facilities in Southern states of the former Confederacy, and, starting in 1890, a “separate but equal” status for African Americans was created by the laws of this country.  This separation of the races, in practice led to living conditions and public facilities for African Americans that were absolutely inferior to those provided for white Americans, systematizing a number of economic, educational and social disadvantages which persist today in the African American community. A condition referred to as “PTSD” (Post Traumatic Slave Disorder).  The law’s today are still applied differently to whites than they are applied to African American Blacks.

The civil rights acts of 1964 and 1965 are land mark pieces of national legislation in the United States that prohibits discrimination. The question then arises, why do we have to vote on our right to have rights? The reason that African Americans were not able to exercise their voting rights was primarily due to white people making their poverty and poor education a barrier to the exercise of their human rights.  These so called Jim Crow laws (Federal, State, Local) never really ended but started more aggressively in the1960s after the passage of the civil rights acts,reemerging with the assassination of our black leadership, while the national guards were sent to stage riots against all of the major cities (approx. 38) where African Americans lived, which event was subsequently followed by government drug labs placed in major cities, quickly followed by the LSD experiments, heroin, and the crack cocaine epidemics across the inner cities, which flooded and destroyed our communities. Unfortunately for them, the same plague of drug abuse and dependency that was forced upon inner city communities, is now beginning to plague suburban and inner city white homes and communities as well. These are the casualties of war, the fallout, of white Americans who got in the way of destroying Black Families.

This is a part of a continuous war strategy on the black community, renamed the “war on drugs” which began anew in 1971. This war strategy legitimized the prison industrial complex which has led to the mass incarceration of people of color and has steadily increased its scope of attack. Over 1 million or more African Americans are currently incarcerated, with as many as 3 million or more on parole and/or probation since this re enslavement policy and strategy to incarcerate and re-enslave the African American Community had begun. 

The National Guard’s destruction of Black communities in the 60's and 70's and the imprisonment of our family members in the 70's and 80's and beyond, are the tools used by white America to keep black people from fully realizing their post slavery gains - Master/Slave relationship. 

From the year(s) 1655 up until 1863 represents two hundred eight (208) years from the first “legal slave” until the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation by then President Abraham Lincoln.  From the 1863Emancipation signing until the 1964 and 1965 civil rights acts, represents a mere 102 years having elapsed from “legal slavery”.  Seeing the end of slavery, is just like, many experiencing the first Black President of the United States.  However, during these 102 years after “legal slavery”, new laws were continuously passed to control the movement and conduct of African Americans. However, in the midst of great despair, great strides were made in all areas of society by these courageous African Americans. These African Americans also managed to have major legislation put into place which put into law their progress.  We are now the guardians of that legacy, which is being eroded because this new generation of black people are not being vigilant.

So, being only 2 -3 generations out of slavery rather we realize it or not, we must have a condition referred to as, “Post Traumatic Slave Disorder” (PTSD), a condition of dysfunction which has been passed down from great grand parents and again re-enforced in the grandparents and parents these 102years, after slavery, in the form of hangings, bombings, police murders, assassinations and, even the more unspeakable known and unknown tortures which took place against them, and not to mention the simple chore of just having to go into town to get needed supplies, having to face such horrendous conduct by whites. 

Our original slave ancestors endured, as did those who came before them. Let’s put into perspective and remember, many black parents, were only a stone throw out of slavery themselves, and did the best they could to survive.  Even though we are hard on each other, we should also look at each other and “smile” because we have come a long way. There is work, that still needs to be done of course, and this time, we need to get serious, in order to put Black Codes and Jim Crow out of business once and for all.

First of all remember, that a person does not steal something that is not valuable! The African American is valuable! Just like the pimp, the most valuable asset he has, is his "hoe", but he will beat his "hoe" and abuse her, and tell his "hoe", that she is nothing without him and I will kill you, if you try to leave me."

The moral of the story, is that we must learn to validate ourselves, by standing together and working together as American's. Even though the validation process will not come easily or directly, it will come, if we make it so. Our ancestor's more than anything wanted slavery to end, at least most of them.

Parents who lived to see the end of “legal slavery” (1863 through 1945 (82 years)) and their children’s children referred to as baby boomers born from (1946 through 1964 (18 years)) and their children born from (1965 through 2013 (48 years), combined represents only 151 years out of “legal slavery”.  

I had a client who died a few years ago, at the age of 81, making him born at or around 1928. He had a 3rd or 4th grade education and he had a living trust agreement and his wife was not a college graduate, but they stayed together and worked together. They had over a million dollar estate when they both passed away within 5 months of each other. They had rental property, two homes and over $400,000.00 in the bank, when they died. They were practical people and listened to sound advice.

What are we doing to carry the torch of Black American progress?

So, from the 1965 Civil Rights, and Voting Rights Acts passed in this country up until the present (2014), has only been 68 years, while white America has always and continues to use every device imaginable and unimaginable to reverse the progress of those who came before us (building more prisons instead of schools), says it all.  

Too many African American “baby boomers”, put their head in the sand of individualism and personal achievement and lost their way in "Affirmative Action". They were bribed away from the Black Agenda, strove for high paying jobs, materialism and sought personal advantages and personal gain and put relationships and children on the back burner. All in search of material gain, they left their once beloved communities which had cheap valuable real estate, sought integration, by leaving the inner city to decay. Now other's are now moving in snatching up this property as soon as a black person dies or can't afford to keep it, based upon poor financial management and/or conditions imposed upon them. White America knows, you are just holding the property, until they want it back because we don't understand yet, the value of preserving real estate. Real Estate agents are only too eager to generate commissions and don't care about preserving the Black community.

By not understanding the art and benefits of group economics, more Black's than ever are becoming homeless and displaced. Just drive down skid row in Los Angeles, CA. and I'm sure other major cities as well. You will see the symptoms of a poor economic infrastructure in our Black neighborhoods. 

We need to help each other to grow, develop and mature by spending money with other. This economic disparity is causing unnecessary poverty, a hustler mentality, because they will say, how else can I get your money, unless I hustle you. Lack of cash flow creates hopelessness and despair, within our families and communities. It takes money to compete and pay the rent and feed our families and we keep giving our "dollar" power away.

As you journey through life and society there are conflicting decisions which face us daily. Too many of us make decisions I refer to as S.I.N. (Self Inflicted Nonsense), which causes us to stumble throughout life, and lose our way. Not only does this SIN cause us to get in our own way, but this conduct causes others to stumble as they try to walk with us. This is why we increasingly stay away from each other, except parties, sports, barbecues, gangs and prisons. We need to train our children in mass numbers in business and economics.

We live in a society and a world where individuals and groups join together for economic motive and profit, however, without the “proper” discipline and education we will remain unable to compete and grow.  Just imagine a group of people trying to get to the same place, but everyone is running in a different direction, running into each other, when there is only one true clear direction. Just imagine a similar scene happening in nature where a group of animals are being slaughtered by a high powered automatic rifle and instead of running away, they kept running in circles towards the firing guns. 

Too many of our children and adults look to television, celebrities, sports, rap songs, glamour and the riches of the world, in order to escape and define themselves. This continued mind lock makes you a Zombie and transforms you into the one eyed Cyclops, living with tunnel vision throughout life without regard of the consequences.  The American Dream for many (99%) has become something you see only if you are asleep or watching television.  The latest wall street/government planned American Dream scandal bankrupted thousands of Black families, individuals, cities, financial institutions, governments, countries and it also bankrupted this country. The moral bankruptcy of America!

Whatever happened to trickle down economics where the rich are supposed to supply the jobs? Oh, I forgot they shipped the jobs into the prisons for cheaper labor.  African Americans are like immature children whose parents were kidnapped and beaten, who complain about their oppressive treatment but will not engage in the change needed to improve their condition. The great grandchildren of slaves, have fallen in love with their grandparents oppressor and abuser.  European psychologists call this condition the “Stockholm Syndrome.”  

Our government has two faces, one is transitional, which is the one we vote for with the smiley face and there is the faceless government, with permanent civil service "life" status. This is the real government. The one we don’t vote for, but is ruining our lives because they are not accountable to anyone. The transitional government says it will make things better, but they will be gone in just a few short years.  The transitional government tells you it wants to help you and the other permanent government literally seeks to destroy you. It is definitely anti Black family. Our government is merely a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Give the people hope, they say while they plot against you.

Then they create a marketing scam, something called the the American dream, and tell you to go after it, without a "rule book" and the proper tools.

We must stop being dependent on government to think for us and corporations to feeds us. Building strong families and communities is the best pension plan and security we can have, but only if we can keep our own government from attacking. I am just saying, relying on government spending programs and corporate generosity is not a long term sustainable model for black people or Americans to continue to depend. 

This current American government is being operated by people, whose value systems do not match ours. Our government(s) must be more representative of the society and legitimate family values. Our government does not value the family because it invests our tax dollars in the prison industrial complex whose mission is to destroy and enslave the Black and Hispanic/Latina communities.

We must now address the issue of abolition of slavery, now in the guise of mass incarceration of our family members and friends. The jobs have not gone overseas they have gone to these prisons and institutions traded on American Stock exchanges.

These prisons have become the economic base for many prison communities in this country. The prison is actually the new manufacturing plant, using prison labor, to provide jobs and opportunities for white communities around this country which in turn fuels police brutality, prosecution, public defender and judicial system, all of which are on the same payroll, which is a violation of the separation of powers and the equal protection clause of the United States constitution.

The federal government and states have created an economic system off the misery and destruction of Black families, and people of color, instead of ingenuity and productivity, at the end of the cold war with Russia, they turned to imprisoning Black America instead. Citizenship rights must always be guarded and protected. The “People must be educated and trained” to understand their rights, in order to know when they are being violated. Even the best army has to be taught and trained on how to use its weaponry and how to develop a strategy for defense and victory.

Our parents are aging. They need someone who is looking after their best interests, calling and coming by to check on them.  As beneficiaries, your primary objective is to educate yourself about receiving wealth and making sure that wealth is being passed on properly through trust agreements and wills, and not left to the probate courts, your own imagination and the state to resolve. The biggest opportunity today is to make sure that our current wealth is harnessed and passed through to the next generation properly.

The opportunity is this, you don’t know what you don’t know and we seek advice from perpetrators instead of licensed professionals and get angry when things don’t work out, and we are so traumatized by “Post Traumatic Slave Disorder” PTSD, that we don’t know how to heal ourselves from the trauma, finding ourselves hopeless and helpless to stop the pain because of symptoms, such as poverty, illiteracy, depression, teenage pregnancy, foster care, gang violence, incarceration, ignorance, domestic violence, anger, drug abuse, no goals, generational curses, racism, ignorance, mental illness, backbiting, gossiping, dishonesty, addictions, fraud and personal greed, are so overwhelming and real, we have taken on the destruction of the black family unit ourselves. 

Willie Lynch said in his speech,  “if my system of oppression is used continuously for one year and at every opportunity, the system will reinforce itself and the slaves will become perpetually distrustful of one another for hundreds, if not thousands of years.”

The first chapter in my book, “The Money Game” represents understanding the initial stages of wealth creation which is in the "Personal Preparation".  This article is being written from a real life historical perspective of helping you to first understand, what your financial independence really means to you and our community as a whole.  For the most part, NOW, it is our “behavior” by which we are oppressed and exploited, while the rich have become richer, the middle class poorer, and the poor get poorer.

At its lowest level, you must understand that the economic model of the United States really comes down to the “plantation – slave/share cropper model”.  The objective of the plantation owner is to get the slave/sharecropper to become financially dependent by offering what appears to be a deal they can’t refuse and then gradually lure the slave sharecropper into deeper debt with the plantation owner, for their entire useful life. Such is the nature of the American Economic consumer system which causes you to go into further debt, just to get a good credit score. Forget the credit score and get and stay out of debt. 

As stated earlier, it is projected that African Americans by the year 2015 will be 1.1 trillion dollar consumers, a small nation in itself, which means, they are looking to you, as a very generous “spender”, whose resources could be used to actually build a nation and change the life of every black person in this country if we could learn to build an economic system within our homes and around our communities. African Americans through their spending in the pursuit of instant gratification have become the “financial whores” of the economic world because they don’t understand how the game of "group economics" is played.  

On its face, you would expect  because of your blind group spending, which improves everyone else’s standard of living but your own, that white America as well as other groups would be quite thankful, but, your reward is seen in more police brutality, poverty, imprisonment, oppression, neighborhood warfare, drive by shooting, children who can’t play outside or go to the store without being shot by a vigilante, all worsening factors of the “Post Traumatic Slave Disorder” and, the ignorance being forced upon you down through the generations by osmosis and diffusion.  Getting you to spend your money on “things” is how the system of oppression works by keeping you and your money separated, family in ignorance, in poverty, divided and continuously appealing to white America to save us, from each other. The government is the tool of oppression, so white America doesn't have to get its hands dirty any more. This is how they can now say, It wasn't me!

The government tracks and monitors every aspect of American life, and breaks these statistics into racial groups by demographics, age, gender, education and income which are indicators and predictors of your social economic status and what they must do, to make sure you don’t prosper as a group. They know before you do, what will happen if your child does not learn to read by the age of three. This is one way the government projects prison capacity and financial crises, and uneducated parents are themselves involved in the incarceration of their own children by not making sure their children can read and write at a third grade level, by the third grade.

My objective was to paint a picture using our history in this country, to show you what is going on and how you can gradually heal the mindset of hopelessness, poverty and despair through responsible financial behavior, while also letting you know, that you have not lost your mind entirely.  Now, we can start correcting our conduct and thought process by getting the information, knowledge, wisdom and tools, you will need to gain control of your spiritual, physical and financial existence.  

Every aspect of this society is designed to take your money and put you into debt, if you are not informed and careful, because capitalism is a financial predator against the weak and uneducated, just to make a profit, by any means necessary and if they have to destroy you and your family, in the process, so be it.

As mentioned, even your credit score is based upon how much debt you can manage to rack up and manage. Parents teach their daughter's to establish “good” credit. Which is good practical advice leading to certain disaster because it is not coupled with “good” financial management knowledge, of how to use "good credit", which is a self fulfilling prophecy of passing on generational curses of excessive consumerism from one generation to another, because we do not know about the proper financial mix of debt vs. assets, needed to grow wealth. Or even the difference between an asset or a liability.

Just ask around, or pay attention to how many people had homes before the financial crisis and then ask them how many homes they still possess. Ask them how many loans did they have on the place they called, home before they lost it? The problem is misinformation and greed, because we buy liabilities and think they are assets. This is like city folk, who don’t know the difference between a “horse” and a “mule”.

Seeking after the American Dream is an informed activity, in which the individual must be “qualified” to undertake the journey or the process will become illusive, frustrating, and it will churn you up and leave you by the side of the road called life, speaking in tongues, hoping there is an interpreter around, somewhere, after the harm has been done to interpret.  

This whole discussion revolves around taking personal responsibility of your intellectual development and financial growth, and then teach others around you, with motivated, positive, focused and strategic information, showing them where the finish line is, and how to get their, so they to can pass this knowledge on to others and become informed and financially literate participators in society.

In 2013, the U.S. has 5% of the world’s population. Yet 25% percent of the world’s prison population (over 2 million Americans are behind bars in jails and prisons)).  “Black people are a minority in America but make up fully half of the imprisoned population.  The “home” of the free, locks up more of its so called racial minorities, than any other country on this planet and there are more African Americans under correctional control today than were enslaved in 1850.

This is why African Americans must get out of debt (indentured servitude, slavery, sharecropping, prisoner, and debtor, which all equate to financial bondage) because getting out of debt requires being educated, skilled and responsible, which over time changes conduct and perceptions about your children, you, relationships and, cause your intellectual capacity to evolve and develop. You will begin to “think” about family, community and civic issues, such as, what in the hell, are they doing to the minds of our male children which makes them not want to continue their education and drop out of school, when these children should know they will need an education in order to compete and survive and stay out of jail.

Some parents are damaged mentally as well, because no parent in their right mind would allow a child, while living at home, to drop out of school. And, who are making these unjust laws which destroy the fabric of the African American family? It is our job to make them stop the brutality for the sake of our future generations, just as our fore parents fought and died for us to be where we are now in history, as a result of their actual agony, tears, and blood sacrifice. 

Our duty as an American people, is to make sure that any laws enacted are for the good of the whole Society and not just the few. Don't be angry become a part of the solution! God wants more than prayer, he requires ACTION! We must do more than just pass laws, which must look at the objective of the law, and come back later to look at the statistical implications of the law, in terms of not only revenue impact, but objectively analyze the societal impact of the law. Legislatures and Corporations should insert in their preamble or oath, a clause that says, "We will do NO HARM"!

Peace and Blessings!