Solutions to the culture of poverty and death
Self-sufficiency and Support of Community Based Business
by Kevin J. Walker
If we are to bring this generation of the Culture of Poverty into the Middle Class (and how often do poverty programs say that is their goal, yet how can they not if they genuinely intend to remove families from poverty?) there are some concrete and fundamental things we all need to do.
The book "The Culture of Poverty" was so relentlessly negative that even I realized I had to inject the possibility of Hope.
Late in the chapters is a section on Success Stories, a couple of which are reproduced here.
The mismanagement of our financial resources is an ongoing problem in the community. Within the Walker Grid+4 improvement zones for taking back the community block by block by establishing and replicating adjoining four block areas there will be a concentrated push to educate citizens on how to make their money stretch farther, and even increase it by learning how to put their cash and income to work for them.
Investments, mortgages, college funds, IRAs and other monetary techniques of a wealthy Capitalistic society can be focused on the citizens of these areas as they are brought into the prosperity that they can share.
We must also learn how to apply conscientious racism for our own benefit. Other races and peoples prosper and often at our expense.
We have learned to seriously dysfunction to the effect that we exalt discrimination against our own kind, and mistake such self-limiting as positive brotherhood and fairness.
Nowhere in the world is such nonsense tolerated except among the formerly and evidently still mentally Enslaved. Those well-meaning crafters of the mythical but still instructive lessons of the 1700s Willie Lynch would understand this attitude well.
We must learn to put our own people first, and not apologize for it. This isn’t racism, this is normality! As Tejumolo Ologboni said, if all things are equal, then go Black.
Give your own people some points for their life experience. One of the saddest things is the behaviour of those deluded Negroes who are placed in positions by White folks to balance out there own acknowledged bias.
Instead, these know-nothing Negroes feel they must be "fair" and so they are harder on their own people than a regular White person is. In some cases, if you know or suspect you have one of these delusional Black people whose fate is theirs to dash you’d be far better off redirecting the task or project to a White person. You’ll be far better off.
There is a saying in the South about these HNICs:
"The worst White racists are Negroes with authority."
Stated Solutions:
o "Financial and Banking Personnel will teach Financial Literacy to targeted areas how to budget their money and deal with credit issues."
o "Start Pursuing Business Formation Instead of depending on so-called "Nonprofit Organizations" to support the community or solve its problems.
o "Push Self-reliance as a credo to live by. After fifty years of New Deal welfare programs, and a so-called War on Poverty millions have fallen from the Pyramids to the Projects."
o "Make Examples Of Those Who Cross Us. The enemies of the community have to be made to pay a price that everyone can see that strikes fear into their hearts."
This is a capitalistic society, yet we have large sectors that seem to operate outside of the monetary system that can benefit them well throughout their entire lives and the lives of their children.
Instead of constantly throwing taxpayer and anti poverty agency funds at the same problems generation after generation the power of money can finally be employed to solve the monetary problems of families once and for all.
o "Financial and Banking Personnel will teach Financial Literacy to targeted areas how to budget their money and deal with credit issues, and help open banking, Roth IRAs, home mortgage, college, mutual funds and other accounts so they won’t fall prey to predatory lenders and other schemes, and so start to build their personal credit and home equity and so make their money work for them. Citizens with promising commercial ideas could be encouraged to become businesspersons themselves who in turn could become community based employers."
There is a chapter late in the book "The Culture of Poverty" on success stories, those individuals and entities who refuse to allow the community to slide downward into self destruction if they have anything to do with it.
Among those people I list is activist ReDonna Rodgers, and the center she established to teach not only financial literacy but qualities and abilities far beyond that laudable goal.
Solutions Success Story: Center For Teaching Entrepreneurship and The WAGES of Success
ReDonna Rodgers is an energetic woman from Chicago who possesses an unbounded optimism and spirit. She’d better, because what she’s trying to do in a city noted for its high rate of dropout and Black male unemployment of around 65 percent is to make many of them into independent business persons and employers!
"It could be popping popcorn in the summertime, driving or delivering for people," suggested the ebullient Rodgers, who is indefatigable in her efforts at marshalling the creative moneymaking powers of her youthful charges.
"Being your own bosses doesn’t mean you don’t take orders," said ReDonna Rodgers, director of the Center For Teaching Entrepreneurship. They teach young people to make their own jobs and not just hope that someone will give them employment.
WAGE is the center for teaching Entrepreneurship’s female component that stands for We Are Girl Entrepreneurs. In a city with predominately female headed households and an out of wedlock birthrate of over 70 percent, girls must be empowered to be self-starters and independent so they won’t end up latching onto some man for the sustenance he can provide for her and her offspring.
Ms. Rodgers was from a large family, raised in Chicago. Her mother told them to use her as a role model for what not to be: not to have children young and not be married; get a good education so you could get more out of life than she did. But she was also a good role model for ReDonna and her siblings to be good businesspeople because she oriented them to be mindful of the services they could provide for a fee to others, which is the essence of entrepreneurship.
This is why Rodgers and her crew try to reach the girls who are in the CTE program early on, to solidify the process. After her young charges are taught how to be bosses, it would be hard for them to come under the thumb of a stupid or brutal man. It is an under the radar form of social engineering that would have delighted Birmingham insurance businessman A.G. Gaston; media mogul John H. Johnston, political advisor and college educator Booker T. Washington, not to speak of Indianapolis businesswoman of beauty products Madame C.J. Walker (no relation, I think). All are businesspeople whose life stories are used in the Center For Teaching Entrepreneurship program.
"You have to learn how to charge, calculating what it takes for your time and what it would take to do this job. And some people don’t know how to do that" said Rodgers. Her group makes sure they have the financial literacy to do just that.
Making Bank Off Poor People--Koreans Sell Packs of Fake Hair; Arabs Sell Food; Rent-to- Own And E-Z Loan Paycheck Advance Places Compete With "Ghettopreneurs"
Legitimate businesses have made a go at trying to make some cash from the ghetto, and have learned how to negotiate the twisting avenues of dealing with the two separate communities in the local African American population.
Downtown corporations who have a presence in the African American community are known to hold two versions of parties; one for their Lower Class clientele in the ghetto, and another for their polite Negro friends who know which fork to use and who won’t get on the middle of the floor and get Jiggy with the vice president’s wife. If some of those from the other side of the community were to learn where the polite parties were held, or if that they were held at all, it could be socially disastrous. It’s on a Need-To-Know basis.
The pointed message is, if you didn’t expressly get an invite then evidently you didn’t need to know!
Liquor stores, Check Cashing places, and rent-to-own establishments (which feature jewelry now!) and Pay-As-You-Go Cellular phone plans were put forth as a solution to their lack of good credit and as a protective way to get at this lucrative consumer oriented and gadget-freak market. Even people who don’t have cars have cellular phones clapped to the sides of their heads, conversating as they bounce along in the back of a city bus.
"I just crossed Center Street, I’ll be there soon, so meet me at the corner, aw’ight?"
This rampant consumerism causes a rapid turnover in goods and services, with the latest fashions or fads that will be closet-clogging junk in a few months, or piled by the curbside for trash pickup as the consumer driven but poverty-prone seek ever more material but without accumulating wealth or an estate. The very next check they get goes to basic survival, and for more stuff.
Discount stores such as Family Dollar and low-cost grocery stores such as Aldi’s are placed where those in poverty can easily reach them on the bus lines. The Payday Loan Centers have now made their appearance in Northern communities, followed by similar financial operations catering to those in poverty where they can pledge their vehicles for quickie loans.
(Look for part ii in the April 4 edition of the "Community Journal.")
