In 2017 the fact remains that Black America is Locked Out of all governmental structured laws and policies that allow for the advancement and self sustaining quality of life basic human rights. Necessities that all human beings have a right to. Black America is Locked Out of Education, Jobs, all Economic opportunity and the Justice system to name just a few. These are a few of the issue that I’d like to high light with the coming release of the organizations indiegogo.com crowd funding, “Visual Landscape: The March To Inclusion” campaign in a few days. . Issues I’d like our potential backers to consider.
By every barometer in American society — health care, education, employment, economic status, poverty — Black Americans are worse off. Looking at oppression, human rights violations and racism as only a byproduct of economic deprivation ignores the ways that racism exists as an independent force that wreaks havoc in the lives of all Black American’s at every conceivable level. This is the reality that Black America have had to survive with since being brought to the shores of America. Black oppression has been largely produced by government policy and private institutions that not only impoverish Black America but also demonize and criminalize it.
The struggle against oppression regularly intersects with struggles for economic equality, but racism does not only express itself over economic questions. Struggles also take place in response to the human rights crises Black America and it’s communities experience daily, including struggles against racial profiling, police brutality, housing, health care, educational inequality, and mass incarceration and other aspects of the criminal justice system. Black America remain’s an oppressed nation within the political and economic clutches of the privileged, Washington and Wall Street.
Contrary to what many are indoctrinated to believe, the dehumanization of Black America did not simply end when slavery was abolished; instead, the mark of inferiority branded onto Black skin carried over into Emancipation and laid the basis for the second-class citizenship Black Americans experienced for close to a hundred years after slavery and until this very day. Black Americans are so thoroughly banished from political, civil, economic and social life that it is virtually impossible for the clear majority of poor and working-class whites or any other race of human beings in America to even conceive of uniting with Black Americans to challenge the human rights violations, injustice and the authority of the ruling privileged class. American Charitable foundations have mainly remained silent concerning the crisis.
With the launch of “Visual Landscape: The March To Inclusion” we hope to not only raise the funds needed to insure a smooth opening for our developing Gallery Boutique community resource center but to start solution oriented dialogue between Black and white Americans. To address the compelling national Human Rights crisis facing Black America, we must engage in a dialogue about race-recognition remedies among one another and encourage it at the highest levels of government. At this point asking Black Americans to work harder, find better employment, get more education, start a business, and try harder is unrealistic. We’d like to high light the fact that, even as our organization is classified as a 501(c)3 charitable organization in one of our states poorest communities, we’ve been continually turned away by local charitable foundations, state and county agencies funded by hard working tax payers. Told in many cases, in so many words, to seek funding from our own. Those who have been denied opportunity and have the least to contribute.
Black-owned businesses make up only 7% of U.S. businesses, although Black Americans constitute 13% of the population. Of the 1.9 million businesses owned by Black Americans, in 2007 only 106,824 had paid employees. Average receipts for Black-owned employer companies came to $925,427; for the remaining 1.8 million Black-owned non-employer businesses, receipts came to $21,263—not enough to keep a family of four above the poverty line. These figures precede the Great Recession. With the resulting credit crunch, lack of access to financing, and decline in consumer spending, there’s little reason to believe that those numbers haven’t worsened over the past years since.
With Black America facing growing pressure by the current administrations threat to slash human needs programs for the poor, who are demonized and characterized as lazy slackers trying to cheat the system, we hope to foster a new, more accurate narrative. The greatest hardship facing Black-American entrepreneurship is not in starting businesses, but rather in gaining the access to capital and growing the businesses to a scale sufficient for sustained and significant revenue generation. Lobbying elected officials to craft better public policy and banning discriminatory behavior by individuals or institutions won’t do the job at this point. And while there is a serious need for government action barring practices that harm entire groups of people, these strategies fail to grasp the scale and depth of oppression and racial inequality in the United States.
Now It’s not enough to just create self-employed Black entrepreneurs; white-owned industry can compete in and even dominate the black consumer market with impunity while Black Americans are locked out and unable to participate. We must build more Black-owned employer businesses that create jobs. This will only help to reestablish America and Black unemployment. It will enable Black America to have a realistic opportunity to compete. Being Erased from history is the Major contribution that Black American slave’s and their decedents have made to making America what it’s become.
There is, with out doubt, a racial component between Black Americans and white Americans that must be addressed. Unfortunately, this country is uncomfortable with addressing that racial component but until we have a real dialogue about it, the division is going to grow wider and the Humanitarian crisis facing Black America will deepen. Your support for our indiegogo campaign and the solution oriented dialog that follows will be greatly appreciated. Please share the campaign and spread the word.
