The very long article I’ve cited below encapsulates a lot of what I’ve been thinking and writing about in my writing. The white males in control from the beginning have always understood that true real meaningful education of the masses would topple them from their privilege. In the South, that has always been the case. Keep them ignorant and we can sell them anything while syphoning their productivity and their money to increase our (white male) wealth.
The white males who dominate our system have long understood that a true real substantial education for us citizens would be the death knell to their undeserved privilege. So now in 2023, we get book bans, calls for prayer in schools, underfunded schools that are little more than prisons. (In the U.S., prisons are not for rehabilitation, but for punishment and exposure to the worse that a human can do to another human.) There are teachers who have given up on teaching. Teachers who should have never been teachers because they have no aptitude for teaching. Administrators who just don’t care that the schools are not serving the children…what’s the latest gimmick (educational theory) out of California. Oh, it doesn’t work and California abandoned it five years ago. Hey, let’s try it! Parents who use electronics to tend to and influence their children, and a culture of blame. We also have a begging culture because no one wants a civilized system of government funded safety nets for the individual. It’s a different story for corporations. Corporations have convinced us that they are too big to fail and our tax dollars must be used to save them.
A 2015 study in Boston found that the wealth of the median white family there was $247,500, while the wealth of the median African American family was $8. Excerpt from the above cited article. From what I’ve read over the years, this study has been replicated in other parts of the U.S. and maybe for the entire U.S. As a group, we have no wealth. We do have paychecks and we spend them frivolously for the most part. I saw somewhere where a woman spent over a thousand dollars on a manicure…a disappearing, temporary asset. If you haven’t seen Chris Rock’s documentary “Good Hair“, you should. We spend money on fleeting, feel-good carpe diem things. I do understand… I do it, but only after setting aside a portion for the future. I’m a firm believer in if you don’t see it/have access to it, you won’t spend it.
So, to spend hundreds of dollars on clothes, hair, shoes, nails, etc. is not in my nature. I like bargains and I have been called cheap. I also dislike the volatility of the stock market and have learned to save my statements for infrequent reviews. I furnished my house in multiple trips to antique stores. I learned to refinish and reupholster and, what I could not do, I found someone who could for a reasonable fee.
But we live in the U.S. and our history in this country has inured us to living in the present. Look at what the barbarians did in Tulsa. They were jealous so they pillaged the houses owned by the Blacks for furniture, etc. that they could not afford. And the Black Tulsans had no recourse. Insurance didn’t pay and there was no justice because the justice system was controlled by the barbarians. The Black Tulsans had to start over and they knew that at any time the barbarians could repeat their pillaging. So, why save for a future that was so prone to violence against their bodies and their property? So, one learns to live in the present. And that is a mindset that permeates our culture. I don’t know that we are aware of it because it is so ingrained.
Living in the present in a capitalistic society sets you up to be like the Black executive who had a rented condo, a rented luxury car, designer suits and shoes…all the trappings of the good life…and not a dime for burial expenses when he dropped dead of a heart attack. And, for his children…no inheritance. One cannot build wealth if one lives solely in the present. (In thinking about this point, the deceased doesn’t care that he or she is buried in a pauper’s grave or cremated or composted, so from that aspect, living in the present has benefitted them. Because you can’t take the wealth with you. However, if you have children, an inheritance could make their life better and, if they learn from your example, then their children will have an inheritance. But, I see too many of us squandering our inheritances on ephemerals.) I’m conflicted. Wealth building in the United States is a crap shoot. When too many of us enter the stock market, for example, it conveniently crashes (corrects itself), and our investments end up in the pockets of the wealthy few and we, especially if we cash out, are left with nothing. If we did not cash out, then we start over with what little is left and hope we live to see our investment recover.
I’ve been through a number of market crashes/corrections and I have never cashed out, but I know people who have. I don’t regret my decision, but neither do I applaud it. I succumbed to inertia. However, after one crash/correction, in order to further insulate myself, I decided to let a professional manage my investments. That was a good decision for me.
Oh, a thought. The picture is not really a rabbit hole. It’s the air/entry hole of one of the many moles that inhabits my yard, tunneling and tunneling, making my yard a mushy trap for any one or thing that walks or runs through it.
Have you noticed the packaging of items in the grocery store? One is getting less product for more money. The trend appears to have accelerated after the Pandemic.
Last gasps to hold onto power are always the most vicious.
The Israeli government was clear in its intent to commit genocide in Palestine. Why didn’t the U.S. government believe them. Their intent to kill, murder should be clear and the murder of the three hostages clearly expresses their purpose. They are there to kill/murder, to exterminate…believe people when they say they will commit evil. If they’re bold enough to loudly express their evil, believe them.
On You Tube, just watched Black Girl, a fifty-plus year old movie that was directed by Ossie Davis. Let me say it…this is an urban movie set, I think, in Chicago. First, the acting was very good. Nobody was reading their lines. Second, I’m from the country and I never knew people like this. Did something happen to us in adapting to an urban environment? This movie was released in 1972 and based on a play by J.E. Franklin which was staged in 1969(?).
There will always be sibling rivalry, but the rivalry depicted between the sisters was toxic. The mother had failed dreams and she wanted more for her daughters than the life she was living. Unfortunately, for her, the daughters from her failed first marriage did not finish high school and were single mothers. They did not appear to work. Maybe they were on welfare. The mother was a janitor at a school. The grandmother (mother’s mother) lived with them, along with the grandmother’s live-in male friend. The movie seemed to be saying that after so many failed dreams, the mother had stopped dreaming and could not dream of a better life for herself or her daughters. Her two oldest daughters had no dreams for themselves, but her youngest daughter (the two oldest daughters’ half sister) did. In the end, the mother realized that she had to allow the youngest daughter to pursue her dreams. There was also a foster daughter who was in college whom the mother idolized because she was pursuing the dream the mother had dreamed for herself. That was another source of tension in the movie.
I can’t say I enjoyed the movie. It was like watching a psychological study of people that I had no connection to. However, in the comments, people were saying that their family was like that or they knew people like that and it was triggering to watch. I think the movie got right the following: the lack of verbalization of love between the mother and daughters; the lack of communication between parents and children when the children are summarily sent to live with a relative. All the unanswered questions may never be answered and the feeling of abandonment is always there…a nagging gnat that always evades your swat; and the denigration and belittling of education by my generation. Note: the mother still believed in education as a means to a better life. Some of us did, too, but the girls having the babies…most did not. So they passed that mindset to the next generation and it has been passed on until that is a mindset that permeates the Black community. I’m glad I watched it, but I would not watch it again.
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