Black Culture Discussion Thread

[tokes99]

understanding YOU are the money, power, and influence.

if more people really thought like this in a grounded, practical, understanding way...instead of the condescending "we are/come from/were kings/queens" wave, which i maybe a problem that every people has to overcome...

serious question, what would those steps be?

i don't know what the steps would be, acknowledging that there is influence/power we do have is important, but there is an existing prevailing system that operates with more influence/power and i think mostly people will have to be understanding about the inevitable comparisons & growing pains; it doesn't have to be an exclusive thing...one could build the one, while participating in the other

BEEN time

my man @Mark Antony called the NAACP Image Awards ‘us giving ourselves participation trophies’

*sheesh*

i think that was probably a poor choice of words, but i took that to mean that some awards translate more readily into influence/money/power/prestige than others. this type thing kinda ends up being the crux of the matter...how much & what, are people willing to compromise; and maybe more importantly how & what they define & understand as compromise...

i cant stress this enough

i come from a family that had one of these businesses since the 1960’s

my family let our business slip away, but will tell you it was stolen from us

over 50 years of business and my grandparents never saw the value in teaching their kids about business or economics so my aunts and uncles never learned it.

i have a cousin that tours the globe singing. extremely smart, he passed the bar but liked performing and made more money.

that wasnt good enough for my grandparents. they wanted him to get a GOOD job and go to work everyday punching a clock

i'd be curious to see a subset of different demographics businesses ownership rates along with failure/success rates; this is the type of thing that looks good as a meme because it seems anecdotally true but not sure it is based in actual fact, something like 50% or more of businesses don't work out, and i don't know that it is the case that most of those groups are business owners...and as mentioned, it could just be that some within those groups have access to capital/credit/networks that aren't available to the people to whom they are being compared?

for as much as the university model seems like a con -or at the very least an expensive undertaking- (especially if not really approaching it thoughtfully) the numbers bear out it is typically correlated with higher earnings across the board...most parents would not necessarily be too in favor of foregoing an expensive university education which, to many a mind at least has the potential for stability, for the life of an artist that on the surface appears perpetually unstable. but ultimately as long as the kid(s) find some relative success in whatever the pursue parents usually are good with it

 

[seasoned vet]

tokes99

im not one of those “all blacks need to own our own businesses” types along the lines of Claud Anderson or Boyce Watkins. i think their models are severely flawed and outdated.

everyone isnt suited to run a business
and all businesses dont thrive

i advocate for an education IN business and economics.
that teaches budgeting, understanding points/ percentages, supply & demand, contracts, credit, land value, etc.

something my grandparents failed to teach their children because they didnt see value in it

 

[tokes99]

tokes99

im not one of those “all blacks need to own our own businesses” types along the lines of Claud Anderson or Boyce Watkins. i think their models are severely flawed and outdated.

everyone isnt suited to run a business
and all businesses dont thrive

i advocate for an education IN business and economics.
that teaches budgeting, understanding points/ percentages, supply & demand, contracts, credit, land value, etc.

something my grandparents failed to teach their children because they didnt see value in it

i get that, no doubt those things are important and arguably perhaps much moreso for people of color...but i would say, with all due respect to not being knowledgeable of your lived experience, your assessment of your og's ogs is maybe a lil unfair, no? actually most people don't understand how those things really work and any education in those thing might not easily be adaptable (or even as applicable) to the subsequent generation(s). it also might very well have been that your parents & their siblings had aspirations 'beyond' or just different to what your grandparents were on??

i think it can be unfair to place a higher expectation for understanding of those things, especially when the comparison is people that aren't of similar demographics; like is the average person generally aware/knowledgeable in those areas?

 

[Maximus Meridius]

Just saw Black Panther. A lot of gems in that movie.


Wakanda reminded me of how people talk about Egypt, Mali Empire and other parts of Africa that was far advanced than the rest of the world.

 

[DCAllAfrican]

 

[DCAllAfrican]

 

[nawghtyhare]

Ain’t been overlooked by me
That’s why I always give dude his props

 

[rbk93]

Why should coming from a more than fortunate situation be frowned upon?

Also, it's a gift that be in a position that LeBron is in. Not to discredit anything he's done or accomplished, but just everyone can't be a LeBron.

 

[nawghtyhare]

Why should coming from a more than fortunate situation be frowned upon?

Also, it's a gift that be in a position that LeBron is in. Not to discredit anything he's done or accomplished, but just everyone can't be a LeBron.

A gift????
Nah a gift is something given
Dude earned everything he got

 

[SplinterMatic319]

im not black but very interested in this indigenous black native american theory...........people on youtube really believe this in their soul

 

[nawghtyhare]

im not black but very interested in this indigenous black native american theory...........people on youtube really believe this in their soul

Not saying I believe
But why don’t u believe

 

[rbk93]

A gift????
Nah a gift is something given
Dude earned everything he got

God or whatever circumstances made him who he is today.

Surely he enjoys his position in the world, but there has to be negatives or things I'm sure he wish he didn't have to experience.

 

[DCAllAfrican]

God or whatever circumstances made him who he is today.

Surely he enjoys his position in the world, but there has to be negatives or things I'm sure he wish he didn't have to experience.

Not sure if you are being serious.

 

[rbk93]

Dead serious. It's a perspective thing.

 

[hand2handking]

 

[Maximus Meridius]

A lot of truth

 

[seasoned vet]

Why should coming from a more than fortunate situation be frowned upon?

.

where do you get ‘frowned upon’ from ‘often overlooked’?

shining a light on one thing doesnt **** all over everthing else

 

[hand2handking]

"When it comes to men’s grooming, there's usually a lot of trial and error involved as guys search for the right routine to complement their individual lifestyles. In fact, tech entrepreneur Tristan Walker -- admired in Silicon Valley for his success as head of business development at Foursquare -- was so frustrated with the quality of over-the-counter razor blades, which constantly left him with razor bumps, that he stopped shaving altogether for 15 years. That's all part of what led him, in December 2013, to launch his very own line of shaving products called Bevel. The products are aimed at "men with coarse and curly hair," according to the website of Walker & Company, Walker's start-up health- and beauty-products business, of which Bevel is the flagship brand. The line includes a special brush as well as razors and lotions, all of them aimed at the kind of skin-irritation problems that are especially common among black men. In the year since its launch, Bevel has attracted investors as diverse as Hollywood mogul Charles King, hip-hop veteran Nas and the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. During a recent interview with The Huffington Post, Walker, a Stanford University Graduate School of Business alum and a native of Queens, New York, opened up on developing Bevel, as well as his long-term plan to expand his company and reach underserved minority customers.Support getbevel.com #motivation #business #ownership "

 

[rbk93]

where do you get ‘frowned upon’ from ‘often overlooked’?

shining a light on one thing doesnt **** all over everthing else

Well I don't fully or truly understand in my opinion, the full perspective of never having to worry about going without.

The struggle seems to be more glorified than coming from a affluent family.

 

[k3stacks]

 

[sugafree]

 

[tokes99]

Well I don't fully or truly understand in my opinion, the full perspective of never having to worry about going without.

The struggle seems to be more glorified than coming from a affluent family.

sure, struggle is just superficially more interesting...i understand your point about lebron tho: everyone can't, nor should they be expected to be held to, live to his standard (and it very well could be that there have been other ups & downs he has went through that the public isn't aware of)

 

[d nice]

“When the Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1863, the black community owned less than one percent of the United States’ total wealth. More than 150 years later, that number has barely budged.” As Mehrsa Baradaran argues in her new book, The Color of Money, this absence of wealth isn’t just a failure to atone for oppression and exclusion imposed by slavery and Jim Crow, but the product of contemporary acts to maintain their legacy.

Today, the racial wealth gap is animated by policies that build the wealth of those who already have it and sowing debt among those who don’t, such as fees and fines levied by municipal governments and the criminal justice system, which fall disproportionately on communities of color.

This experience of exclusion is reinforced at the community level where decades of legal residential segregation create the conditions for economic insecurity to become self-reinforcing. The disappearance of mainstream banks from communities of color, for example, has left the door open for unscrupulous and predatory actors, like payday lenders, to profit from poverty. Rather than seen as an outcome constructed by law and policy, Baradaran argues, the lack of Black wealth is blamed on colorblind market forces.

As such, the prevailing solutions have focused on enabling Black communities to “bootstrap” their way to wealth by invigorating local enterprise, leaving unexamined the ways in which the government is culpable for both failing to invest in building Black wealth and continuing to siphon it away.

If you got the time and some patience, you should definitely check this out.

 

[gry60]

Today, the racial wealth gap is animated by policies that build the wealth of those who already have it and sowing debt among those who don’t, such as fees and fines levied by municipal governments and the criminal justice system, which fall disproportionately on communities of color.

They had a report on NPR about the amount in fines resulting from unpaid tickets owed to the city of Chicago: $1.5 billion (compared to ~$30 million in LA and about the same in NYC), most of it due to the fact that when you can't pay exorbitant tickets, they just...double and there is no statute of limitations on those fines. Of course, most of that amount is owed by the poorest in the city.

 

[hand2handking]