African American News&Issues

There are many obvious disadvantages for a vibrant, new company that depends too heavily on senior citizens who have seen their best days, therefore conventional wisdom is to always have a steady infusion of “new blood,” i.e. young staff members, that you can train up in the way you want your business to go, so that they can step in when the old timers step out, or fade away.
On the other hand, Black newspaper’s most valuable assets are veteran watchers on the wall, who have been there and done that. Especially when they have long memories that are enhanced by instant recall of historical events, as opposed to their young colleagues that have yet to accumulate enough experience and knowledge to fully grasp the concept of a true Black perspective. Fortunately, African American News & Issues just happens to have an ideal mixture of veteran journalists, who are still hanging because they simply love doing what they do, and ambitious young communicators eager to learn and add to what the media’s elders refer to as “a deep well of knowledge.”

Much like today’s society, our younger journalist have a very different perspective of news and issues than tour senior citizen wordsmith, therefore our Tuesday morning staff meetings at times becomes a clash between our elders from the “old school” (segregated era) and our post integration educated writers, that usually evolve into a Black History lesson. If you don’t know where we’re coming from, let’s use the recent controversy involving the self appointed Black leaders and the Houston Rocket’s Leslie Alexander as an example. The younger writers considered Alexander’s “craw fishing” a victory for Black faces in high places. Even so, they are political savvy enough to realize that their court action was more about their personal thirty pieces of silver, than fairness.
Judas Goats aside, our younger journalist (much like the minority contractors outside the insider’s loop) aren’t naïve enough to believe that Alexander’s “change of heart,” will benefit Black entrepreneurs, per se, but a minority victory is still a victory. And we minorities will take a victory over the rich and powerful any way we can get it. On the other hand, our older watchers on the wall scoffed at the agreement and came close to dissing the victorious Black leaders. They think that, once again, the Black leaders have failed to remember our history, therefore are making the same stupid mistake we’ve made in the past. “When are we (African Americans) going to learn that you can’t make a deal with the devil?
We Must Understand, our living historians asked a good question, indeed, because our media anointed Black leaders and/or political insiders seem to be doing exactly what the disenfranchised Native Americans did. How many treaties did greedy White men have to break, before Native Americans came to the conclusion that, “White eyes speaks with a false tongue?” History clearly tells us that contracts and treaties are no better than the people responsible for honoring them. Therefore, an even better question that’s begging to be answered is, why—or perhaps we should make that how—can we be dumb enough to believe a man, who was being sued (for what we perceived as a bald faced lie), can’t fix his mouth to tell another lie.

We are reminded of that old snake story. The snake, in fact, was surprised that the man who saved him was too stupid to realize that snakes are snakes because they do what snakes do. Incidentally, snakes uniquely have forked tongues. Meanwhile, the heated discussion introduced another concept. The elders insisted that setting aside 30 percent (for minority contractors to fight over), is sharecropping. Sharecropping? Naturally our young journalists were familiar with the political cliché, but they failed to grasp the concept, therefore we sent to Internet to learn: “Sharecropper was a practice that emerged following the emancipation of African-American slaves, sharecropping came to define the method of land lease that would eventually become a new form of slavery.”
“Without land of their own, many blacks were drawn into schemes where they worked a portion of the land owned by whites for a share of the profit from the crops. They would get all the seeds, food, and equipment they needed from the company store, which allowed them to run a tab throughout the year and to settle up once the crops, usually cotton, were gathered. When accounting time came, the black farmer was always a few dollars short of what he owed the landowner, so he invariably began the new year with a deficit. As that deficit grew, he found it impossible to escape from his situation by legal means. The hard, backbreaking work led to stooped, physically destroyed, and mentally blighted black people who could seldom envision escape. Their lives were an endless round of poor diet, fickle weather, and the unbeatable figures at the company store.”

We Must Understand, we’re no different for those poor, dumb sharecroppers when we fight over thirty percent of our tax dollars and still come up short. For some unfathomable reason we fail to realize that when our tax dollars are used to build a downtown arena, or anything else, minority taxpayers should expect 100 percent participation. Why do we continue to go for the okey doke and fight over thirty percent that we seldom, if ever get? Why are we allowing rich and political powerful people to play “Plantation Politics” with our tax dollars? In a one person, one vote Democracy, all taxpayers own the plantation, so why foolish enough to be divided and confused over thirty percent?
Why would supposedly politically astute minority leaders believe that Alexander has any intentions, whatsoever, of dealing fairly with minority contractors? And one only had to observe the minority leaders make a 360-degree turn, and praise Alexander to conclude that they truly believe him. Why would they believe a man who has lied to them before, won’t have any problem lying to them again? Then again, all of those questions are answered, if they don’t have sense enough to realize that fighting over 30 percent, rather than a fair share of 100 percent, is the same as sharecropping. And history tells us, sharecropping precludes fair deals. Shame, shame, shame on you minority leaders.