"Black People" and Reparation Checks
It has been said more than once, it has been said in a major motion picture, a popular black comedian did a skit on it and I even seen the idea advanced on one of the cable networks; If "Black People" are given reparations in the form of a check, this or that will happen. In the movie Barber Shop Cedric the Entertainer said that we would spend it all on Cadillac’s, Dave Chappelle did a skit on his show that portrayed us spending reparation checks on Chicken and many other things.
The sad part about this garbage being spoken on television and in movies is that no one has challenged this foolishness. When ever I hear a Black person advance this idea I ask them if that is what they will do, and of course they say no. I then ask, if not you then who? They of course say other people, you know “Black people”. The truth is Black men and women will not spend money giving to us for reparations any different than white folk or any other group of people would spend money given to them or money they already have. When we look at the idea that “Black People” will run out and buy this car or that car in large quantities, we see that this ignores that there is no one car that has been purchased by more Black folk than any other group of people. Even the Cadillac Escalade which is commonly referred to as the car “Black People” will run out and buy is driven by more white folk than by us. So what would be so weird about Black men and women buying a car if they need one? As far as fast food restaurant becoming this or that because Black men and women have come into some money, this to ignore the fact that no fast food operation is in business because "Black People" are their biggest customers and that includes the Big Chicken chains, thus we would only be spending our money as those who already have money spend theirs.
We can expect and should expect that some people who have never had money will spend it frivolously but to suggest that “Black People” will spend money this way or that way can only mean that their is a fundamental belief that we lack the discipline other groups of people allegedly have to spend money wisely; as if we will spend it on things that is not being purchased by those who have money already. The sad part about this belief is that it is espoused by other Black folk who apparently do not consider themselves “Black people”.
I believe if given reparations in the form of a check "Black People" will spend it on various things that include but not limited to; cars, if we do not have one, a home if we do not have one, some of us would use it to send our children to College or to a private grade school, some of us would use it to take care relatives suffering from some illness, some of us will use it clear up any debt we have and the list goes on. It is about time we start challenging those Black folk who continue to advance the idiotic idea that “Black people” will spend reparations given in the form of a check irresponsibly and remind them that they are "Black People" as well.
Faheem..
posted by Faheem @ 8/29/2004 01:41:00 AM
9 comments
9 Comments:
Its funny how the term "black people" is used non-inclusive by so many of our people, when they are making dispariging remarks. If each of us see ourselves as being inclusive, when the term is used, it should have the effect of cutting down on all this negative rhetoric. However, the truth is that many of our people are trying to seperate themselves from the think of the masses, feeling that it ELIVATES them in the process. It makes them feel SUPERIOR and hence more acceptable to white society.
I agree totally Faheem. This nonsense gets propogated by our noted scholars such as Cedric the Entertainer, Ice Cube and the Chapell cat. While uneducated cats like Cornell West, Mike Dyson and others rarely gets that large of a national audience to give their point of view.
You guys are on dust. You accept his argument without any fucking facts to back it up. You are on the web, were data is a Google search away, where is the data to back up his belief that blacks wouldn't spend extra cash frivolously. Do we have a higher savings rate ? Do we invest more in education, stock market homes ? Do we build more small business ?
Well here is an article that counters your claim that we don't piss away our money.
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m4021/is_1_25/ai_96734619
"Americans of all colors like a bargain, but whites are the most likely of all racial and ethnic groups to shop at discount stores."
So were aren't even willing to shop at discount stores.
Now this article isn't the end all of the debate, but please try to use some FACTs and have your conclusion based on it. And this article does make the point that different groups do have different shopping behavior, which you try to deny when you say. "The truth is Black men and women will not spend money giving to us for reparations any different than white folk or any other group of people would spend money given to them or money they already have."
The saddest part about this post is that you are trivializing the entire reparations debate.
For anyone who actually wants to THINK about reparations check out these links on my blog.
http://blacksforbush.blogspot.com/2004/08/alan-keyes-supports-form-of.html
http://blacksforbush.blogspot.com/2004/08/blacks-deserve-reparations-from-reason.html
Well Scott, you seem to be as knowledgeable about this subject matter as you are on physics and science. If one takes a subset of the white population, with the aim of the subset to be a mirror of the superset of black America, in regards to poverty rates, median per capita income and educational levels, that would be a fair racial comparison of spending proclivities.
As Faheem noted, black people spending habits are not that different from whites, however, the spending habits and priorities of “poor” or “uneducated” people are considerably different from those more affluent and educated. Thus, the difference in spending behavior has much more to do with “CLASS” than it does for race. It just so happen that black poverty rates are a couple times greater than whites on the whole, making a phenomenon that is rooted in class, seem as if it is rooted in race, when it is not.
Neither of you have show a single piece of evidence to back up your beliefs. Please do so.
The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. If evidence is so paramount to you, how about you presenting the evidence that what I just stated in regards to “class” is not true. If you are a proponent of evidence, yet, fail to present any that discredits my assertion, then you have just discredited yourself.
You need to stop relying on what “others” say, because you have know way of proving the validity of it…rather, you simply look for literature that matches your political ideology…and deem it credible for your trust.
Scott buys into any thing that disparages Black men and women and paint a picture about us as being irresponsible but he would say of himself he is none of those things but yet he is a black person. Scott missed the point in my article where I stats;
"We can expect and should expect that some people who have never had money will spend it frivolously but to suggest that “Black People” will spend money this way or that way can only mean that their is a fundamental belief that we lack the discipline other groups of people allegedly have to spend money wise"
You quote that white folk are more likely to shop at a discount store, but your little article also points out that:
"Blacks are the most likely of all groups to be willing to travel an hour or more to shop at their favorite store and almost twice as likely as the average consumer to go out of their way to find new stores, especially if a bargain is to be had."
Further more throughout the article the percentage points between Black consumerism and white consumerism is in the single digits and as low as three to four percentage points in many instances. If we extrapolate that data into to real world numbers we see that white folk spend money far more frivolously that black folk being that so many of us are poor and are not shopping at all. There is no way this article can portray an accurate picture of consumerism about Black folk by doing a survey of a few of us, but I digress. I think your article support my position more than it supports yours.
Also take into account that those white folk that you say are saving money, investing in this or that opening business are also spending money on those things that are believed to be the things Black folk will run out and spend money from reparations on, thus equating a person with money spending habits with those who have little money is not a fair comparison. Surely you knew this. Measuring how we spend $646 billion to how white folk spend $6.3 trillion is funny, it is no wonder they are investing and saving look at the difference in money spent.
A guy making 40k a year is not going to save or spend his money the way a guy making 80k will. Surely you knew that to.
Glad you finally found some evidence to support your thesis.
I understand Bushes weakness on race:
http://blacksforbush.blogspot.com/2004/07/bush-and-race-from-i-hate-republican.html
The sad thing is that he has done more for black people in the last three years than any democrats in 3, if not the last 11.
Federal funded school vouchers for the people on washington D.C. and th NCLB act. Are the two biggest things he has done for black America.
http://blacksforbush.blogspot.com/2004/07/naacp-betrays-black-americansthrough.html
I hope in his second term he will be able to privatize social security since most blacks don't live long enough to collect the money they put into social security. and if its privatized it becomes wealth that can be passed on to the nexy generation.
BTW when I started my blog I wasn't totally pro-bush I was investiagting because it bad for blacks to always vote democrat. As I have look at issue after issue Bush is just better on important issues than Kerry.
http://blacksforbush.blogspot.com/2004/03/malcolm-x-ballot-or-bullet-malcolm.html
Malcolm said it 40 years ago:
"As they see these new political trends, it's possible for them to see that every time there's an election the races are so close that they have to have a recount. They had to recount in Massachusetts to see who was going to be governor, it was so close. It was the same way in Rhode Island, in Minnesota, and in many other parts of the country. And the same with Kennedy and Nixon when they ran for president. It was so close they had to count all over again. Well, what does this mean? It means that when white people are evenly divided, and black people have a bloc of votes of their own, it is left up to them to determine who's going to sit in the White House and who's going to be in the dog house."
But we never learned the lesson. Its time for a change. The black vote must stop selling out Black America by giving away the milk for free. Join with me to earn the respect of the political power brokers in America.
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This is not racist, because your name is Faheem, and I assume your black! But if your name was sarah and you were white, you might as well be a KKK member. Admit it.
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