50 Solutions

50 Solutions to the Black Dilemma


Let’s acknowledge out front that we will never be able to totally solve our problems and eliminate self interest totally. Certainly, we can no longer ignore that there is a “profit side”to black crisis, and a fame side for those who speak to black crises. That’s the up-side, and we always pay more attention to the up-side than the down side. The down side, however, is most damaging when our collective interests aren’t served, and most dangerous, when they are. But we can eliminate potential of conflicting self interest, meaning you can come up as long as, or in helping, the people come up—but you shouldn’t come up at the expense of the people. With that said…

Solution 1: Let’s acknowledge that we’re all different but experience the same challenges.
Black people are not monolithic and shouldn’t be expected to accept “cookie cutter” approaches to solutions. Malcolm X said 40 years ago that we don’t catch hell because we’re Christian or Muslim, Democrat or Republican. We catch hell in America because we’re Black. It’s still true.

Solution 2: Let’s acknowledge that racism isn’t over.
Just because white people have eliminated it from the public discourse, doesn’t mean that it went away. Race-neutrality, or “Colorblindness” is the new Jim Crow that allows us to be separated, mistreated and still
unequal. We must address race inequities that are every bit as disparate as they were 50 years ago.

Solution 3: Stop playing to our lower self, or the worst in our society.
We will never progress for as long as we allow others in the race to disrespect our women, our children, and call each other the worst thing our grandfathers could be called, . The pimp, thug, dawg, and gangsta mentality doesn’t serve our best interest either. It’s degradation and cannibalism—pure and basic, feeding on each other. Can’t we just be human, or more importantly, men and women?

Solution 4: Establish a “quality of life”survival level for our communities. Forty years of white flight and job relocations have created communities without sustainable economies.
Minimum wage jobs cannot support the economy of any community. Identify companies that rely on the black dollar and demand work. Otherwise, don’t spend with those that don’t support us.

Solution 5: Engage in only responsive, action-oriented advocacy.
Let others know we mean business. Target our advocacy to demonstrate that we are responsive enough to close a business, or vote someone out of office, when they betray our trust, or go against the collective interest. Back up the “twist and shout” with “Get ‘em out.” Others will respond when they see we can respond.

Solution 6: Identify and expose “interlopers.”
Interlopers are those who call themselves part of the community, but show others how to exploit the community and take payment for it. They can work in corporations, government, elected office or in the church. This is currently black America’s biggest problem—those who will do a good deed in support of the community out in the open, but do two dirty deeds behind closed doors to undermine the community interest.

Solution 7: Take our children out of public schools, if they cannot be properly educated.
If we haven’t figured out that public education is “dumbing-down” our children, we will never figure it out. I know this is controversial, but for as long as public education is broken, it is the biggest contributor to black adult illiteracy (now over 50% in some parts of the country) and the marginalization of black employment. Like 50 years ago, poor education is now our biggest threat.

Solution 8: Do not condone crimes against society, particularly our community.
Blacks are currently the biggest criminal exploiters of other Blacks. We can’t (or even shouldn’t) expect the other man to do anything about this “black on black” thing. We have to solve this one ourselves.

Solution 9: Practice sound economics to lift our communities. Economics is not arithmetic.
“Buy black” days and five dollar a month checking accounts will not build wealth in our communities. Massive wealth building strategies, like the Rule of 72, or REIT investment circles that double your money in 4.2 years, are the only solutions that will allow us to keep up with rising costs in housing and business start-up markets. Blacks must learn to live on 50% to 70% of what they earn, and save the rest. Looking good and being broke went out with platform shoes and jeri curls. Econo-practicality that emphasizes saving will close the racial wealth gap. Consumer mentality on quickly depreciable assets (cars, clothes, some jewelry) keeps us poor. Give it up.

Solution 10: Pull your money out of banks that do not lend it back to you, pure andsimple.
Banks are strangulating our communities, taking money in but not letting it out, unless it’s in another community. Lending practices are highly questionable and we need to hold banks in our community accountable. We cannot allow economic redlining to persist, as leverage builds wealth.

These are the first ten solutions to the most common (and complex) collective problems in our community. The next ten will focus on personal behaviors, mental well-being and health.

Who knows? This could start a national debate on how we solve (some of) black America’s problems. It is this generation’s dilemma, you know.
Central to solving any problems in the collective black community is correcting the mental and physical state of Black America. The figurative state of Black America is reflective of
literal state of Black America’s health and mindset, both of which that causes us to think and act in ways that are counterproductive, at best, or destructive to the notion of unity in our communities. It is time for us to admit the black people, in their current condition, are every bit as sick, physically and mentality, as the forces that created our societal circumstances.

If you want to lay it at the feet of “the White Man,” then so be it. He certainly has done (and continues to do) his share. But I’m not so sure we can blame the white man for all our problems anymore. For instance, the white man doesn’t make us over-eat to the point that obesity has become a pandemic in the black community. With the average black man 20 pounds overweight and the average dress of a black women being a size 22, can we really say the white man is making us eat much of the “slave foods” (truly a vestige of slavery when we ate the scraps from the master’s table) that have now became the “delicacies” we call “Soul Food? Does the white man make us kill ourselves in the streets of America to the tune of close to 100,000 over the last 20 years? Does the white man make us sell dope to our people, or leave our women, or beat our seniors, and I can go on and on….The argument could be made that racial circumstance makes us “do what we have to do to survive” or make us so “frustrated”that we turn on ourselves. The response to that, of course, would be, “Isn’t that part of the plan?

Genocide is genocide, whether it’s orchestrated or self-inflicted. The point is the black “mindset” must be adjusted for us to fight that fight, and our health must become our wealth to the point of where we value it more than the things we kill ourselves over. That being said, some of our solutions must address our heath status. Here goes:

Solution 11: Admit that most black people need some kind of counseling to exorcise themselves from the demons that centuries of racial hate (white on black and black on black) has produced. Black America has serious self-esteem problems that, even when we succeed, cause many of us to hate each other and separate from the condition of the masses of our people. We can’t run from each other, and help each other at the same time. Nor can we ignore the condition of the masses. Nor can we wash the black off. None of us can escape the condition of the least of us.

Solution 12: Stop hatin’ on each other. Jealousy keeps us suspicious of each other, and
envy is the mother of murder. Self-hate is environment under which our enemy operates, and confuses us to who our real enemy is. As long as black people are hatin’ and killing on each other, we cannot see the enemy from without due to the confusion caused by the enemy within.

Solution 13: It is time for black men and black women to call a truce. All black men are not triflin’ and all black women are not mean and evil. The dysfunction of the family that now has the new “black family” being 59% single female-headed households stems from the dysfunction of the black male-female relationship. The black community has lost its balance because the black family has lost its balance. We have to restore the black family unit where both men and women are present. Black relationships don’t have to be traditional to be balanced, but every household must be covered. Whether they are men-women, gay-lesbian, man-sharing, women-sharing, whatever they are, black men and women cannot raise a community distrusting/fighting each other.

Solution 14: We must become a community that raises our children again. We can’t leave it to just the child’s parent. When we see children do wrong, the community must correct them in the absence of their parents. Parents must give permission for the community to correct their child. And when their parents don’t know right from wrong, the community must embrace the fatherless and motherless child. “It takes a village to raise a child” must become more than a saying.

Solution 15: We must restore a position of prestige to our seniors where they can pass the best of our history to us, and help guide us through this storm. No race can survive without tapping into the wisdom of its elders. Young men for war, old men for guidance. Young men don’t get to be old without guidance. Our community mothers must teach our young ladies how to be women—not hoes, not b*tches, not rumpshakers, not shooters—women. We need the guidance of our elders.

Solution 16: We must change our dietary habits to extend our lives. How can we say we’re no longer slaves, but continue to eat slave foods that put African Americans at the top of every major health affliction; heart disease, hypertension/strokes, diabetes and certain cancers. The common denominator is our obesity. Blacks must eat less, and eat right to eliminate race health disparities. Then we must exercise regularly. Good health is the first step to black recovery.

Solution 17: We must eliminate stress from our lives. Stress complicates our poor health status. Stress relief comes in many forms, from prayer to mediation, to exercise to soothing music. We must find our quiet space where mind, body and spirit can come together and guide us in a constructive manner. Stress is the silent killer amongst us and makes us intolerant of each other.

Solution 18: Find a way to make a difference. Not just by writing a check, or having your job buy a table to the local black organization chicken dinner. Give time, money and resources to, at least, one activity or organization that is really making a difference. We can feed a child for a day, or teach a child to fish where they can feed themselves for life. The state of our communities are what they are because not enough of us do our part. If we spend as much time helping people as we spend fighting for positions of recognition in our social organizations, all our problems would be solved. It’s time to end tokenism. Each one, reach one, teach one, then save one. That’s what we used to do. If all of us just saved one…we could save them all. It’s better to be heard in private than to be seen in public.

Solution 19: Stop making excuses for why we can’t do anything “as a people.” Because past efforts failed, doesn’t mean future efforts can’t succeed. Nobody is going to save Black America, but Black America. If we don’t believe we can do it, nobody else will. Let’s “just do it.”

Solution 20: Let’s start listening to each other, and accept valid criticisms. Black people are too damn sensitive. Sometimes, criticisms aren’t valid, but letting people express themselves (sometimes) serves as a bridge to better communication. We need to check each other sometimes, but we don’t need to always be checkin’ people and we don’t always have to be right. Let’s develop a sophistication to our interface that allows us to disagree agreeably, and move ahead.

These solutions were meant to help us deal better with each other. The third ten will focus on our politics and our spirituality. Hold on to your hat—I feel a hellava holy roller comin’ on.

Today, black politicians and black preachers are pretty much in the same state of affairs.
Most want to be celebrities and entertainers. Going to church these days is like going to a
concert. We have legislators that have been in office almost 20 years, and have never passed a piece of legislation. We have preachers of “mega-church” congregations that have never spoken out on a controversial issue. If the so-called “independent” politician or the preacher won’t speak out, then who will? Most aren’t worth the paper these words are written on, but every now and then, one steps up that makes a real difference. While that keeps us from losing total faith in politicians and preachers, it’s not enough. So here’s our ten solutions to sure up our spirituality and our politics;

Solution 21: Learn to separate your spirituality from religion. It helps you separate the hypocrisy of the pulpit, and the church, from your need to stay connected to God. So when you quit the church, or “church-hop” (as most do) in search of spiritual guidance, you don’t quit God. Stay connected to your source of spiritual light and wisdom. God is in you, not in false prophets or bricks and mortar. For those who need church, make the church—don’t let the church make you.

Solution 22: Remind politicians—on a right regular basis—that they serve you, you don’t serve them. Most of them have forgotten that (and many never really understood it). When they forget, tell one, every now and then, to “kiss your a**.” That tends to shock them back to reality.

Solution 23: Be a witness for God. Not just a “closet witness.” Take it to another level get even. Be a soldier for God, or as some of the youth say, “A Gangsta” for God. Advocate for what is right, and what is just. What is right isn’t always just, but what is just is always right. Our community’s condition is due the absence of witnesses for God. Plenty of churches, few soldiers. Solution 24: Let’s stop playing with our franchise, the right to vote. This year is the 40th Anniversary of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and Blacks are voting at the same levels, and in some instances—lower, than in 1965. Our voting sophistication must improve, and there are millions of dollars to educate voters that, somehow, never seem to make where they’re supposed to. Demand voter education between elections, not just before—when they want you to vote somebody. Our loss of societal respect is tied to our unpredictability at the polls. We are not equal without voting.

Solution 25: Stop looking for perfect people. There are none, just people striving to do right, be right, and act right. Our imperfections, our faults and our flaws, like the prophets, are demonstrations that God uses ordinary people to show others that those “on the right path” receive blessings, and perform “miracles” as they strive to stay in God’s grace. Those who can’t see that are not in God’s good graces. Look for the best in people, not perfection, Seek redemption where redemption is given and avoid judgment from those who are not in a position to judge.

Solution 26: Attend a city council meeting, County Board of Supervisors meeting, School Board Meeting, at least once a month. And show up in Washington, D.C. or your state’s capital every now and then. Politicians tend to be more accountable when they know people are watching.

Solution 27: Challenge your preacher to open the church to the lost, the despised and the rejected on a day other than Sunday and Bible Study night. As many churches as we have in America, three million homeless should not have to sleep on the streets. Housing the homeless, or battered women and children every now and then won’t take the polish of the mega-church floors.

Solution 28: Challenge yourself to understand the relationship between politics and money. Give a campaign contribution to prevent our politicians from having to become captive to outside special interest (part of the reason they can’t speak out)and pay to play schemes. Money is a necessary evil of politics. There’s no getting around it. If we want political independence, we have to pay for it. If we don’t, others will and they call the tune our politicians dance to.

Solution 29: Make your faith real. Faith without works is death. People claim they believe, but if you can’t put your faith into action—you don’t really believe. If you believe our communities can come up, believe they can be safer, believe God will bring the man or woman of your dreams, that faith should become real. God says in the Qu’ran, “You shall know the true believer, for they are the successful ones.” God knows the true believer’s heart and makes their desires manifest if their faith is real. If you’ve been praying all your life and nothing’s changed— don’t check others, check how you act out your faith.Those who don’t act on their faith, don’t have faith. You are not what you say you believe. You are what you act in support of your belief.

Solution 30: Practice the politics of moral suasion, and challenge both politicians and preachers to do the same. Find somebody that’s doing nothing about conditions of the poor and disadvantaged, and challenge them to help you make a change. Convince them that they cannot separate their communities circumstance from ours. We’re in this together—they can’t forget that.

The next ten solutions deal with preparing the next generations of Black America.
Believing that our children are our future raises an interesting question, What kind of future can we expect if our children aren’t well taught? The second and third verses of the “Greatest Love of All” states that we “teach them well and let them lead the way,” and “show them all the beauty that they have inside.”As the first American generation that has less than what their parents have, we must prepare our children how to reverse that trend—for if white children have less, black children will have much less and continue to be disproportionately impacted by their societal inequality. Billie Holiday once sang a song that said, “God blesses the child that has his own.” The solutions in this segment focuses on how we prepare the black child to have his or her own:

Solution 31: Stop telling our children, “they ain’t sh*t” or “will never be sh*t” Their self-esteem and self-image must reflect the ability to achieve. If they don’t believe they can achieve, their self-perceptions become self-fulfilling prophesies. If they are not achieving, tell them that they can do better, insist that they try to do better, then help them do better. Don’t ostracize them.

Solution 32: Stop passing on the failures of one generation to another. Telling young men that “they ain’t gonna be sh*t because their daddy wasn’t sh*t” is nothing more than putting the frustrations of adults on their children. Black America will have to acknowledge that it possesses millions of frustrated adults who didn’t fulfill their individual potential. Instead of thinking your children are no better than you, encourage your children to want more than you, and be better at it.

Solution 33:Teach our children how to give. Many of our children are too selfish because many of them only know how to receive. It has to be “all about them.” We can’t raise a society of “takers” and “beggars.” All the laws and the scriptures tell us it is better to give than to receive. There’s a reason for that. The law of the world is that those who give, receive ten fold. If future generations are to be blessed, we must teach them to be givers, not takers.

Solution 34:We must teach our children the true meaning of success. The last two generations of Blacks have sent the wrong message in that success is in things like homes, cars and jewelry. Success are not those things. Success can bring about those things. Success is self improvement and understanding the dignity in being educated and accomplished. The film Coach Carter, and actor Tiny Lister (who spoke after the film), points out that winning basketball games is a measure of success, an accomplishment. But in the larger scheme of things, it doesn’t compare in terms of being educated and being able to change the quality of your life. Success is not a relative engagement, it’s a definitive engagement. You can have “stuff” and still be poor and unaccomplished. That is essentially the state of Black America, poor and unaccomplished, with everybody driving BMWs, Benzs and Escalades. We must paint a different picture of success.

Solution 35:Teach our children that failure is an experience, not a finality. Help them learn that failure is the stairway to success, and not to get bogged down in failing. Real failure is in not trying to do better—not trying to succeed. When you stop trying, then you know you’ve failed.

Solution 36: Tell our children that we love them so they will stop seeking love in all the wrong places. Our children have been convinced that “the streets” love them more than their parents and their homes. The heinous things taking place in our communities stem from an absence of love in people who have no love—so they give no love—and they destroy. Gangs, prostitution, drugs, and pregnancy are all surrogates for young people looking for love or someone to love. Black people need to learn to love themselves again, and being loved is central to giving love.

Solution 37:Tell our children our stories of sacrifice so that they know struggle and can relate to struggle as a continuing battle to achieve equality in America. Because they have everything others have doesn’t mean they’re equal. Help our children understand why they are different and need to be “twice as good” as the other man to be equal in his eyes. Our parents taught us during segregation, but we forgot to pass it on—thus, the equality gap is widening and our children are paying for it. Black struggle in America is a continuing story to be told.

Solution 38:Help our children understand that education changes their life forever. Many think education is over-rated. They won’t understand until they get in their thirties, becoming frustrated adults themselves that they should have taken advantage of what they could’ve learned. They can’t talk what they don’t know and can’t go where they’ve never been, without education.

Solution 39:Teach our children that being rich is more than having money. Being rich is having a spiritual base (knowing God at an early age), always seeking understanding (answers to life’s questions), and staying focused enough to make a difference in their own lives and the lives of others. When you are touching lives with the blessings God has given you, you know you’re rich.

Solution 40:Teach our children to never stop dreaming for a better life. So many of the youth I encounter have, what I call, “dead eyes,” that are life-less, without purpose, meaning they have given up on life and become resigned to their condition. For as long as you have dreams, you have life. Dreams never allow the gleam in one’s eye to be extinguished. It’s heart-breaking to see dead eyes in a young people. Tell our young to believe, and keep in their mind’s eye, their dreams.

The last ten solutions deal with what is holding Black America down the most, the unwillingness on the part of “the Negro” to let a new generation of black thinkers and activists emerge.
The overwhelming number of the 40 million Blacks in America work for someone else, and spend with someone other than themselves. Blacks are trapped in their “Negro” psyche where they can’t help themselves, and can enrich others. How do we overcome the mindset and behaviors of our “Negro” selves? Here’s our last ten solutions to the “Black dilemma:

Solution 41: “Confess with thy tongue” that you are a Negro if you do any one of five things; 1) Worked all your life for somebody else and have no money saved, 2) Spend most of your money with non-black producers of goods and services, 3) Don’t trust any other Blacks outside your family (and sometimes, not them), 4) Do nothing for anybody else (community service) other than yourself, 5) Help “build the wall of racial inequality” higher by refusing to speak out or stand up for right. If you do any of these things, say to yourself, “Damn, I’m a Negro and I need de-programming.” Nobody thinks they’re a Negro, and a “Negro Conversion” Center would probably go empty if asked the Negro to surrender himself but, fact of the matter is, most of us have Negro behaviors that we have to consciously check, in order for our reality to change. The condition of the Negro will never change until we rid ourselves of the mindset of helplessness and dependency.

Solution 42: Stop resisting change. Remember Martin Luther King, Jr. was only 26 years old when he led the Montgomery Movement, 28 years when he founded SCLC, and 35 when he won the Noble Peace Prize. But he was also put out of the National Baptist Convention (he left and co-founded the National Progressive Baptist Convention), criticized by the NAACP (and other traditional) leaders. The Negro resists change. Understand that everything must change, and we need to learn to go with change instead of always resisting it.

Solution 43: Train new leaders to succeed old ones. The Negro read the leadership book but closed the book before the leadership succession chapter. The Negro thinks he can lead forever. Each generation leads itself. Everyone knows and practices this except the Negro. This can’t go on.

Solution 44: Think in terms of the next generation. The Bible tells us that a wise man plans for the next generation. The Negro can’t see beyond his own lifeand lives only for today. Stop it.

Solution 45: Change what we teach our children. The Negro told their children to “go to school and get a good job.” While they were well-intentioned, we now know that it was flawedadvice. We should now tell them to “go to school, learn their trade (work for someone 5-10 years), then start your own business.” Wealth is created through small business, not jobs. We can’t leave our children our jobs. We can leave them the businesses we build, the inventions we create, and our thoughts (the books, poetry, movies and songs we write) that they can profit from.

Solution 46: Re-orientate our children to buy all the land they can (as we did after slavery). Somewhere along the way, the Negro thought it was better to rent next to white people than buy wherever they were. Today, you have people paying $1,500 to 2,000 a month rent when that same amount will pay the mortgage on a $300,000 to $500,000 house that they could own and build equity it. Even poor Blacks can own homes. Hell, poor Whites and poor Latinos do it. What do they know that we don’t know? They understand the importance of ownership. So should we.

Solution 47: Reject racism wherever it exists and speak out whenever it occurs. The Negro, somewhere in 1980s, came to tolerate racism. They didn’t want to lose a job or “cause any trouble. ”No, they would rather live mad themselves—and shorten their life—over the continuing injustices in the world—which remain as long as we’re silent. Teach out children to do the same.

Solution 48: Give nobody a free pass when it comes to our dignity. We must criticize Whites, Blacks and anybody else that assault our dignity in this society. We are not respected because others see that we don’t respect ourselves, and they treat us as we treat ourselves. Somewhere along the way, the Negro lost his dignity and his children have no dignity, calling themselves, “Niggas, *itches, and Hoes,” and doing anything for money. Re-claim black dignity.

Solution 49: Make no more excuses about why we can’t lift ourselves up. The “excuse” has become the Negro moniker. He (or she) can always find a reason black people can’t do something, which is really a reason as to why they’re not doing to improve the situation. Stop it.

Solution 50: Find a way to build unity. Division is our biggest weakness and the biggest reason for Blacks lack of progress. The Negro took generational division to a whole ‘nother
level. We have to find a way to come together, or we will always be played against each other.

These 50 solutions won’t solve all of Black America’s problems, but it will put the race in a better place and better space than it is now. We need to start somewhere. Here’s 50 ways to start.