Black Folks Business

Have you Ever

Have you ever asked yourself why you are doing what you do? When I ask this question of myself the answer brings about the deeper root of my intents and purpose. It is my experience that if we don’t ask this question we tend to not only act, but react. We tend to react to all sorts of cues in everyday life. So many learned responses and the majority of our learned experiences are negative. In our black community it appears to me in more cases than not, that we tend to live our lives with ourselves in the center. I believe this is true and through this thought, we can explain many of our problems and issues within our community. Looking outside our community to wall street, we see that those who lived for themselves share a portion of the responsibility of this broken economy.

Living Beyond Ourselves

To live beyond ourselves means I put you first. I consider not only my own interests but the interest of those in my community. This is a higher living model that few people ever strive to walk in. This is not the easiest way to live because most of the lifestyles of those around us are living for themselves as opposed to living beyond themselves. It is important to ask ourselves why we are doing what we are doing. If we seem to benefit the most and others are being used just to get us to a place, then we are living for self. When we are looking more on the well being of others then we are living beyond ourselves. Living beyond ourselves is the only way we are going to lift our community from the place it is, to the place we all believe we deserve to be.

Check out my Living Beyond Ourselves voice blog as I explain this concept a little deeper.

http://cinch.fm/blackfolksbusiness/297105

This is something that every black business owner needs to know. I think that for the most part most black business owners don’t know why their business is not doing well. Most even when told would give you the look that could kill. How do I know? Because I have been in black businesses and found that I generally get further with a non black business then I do at a black business. What do we do about changing this craziness? It’s important because if we don’t do something to prosper our black businesses how are we going to build our communities? How are we going to educate our children? The problem is that many of my black folks think that the government is going to take care of educating our children. Well, the government has done a poor job. Heck they are closing schools in Oakland, California. So it’s high time we begin to take control of our destiny ourselves. Listen to this radio show and I will let you know in more detail what I mean.

Black folks stay strong. Don’t give up the struggle. We are going to overcome every obstacle that attacks our community. We are able to endure and come out on top because we are a great people. Yes, we have been through thick and thin, ups and down, rounds and rounds and you know what? We are still standing. This shows that God ain’t finished with us yet. We have an appointment with destiny and we will make it. So with that my black brothers and sisters, Stay strong!

Who is going to help us in our community if we don’t step up to help ourselves? If we don’t band together as a unit and move forward toward our own destiny, who is going to do it for us? My black folks, it is our business to educate our children. It is our business to protect our children from this brutal police state who would rather spend money on building the prison industrial complex rather than investing our tax dollars into education and after school personal development programs and tutors. Our leaders would rather drop bombs on nations far away rather than drop dollars on our social issues right here at home. We rather build infrastructures in Iraq and Afganistan but our infrastructures are falling apart in our communities.

No, my black folks, we cannot wait for the government to come to our rescue because our government needs to be rescued by us. We the people, black, white, brown and yellow. We are the ones who are going to bring our communities out the slump we are in. Once  we have dealt well in our communities we can come together to make positive change in our cities, counties and nation as a whole. President Obama can’t help you nor can  Governor Jerry Brown or any other politician for that matter. All we have in the black community is God and each other. Yea, like 2Pac said,”Only God can judge us.” Only God can help us and He has empowered us to help each other within our community first. Then we are capable of reaching out as a community to other communities and lifting them up with us.

Yeah, my black folks, let’s rise up stop looking for some pie in the sky super politician to ride in and save the day. Let’s save our own day. They take money from our schools, let’s raise our own. They cut our seniors social security or disability checks, we will replace it ourselves. Folks getting laid off from corporate jobs, let’s start our own enterprises and patronize them ourselves. We have the answers, let’s go to work. They take money from our youth programs, let’s pot up and fund them ourselves. Bring the church back into our community as a hub and let’s rally up and begin to move our community out of the wilderness where the powers that be have led us and let’s follow the cloud of glory into our promise land filled with milk and money to make sure we leave an inheritance to our children’s children.

Sometimes trying to nail down our wants is like looking for a needle in a hay stack. We don’t always really know what we want. The heart, who can know it right? One day you want red, the next day you want blue. Somedays you want this and other days you want that.  So where does it all end, you know, wanting? The crazy thing is, It never ends. The desire of wanting continues on and on and never seems to stop. This being the case makes the good old question as relevant today as ever before. What do you want?