Before “Affirmative Action“ and integration, the African American community had an economic infrastructure that supported its social and economic needs, born outa American Apartheid pre-1980s. We had professionals, schools, towns, businesses etc. So, what happened to the African American thriving aforementioned infrastructure that supported our community before integration?
One untold story is something MLK once commented on, that of integrating into a burning house and the loss of over 100,000 Black educators’ jobs as a result of integration. The loss of those 100,000 African American educators went far beyond economic loss, but with the teachers, went our communities, African American educational infrastructure, and the residual memory of our ways of knowing and learning.
The African American ways of learning and knowing were replaced with the European ways of mean making that impacted our cultural algorithm in ways we are still defining. In the age of fascism and Critical Race Theory, the African American community must stand up and demand accountability and servant leadership from our political and civil rights organizations as we enter the technological world of AI economic dislocations.
President Biden’s Build Back Better framework offers a good opportunity to implement the African American’s political and economic agendas. African American political and economic power must be created independent of the Republican and Democratic Parties.
The African American community must now define “Affirmative Access” and what that means for the African American community’s future economic success?
Trump is indicted. What does it mean for African Americans? Mainstream media organizations like to say there are two systems of justice. These include the Trump “legal clown show,” which highlights three systems of justice, “black/white” “rich/poor,” and the “oligarchy,” or ”rich people justice.” The Trump saga lays bare the clearly rigged American judicial and business systems. Trump is the perfect example of white privilege allowed to ”fail forward,” go bankrupt six times and become POTUS.
In the Trump indictments, number four is about his efforts to nullify the African American voter in the seven swing states, thus nullifying the vote of all American voters. When I say, dear white people, you don’t have any more rights than the average African American voter, indictment number four is Exhibit A, which proves denying Black political power also denies white political power.
I attended the Town Hall meeting July 2023, sponsored by Curtis King’s TBAAL (The Black Academy of Arts and Letters), where newly appointed Operation Push President Rev. Dr. Frederick Douglas Haynes, lll posed a rhetorical but serious question, “What’s the plan?” in relation to the African American community going forward.
To that question, I offer Freedom Rides 2.0 as one plan for communities and national organizations.
Freedom Rides 2.0 is a vision to bring back the Freedom Rides with a 2024 flavor to create economic, political and social power.
Phase one of Freedom Rides 2.0 will create African American GOTV (get out the vote) throughout the south with the goal of developing African American voter power independent of the Democratic and Republican Parties. By developing our voting power independently of the two political parties, we create a new African American political algorithm that strengthens African American political and economic power.
Phase two: The African American community has a two-trillion-dollar economic buying power. Currently, this is unfocused economic power. Focused economic power is key to the economic future of the African American. A sustained multi-generational GOTV effort to develop political and economic power independent of the two major political parties will result in African American focused economic power. The goal here is to create economic scale within the African American two-trillion-dollar buying power paradigm.
Phase three: The African American community’s legacy institutions must create trusted metacommunication spaces to share knowledge with local community leadership organizations within the context of the current American economic technological paradigm.
What is meta infrastructure? Social media systems (servers) controlled by African American communities. The African American community is in a technological world. This means all the old rules don’t apply. The day of finding a white sponsor is over. The current technological economic system, as presently constructed, consumes whites politically and economically, same as Black folk. The “white privileged” folks have been anesthetized and continue to believe they will be spared by this technological revolution.
The African American community has embraced the new technology in ways that will benefit the African American struggle for political and economic self determination.
The removal by the Supreme Capitalist Court of Affirmative Action may help recreate the African American sense of community and unity lost to integration. The African American community has all the tools needed to take the next steps in our development as the true representatives of freedom in America.
Compared to our ancestors, this Joshua generation of African American diaspora proxy warriors have more of everything. This generation has more technological power, educational power, political power, voter power, and economic power tied to a two plus trillion-dollar consumer aggregate buying power. It’s up to the African American community’s leadership to build new meta freedom spaces—spaces built around strong political voter presence, with a strong community economic education focus.
Pastor Haynes’ question at the TBAAL Town Hall meeting, “What’s the plan?“ deserves an answer from our collective African American community’s leadership—One man can’t do it alone. Congratulations, Brother Haynes, on your Operation Push appointment. Know the community is here to help you answer the question, “What’s the plan?”
The African Americans community can’t simply rely on old political coalitions as constructed currently. The vote, while essential, is insufficient in and of itself. The vote must be connected to Freedom Rides 2.0 actions to create movement the African American community can see and feel.
