Dear Community:
We are approximately 4 months away from the most important election of our lifetime. If you know me very well, I don’t support either party at the moment. My philosophy focuses on black unity and working together as a collective to rebuild our communities and rebuild the black family in our community. No elected official or President will bring about that change. But this excerpt is not about me, it is about my concerns that I have for the black community. I believe that this year’s election is a lose – lose situation for the African American community. I have sat back all year, watching the shenanigans taking place on both sides of the political spectrum during this 2024 election. What pisses me off, is that each party is using tactics to bring on the black vote, by offering false hopes to get the black vote. My brothers and sisters, for over a century, both parties have offered you false hopes, but here we are in 2024 still begging for help from this nation. Let me ask you a question my people, why would the people that put you in the predicament you in save you? There concerns aren’t focused on you, they would rather focus on non citizens of this country in which they should. But I am so tired of us, begging this government for help, when yet we have the power to rebuild our communities. Let’s take a second to talk about the common villain of this presidential race, Donald Trump. If you are familiar with ego driven businessman, then you know trump very well. These businessmen are so focused on themselves. Just like every other community in America except the black community. We are so focused on helping others with their issues instead of helping ourselves. How are you going to help another community when we are struggling ourselves. Hence why other communities focus on building their communities up and hence why they have successful businesses in our communities. The same goes for Donald Trump. He has millions of supporters who think like him. The Conservative base work together to spread their beliefs and push their agenda’s. A huge amount of them, believe that American society should only be ruled by the white power structure. They remind me of the white citizens council during the civil rights movement. In a Stanford Article, they talk about the forming of the white citizen council and their role in the movement. The article reads, “In response to the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision ending school segregation, white segregationists throughout the South created the White Citizens’ Councils (WCC). These local groups typically drew a more middle and upper class membership than the Ku Klux Klan and, in addition to using violence and intimidation to counter civil rights goals, they sought to economically and socially oppress blacks. Martin Luther King faced WCC attacks as soon as the Montgomery bus boycott began and was a target of these groups throughout his career”. The GOP and conservatives are the new WCC. When you look at the January 6th insurrection, that violence that was showcase to the world including the lynching platform was a sneak peek into what the possible future holds if Trump is re-elected or if he loses this election.
If Trump wins, Project 2025 will potentially go into action. This project outlines a conservative government. This government reminds me of a 40’s -60’s style government. Even though I believe that the African American community and family was close together during those times, the violence against African Americans was consistent and scary. Under a new Trump administration, we can see the Jim Crow atmosphere coming back. Why?? Because Trump supporters, conservatives and etc will believe that they are above the law. They already believe that, so just imagine what will happen when they are back in power. We as a community, need to focus on building our own communities and foundations so that we don’t further go down the poverty hole. We need to build towns like the former black town of Mound Bayou. Put all of that energy that you have when you are matching and singing into rebuilding our communities and saving our youth. We know that 50% of the problem in the black community is racism, but we never address the other 50% which is fixing the issues that we have in our community. I am afraid that the issues that we have will continue to get worse and with a new civil rights movement on the rise, we will not be strong like our ancestors. We are already broken. But let’s talk about it Biden wins and Trump loses. If Trump loses, his supporters are going to say he was cheated and the election was rigged. They are going to make sure that what they repeat what they did on January 6th , but this time around, it will be even more destructive and we will feel its destruction for years to come. If you think they are going to be mad for 2 months, then you are crazy. They are still mad from the Trump assassination attempt. They have not retaliated because it could hurt Trumps campaign. But best believe that they will take that anger out on who ever the democratic candidate will be. A day ago, I watched a Republican Party member at a Trump rally day, “If Trump doesn’t win, there will be another civil war”. In 2024, a republican member said that there will be another civil war!! Let me say this, we are like our ancestors. We aren’t afraid and God forbid if it comes to it, we will defend ourselves!! I am nonviolent first but if violence finds me, I will defend myself. But I am concerned that African Americans will have a huge target on their backs after this election. It will be similar to the days of Jim Crow. We already know that we are being killed at a high rate by police officers and others, but after this election, the madness and racism that we thought went away after the civil rights movement, will be back at our doorstep.
Now let’s talk about the Democratic Party. After the drop out of Biden, we now have Kamala Harris who is next in line. You have a lot of civil rights groups who have been telling the African American community to vote for every democratic candidate for almost 50-60 years. They have promised our community that the Democrats would help us and bring about legislation to help us. These false hopes have carried over every election, and yet we continue to fall victim and follow the same plain, believing that things will change. Well I am here to tell you my brother and sisters that I don’t see anything changing. The fact of the matter is that, congress runs this country and we have yet to win that fight. Secondly, the democrats always give us symbolic victories, like statues and material things, but here we are in 2024 still begging for a police brutality bill and an economic plan for African Americans. I believe that this election, when you all vote Kamala in, we will waste another 4-8 years waiting for those things, and by the time her term ends and we have no police brutality bill or economic reform, we will be way behind every other community when it comes to growth and economic development. We must start taking control of our own communities.
What do I mean by taking control of our own communities? Firstly we must build unity. Currently, I see a divide between African American women and men. I constantly see them arguing and belittling each other. I constantly see black women flex their power and say that black men aren’t doing enough. Black men take offense to this and start to distance themselves from black women which creates problems. Why is it a competition between us? Why? I’m so tired of the competitiveness between us. How about we put that energy towards working together instead of working against each other. We need to fix this first.
Secondly, we must build ourselves economically. What do I mean by this? We must grow black businesses, put our funds back into our communities by redeveloping houses, parks and help our people in poverty, and we must create more of our own schools. Education is under attack and our history is being erased. It is up to us like back then to teach our history. No more depending on government education, instead we must build our own. For example, brother King Randall (The Creator Of The X for Boys school) he started from scratch by creating a small school for young boys and now he has his own building for his school. I don’t want to hear anyone say that it is impossible to build our own institutions, because you are wrong. King Randall is an example that you can.
The third thing that we must do is rebuild black towns. Our ancestors once had towns like Black Wall Street and Mound Bayou. We have more resources now to build 10 of these towns. We need to put our resources together to build more black towns. Why should we build these towns? For one, having our own towns can help reduce the involvement of police officers who causes a lot of brutality in our communities. We won’t need them in our communities, because we will do our own policing in our community. We will have our own security. Secondly, this help grows our community economically. Why? Because we will have black businesses in our town which will help build them up. Thirdly, we can pass these towns down from generations after us which will build wealth!! There is a huge racial wealth gap in America. By using all of the steps that we need to take to achieve black economic growth, we can surely close that gap. Booker T Washington and Dr. Claude Anderson are a great testament to how we can achieve economic success. Booker T Washington, emphasizes economic self-determination over political and civil rights. We need to focus on ourselves instead of others. We keep focusing on government help instead of building ourselves up. We again have resources to do so, but no one speaks on this issue. Again we know that 50% of our problems have to do with government issues and racism, yet we only focused on this percent first. How about we switch up our plan and start to put 50- 60 years into building up our communities, and don’t give me that “We can do both at the same time. We can vote someone in and still build our communities”. I’m so tired of hearing that. If that was the case, from the 60s- now, we would have huge economic growth. We wouldn’t be begging for the same legislation to pass. We have used the same plan and year after year we are in the same position. Can we please put our energy towards growing our community. Can we?? I promise that it will help us significantly.
I would like to thank everyone for reading my book. I hope that I didn’t offend anyone because all I want is for us to reach our full potential and sustain economic power. As you are, I am eager to see how this election goes. After the election, I will write part 2 of this excerpt. Have a blessed election season.
Thank you,
Ethos Christen Griffin