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Blackonomics

Embrace It. Practice it. Then Flourish.

By Dre JosephPublished 7 years ago 3 min read
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In America, what do Hip-Hop and R&B music, the black hair industry, and professional basketball and football leagues all have in common?

They should ALL be owned by black people. Period.

If blacks want to be strong enough to one day throw their money behind a political candidate to run for public office in every predominant US state with a pronounced black population, we will need the political capital to do it. What better way to do that then by the way of one of the industries we have a strong presence in already?

In 50-100 years, it is entirely possible that a black man could own some, half, or all of the NFL and NBA teams. And if these black owners are pro-black enough to funnel some of that money back into the down-trodden black communities, then places like Detroit and Baltimore will eventually transform into cities with new schools, banks, supermarkets and gas stations; all black-owned and managed.

Same goes with Hip Hop music. Nobody produces rap music more than black people, and oddly enough, it is consumed by everybody. So why not capitalize on that? When Michael Jackson died, he was in a battle over his masters with his record label...so was Whitney Houston...and so was Prince (who, by the way, had so many unreleased songs that he could put out an album every year for 40 years at the time of his death). All it takes is for one mega rich black person (i.e. Jay-Z or P. Diddy) to purchase the masters of the top-selling rap records away from the major, white-owned record labels that currently own them. Obviously, this would be incredibly difficult. But let's be real: why aren't black people profiting from a genre of music we popularized into a world phenomenon? Same goes with R&B and Gospel music as well.

And for the women - black females are the biggest consumers of hair products. Yet, all the hair care manufacturers (i.e. Clairol, L'Oreal, Conair, Paul Mitchell) and retailers (i.e. Sally's) are managed by whites, non-blacks, or both. Which is crazy when you consider how much money black women worldwide spend on hair care products annually (about $9 billion in 2014...I can only imagine what the amount is now in 2017). Black women should be the owners of that entire industry. Period. If people like Nia Long, Taraji P. Henson, Viola Davis, and several other wealthy black women (and men) pooled their money together with, say, someone like Oprah Winfrey...that would be more than enough to buy to own the black hair care industry for black women, I have no doubt.

So imagine...with black women owning the black hair industry (currently worth $761 million with potential to rise to $500 billion)...and black men controlling the royalty rights to the top-selling songs/albums of the greatest black musicians of all time...you have any idea how much economic power that gives blacks if SOME of that wealth is diverted back into the black community?

This could see to it that better public schools and schools for gifted black youth are built all around the black community nationally. Same goes for black-owned hospitals, supermarkets, gas stations...basically everything we have now, just black-owned as opposed to non-black-owned.

With that kind of economic power behind us, black people could finally play the game of politics, as it was meant to be played in this country, and "buy" the loyalty and services of politicians. Then we could be the ones who go home and laugh our asses off as our "elected" officials appear on Fox News to drag their support for pro-black legislation across the faces of Tucker Carlson and the millions of radical Republican voters watching him.

It'll require years, if not decades, of boardroom promises and treacherous backstabbing, but we can get there. We will get there...because we have to.

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About the Creator

Dre Joseph

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