By Terrance Amen
Nationwide — For those of you who haven’t heard about this case, Byron Allen, CEO of Entertainment Studios is suing Comcast for $20 billion, for not fairly giving contracts to Black content providers like himself, based on the 1866 civil rights bill that gave Black people the right to fairly be given contracts, both commercial and with the government. The miseducation part falls under the fact that, Byron Allen and others have to cite a 150 plus year old law, in order to receive fair treatment to do business with commercial and government entities. Had we focused on building our own everything, like every other group does, we’d have our own distribution networks in place and this case and cases like this would have never come up.
They have their best interest at heart, which is why we haven’t made any significant progress as a community for the past 50-60 years, and counting. A sign of insanity is doing the same thing, but expecting a different result. Unfortunately as a community, we have this down pat. The other part of the miseducation is the fact that, we have no clue of our value, but everyone outside our community does. As long as we continue to devalue ourselves, we will continue to struggle. What do I mean? Let’s talk about a perfect example that’s occurring right now with this Popeye’s chicken phenomenon. It’s a fact that we love and eat a lot of chicken and have been for a long, long time.
It’s inexpensive and the way we make it, taste good. This leads me to the question, why in all this time we have no national chicken franchises? Now some will say we don’t have the money to create one. Yet we’re creating billions a year for these chicken franchises all across the country and probably created their recipes. This is just one example of not knowing our value. We are great consumers when it comes to buying outside our community, but when it comes to creating, owning and supporting our own businesses, we have a very serious problem with that. We will come up with every excuse in the world for why we can’t support our own.
This is the most serious form of miseducation because it keeps us stuck as consumers rather than owners, which is why we continue to have to rely on people outside our community for almost everything. It would not be right to talk about the problems without giving a solid solution for these problems. But there are people out there who make a good living talking about our problems. You know who they are. I’m not one of them, so here’s the solution that is simple, accountable, realistic, affordable, and inclusive, meaning the whole community will benefit, not just the people at the top. 3UFirst was created specifically to solve the major problems in our community, by funding our for profits and nonprofits, using the money we’re already spending.
The accountability is built in. We can’t just buy from Black businesses and although they’re creating jobs for our community, they have to do a lot more. Otherwise we’re just replacing one business for another and we’re way too behind to do this. I’m talking about doing what we did before, what I call, the integration experiment. Creating and supporting our own Afrocentric schools, hospitals and clinics, Banks, food and distribution services, tv, and movie studios, and anything else we need to become self-reliant. This is and will always be the solution for our community. But we have to think outside the box.
As long as we continue to listen to people who say we have to wait for people outside our community to diversify and include us in their businesses, we will never solve the major problems in our community. Those who don’t tell you this are not being honest with you, period. If you’re looking for real solutions for our community, listen to people who first tell us we need to collectively do for self, not individually and have a solid realistic, affordable, accountable active plan, (not just in a book) that includes all our people, not just those at the top. Byron Allen did do us a favor by outing some of these so called leaders. The proof is in his interview with Roland Martin.
For real solutions for our community, watch this video, and let’s start solving our problems instead of just talking about them.
Terrance Amen is founder and CEO of 3Ufirst FPC, created to end the major problems in the African American community, by bringing some of the trillion dollars we spend every year, outside our community, back to our community, in order to fund our for and nonprofits. Based on his book, “Black Unity: The Total Solution to Financial Independence and Happiness”. For more information, go to www.3ufirst.com.
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