Brother Nuri Muhammad, a student minister of the Nation of Islam, discusses the need for Black people to improve the manner in which they spend, invest and save their money. He specifically cautions this group in the United States, demographically the eighth richest in the world compared to any other country, against impulsive purchases. Likewise, he encourages them to stop buying so many unnecessary items. Instead, Nuri inspires Black people to invest in land and businesses that can help build wealth and pass it down to future generations.
Part of that knowledge involves understanding the difference between wealth and income. It also means urgently doing something about the fact that Black people in the US gush out 97% of their money on products and services provided by white-owned businesses yet blame the overwhelming majority of their problems on white people. Is it any wonder why Brother Nuri states, “We got dollars, but we need some sense?”
White settler colonialism, the bloodsucking capitalist system and the historical exclusion of Black people from the US economy and society at large find themselves as root causes for the atrocious spending habits attributed to Black people nowadays. In general and very distinct cases where the long lost descendants of Africa had no other choice but to pool their resources and do for themselves, those efforts were met by American terrorism, which was best exemplified in the Jim Crow era. These are the legacies of Tulsa, Rosewood and other towns and cities.
For Tulsa, where a thriving Black community was decimated and hundreds killed by a marauding white mob in 1921, even air-bombed by US officials, reparations, as of last year, were denied to three of the remaining victims who are all over one hundred years old. The presiding judge in the case, Caroline Wall, dismissed the lawsuit, which sought recompense for the surviving victims.
“We were taught not to talk about it,” said 109-year-old Viola Ford Fletcher, a survivor of the massacre. “If you talk about it, your family will be killed, I’m proud I’m living to tell about it.”