The first episode of Trigger Warning with Killer Mike touched on the importance of a strong central economy within the African American race.
My first comment on the episode has to be on the satirical nature of the show, he makes several jokes including referencing the point of desegregation was to “sit at the counter with white people”. I personally feel as though he passed over many teachable moments with jokes and comedy instead of taking a moment to delve into the true reasoning behind both the civil rights movement and the current movement promoting black owned businesses.
Secondly he briefly speaks on the rate of which a dollar stays in the black community. This is important to talk about because of the extreme lack of economic growth there has been in our community. Culturally we have become increasingly dependent on someone else to create and then we consume. There are no black owned national grocery stores, few black owned beauty supply stores, and no black owned car companies. The society we are living in promotes “integrated consumerism”, this scratches the surface to a greater issue in which we shop as individuals, not as a community. As a whole we have fed into the cycle of blindly consuming; spending our money in places that have the capabilities and agency to maintain the wealth gap we are combating, do not ethically source materials, and only care about personal gain.
The last topic I want to cover is the initial reaction my peers have to Black owned products. In many of our minds there could never be a “black equivalent” to an Iphone. As if the idea of someone doing so inherently labels the product ghetto, undesirable, and incapable of fulfilling their needs. I’ve seen the same rhetoric with black films; hyper critical and judgmental sentiments before allowing themselves to experience it as its own entity; everything has to have a white equivalent. This type of speech is detrimental to our society simply because if we don’t believe, if we don’t support, why do we expect the rest world to? In closing I believe there is a subconscious belief that what is already out there is better than anything we can create, this lack of pride within our community is detrimental to our growth and prevents the masses from obtaining financial security.
The C word 