Having political power without economic power is impossible

By A. Peter Bailey
TriceEdneyWire.com Columnist

We Black folks need to understand that political power is impossible without economic power. We may have some degree of political influence, but never power without securing economic power. No one understood this better than Professor James Clingman. The following excerpt from his must-read book “Black Dollars” will explain my position: How to Teach Your Dollars How to Make More Sense” “Herein is my strongest effort yet to elucidate the nuances and the obvious connections between politics and economics. Moreover, as others before me have done, my task is to do everything I can to convince Black folks in particular that our interests must be returned to economics over politics as it was when we owned economic enclaves across this nation. I know that’s hard for some of us, because we have been seeking political power since 1965. Irrespective of our feelings about our favorite politicians, the status quo will remain the same until we demonstrate our willingness to use our dollars to effect public policy. Everything else is rhetoric.”

Furthermore, he continued, “I am not advocating an ‘either or’ scenario between the two disciplines; certainly our actions in response to them must be ‘both and.’ We must understand the priority however; which one comes first, which one depends on the other, and which of the two can achieve real power faster. We have struggled with politics for 50 years now, since we abandoned our economic base of business ownership and mutual support. Five decades should be enough to convince us that if and until we have a strong economic base, a position of struggle from which to negotiate our grievances with politicians, we will never have real political power. I hope this book convinces you of that hard cold fact and will leave you to work on obtaining real economic power collectively and individually as quickly as you can….Our aggregate annual income of $1.2 trillion dollars is mainly used to create wealth for everyone for Black people, because we spend the vast majority of it at their businesses. Politics has not and will not solve these issues. We must solve them ourselves, by ‘the work of our own hands,’ as Martin Delany told us.” For those who don’t know, Martin Delany was an Afro-centric contemporary of Frederick Douglass. We as a people must insist that our leadership on any level display their knowledge of Professor Clingman’s views on economic power.

Finally he noted the term, “Black dollars matter! is in response to our efforts to tell the world that ‘black lives matter!’ To most, that’s a very obvious reality and there should be no need to impress that reality on any human being, except of course on those who would take Black lives unjustifiably. Thus, our protests against police killing Black men continue. In order to implement a Black dollars strategy in response to the killings, we must understand the relationship between public policy development and economic empowerment. Once we get a handle on that, I contend we will be well on our way to winning this battle.”

This article originally published in the July 6, 2020 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.