“The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men and women to do nothing.....! If we want better we have to do better and demand better”
I had a fascinating discussion on Face book with some of my networking colleagues the other day. The discussion was on race. A subject I usually avoid to discuss in person because my views are generally unorthodox to most people. (I also avoid public discussions of religion and politics, if I can help it.) However, at the core of my philosophy about race is that it’s not an argument of SKIN COLOR (pigmentation) but a conflict about ECONOMICS (fundamentally who get what, when and how much of it!). For me this perspective changes and shifts the paradigm in many ways and for this I have been label by my intellectual friends as a “Classist”, which I don’t mind. I find that may people are stuck in the events of history such as slavery and colonialism and forget all about what really drives us all - Self-interest and self-preservation. But ask the question, if each one of us had the opportunity to exploit the other for wealth creation would we think otherwise?
But let’s look at it from skin color because this is where most people are stuck from. I argued that racism is not a philosophical argument of demands and wants. When I go back home I find out that even after years of so called “independence” the remains of colonial racism are so entrenched among the black to black relations within themselves. It’s from everyone even the mediocre black waiter in Meikles Hotel who treats you differently that the Caucasian dinners as if we were still in the colonial times. Race from a pigment of your skin argument (which I think is now irrelevant in the global economy) is also a paralyzing state of mind. (ref. Steve BIKO – I write what I Like)
The pigmentation race-based argument is like that story most Shona people heard at family gatherings called “Biras” (night ceremonies to consult with the ancestors). Self appointed Zinathas (witch doctors and fortune tellers) showed up to consult with the hosting family and the family elders wanted to find out if there are problems in the family. They would be told that there is a problem of an unpaid debt...the story was always that the family owed an unfulfilled promise to some migrant worker (usually a Malawian man) who their ancestors promised a wife as a payment in exchange for the work the migrant worker did. Then for some inexplicable reason the migrant worker leaves without his payment (the promised wife) of course intending to come back to get his wife at a later date, but never does. So now the family is haunted by the migrant worker's spirit that still need to be repaid!!!
I have asked every Shona person that has stopped by my house if they ever hear of this legend and so far I have had 5 people tell me their family were also told the same story about the migrant worker curse.....So I started thinking this reminded me of the race argument. When will other races stop paying their debt to black people? Yet we ignore the Black heads of states that have mismanaged their African economies and have stashed away billions of dollars in foreign bank accounts! It’s time we start taking responsibility; focus on self-sufficiency & self empowerment, instead of steal from each other; mismanaging & plundering the country with greed, then turn around and blame it on history of colonization & everyone else!!!
I have been called an apologist, a classist and other choicer labels, but I am not an apologist, apologies are a waste of time! I am a realist and I understand how the game is played. Whenever I give my African brothers and sister the migrant worker curse parable I find that they do will not address it even if they see parallel futility of it all. I used the immigrant worker curse as a parable to highlight that: a) Historical debts are a black hole that gets black people nowhere and will never be settled as details/facts are obfuscated; b) We get stuck on focusing on the past not the future; c) we exhaust energies on problems that divide us and not solutions that unite us: d) instead for remembering the past to create a new future of the future past we would all want our children's children to remember; e) finally we should not want our children to carry the burdens of our ancestor...whether they owe or are owed a debt. I like working with progressive people no matter what color they is!!! That’s mobilizing my resources (SLIPPA principle #3)
From an economic perspective the issue of race makes more sense to me. It is the idea that those with power and resources can exploit those without in order to maintain the status quo – both within their economic class bracket as well as externally to other class brackets without. From my observations, it seem that the moment you have power or resources that you can bargain with, your race matter not! We all seem to forget a person’s race once they become wealthy, for example people like Oprah, Michael Jordan, Michael Jackson or Tiger Woods, and no one really seems to be preoccupied about their race. Unless of course they become too greedy and dominant and violated the principle of “YOU GO CHOP, I GO CHOP
I had a debate with some Nigerian colleagues of mine during the Tiger Woods scandal and everyone was arguing that it’s because he was a black man and they were just waiting for him to slip up, which he did, and the vultures where out to pull him down! I argued that Tiger’s exposure had nothing to do with his race at all, but with the economics of who get what, when, how much and for how long! It was more to do with the fact that he was dominating the Golf economic pie! He was getting all the lucrative endorsements in addition to staying number one in the game! Same thing happened to Michael Jordan, Michael Jackson. They dominated their industry pie so much that the only way to move them over was to find a scandal that would derail them at the right time and place…The reason why people want to pull over-achievers down is because it’s the only way to make room for others to enjoy the pie. I reminded my Nigerian friends, it was no different from what they famously say “YOU GO CHOP, I GO CHOP”!!! Its primitive, but its captures the true essence of sharing the economic pie. Tiger’s down fall had nothing to do with him being a black man…everything to do with the fact that Tiger go chop, chop all for himself and failed to let others chop also in the golf pie too!
On the other hand Oprah’s has survived because her style of doing business clearly involves “YOU GO CHOP, I GO CHOP “philosophy! Maybe not by design; But also I think because she is a black woman she does business different…very different from say…Martha Stewart! She had created all these other stand alone brand extensions and lucrative supply chains which have made so many other people really wealthy and famous along the way! So if one were to attempt to take her down they would really be taking down a whole chain-work of a highly integrated wealth creation system. Hence the program on the “ Oprah Effect” exemplifies the tentacles of the “YOU GO CHOP, I GO CHOP” philosophy in her style of doing business.
So when we talk about racism or tribalism or nepotism any of those concepts of them vs. us its just a way of categorizing who belong were at the time so that the curving of the pie goes to those with the most clout– we are talking about turn taking among the power elites in sharing the pie. For the most part the power elites don’t care what your race pigmentation is, but more what your economic status is! If you can create opportunities for more wealth for all to go chop you stay, but greed will result in evitable downfall.
On a country level, we can talk about America and the European countries designing regional blocs and institutions as a way of having a mutual understanding of who get what spoils from where on the global level. But the rise of China and India has upset the status quo. A good example is China, which used to be the economic underdog of the West is now leveraging its labor resources to amass economic influence and the Western powers that be have had to calibrate their approach in dealing with China. Of interest is how the democracy carrot that Western powers used to use as a condition for doing business with the less powerful LeMonde du Sud (southern countries) has been undermined by China and its way of doing business -they are openly doing business with dictators around the world and this has upset the balance of economics in the global arena. China has changed the paradigm of who is doing business with whom! It’s not my imagination that I don’t hear much about conditionality of democracy in the development narrative…..? Not that it has completely gone away, is now encapsulated in the new “governance” terminologies.
I could flip and dissect this race issue in so many ways, to prove how the race argument is so obsolete on a macro level. Of course, people of color may encounter isolated incidents of racial prejudice, but I would attribute this to an element of individual failings or insecurities, but not a narrative of mass consciousness. As Friedman said “The World is flat”, hence economics is the only relevant relational narrative currency of our times!
Copyright @ January 2011, Dr. Tendai Ndoro (DocNdoro) – Founder, SLIPPA/Brighten The Corner Foundation; CEO EDCTrainers, LLC
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