Prometheus 6

The Black Commentator has an article up called The Small and Minority Business Game that, important in and of itself, touches on one of my real pet peeves.

I have questioned the word "minority" and caused a few high-brow eyebrows to be raised at my exposure of the games they have been playing on Black businesses. Now they are conducting a stealth move away from one demeaning term to one that is more palatable. More and more they use the term "small" when it comes to slicing up the public contracting pie. I have no problem with that word, as opposed to the word, "minority," with which I have a tremendous problem. However, I do want those who use it to define it. And I do want those who are classified as "small" to know what it really means in their particular business circles.

We have seen all sorts of terms used to describe Black businesses, i.e., minority, small, disadvantaged, underutilized, but there has been no confusion about the term used for white females; they call their businesses "women-owned." Unfortunately, we have seldom looked into the real meaning of those terms nor have we been advantaged by them. The latest okey-doke is the term "small." Black business owners will do yourselves a favor by learning just what is considered "small" as you compete in your local Small Business Program.

…The city made one significant change in addition to those guidelines, however. It raised the level of net worth that one owner of a small business could have from $325,000 to $750,000, thus, enlarging the so-called playing field to include even larger "small business" owners. This criterion is in addition to the SBA’s definition, which allows a small business to earn millions in annual revenue and employ hundreds of people.

With most Black business owners, especially those in construction trades, having far less in annual revenue, oftentimes no employees, and a much lower net worth, the chances of them competing and winning contracts just got slimmer. To make matters even worse, our Small Business Enterprise Program, which calls for 30% of the business to go to "small" (there’s that word again) businesses, includes everyone. That’s right. Even white males can participate in the Small Business Program now. Let’s get this straight. White males get the 70% and then they can get in on the 30% as well. They can even start front companies for their wives and daughters and get even more of the 30% that way as well. What a deal! And guess what. We have black (small "b") city council persons who approved this silly program.

I've been annoyed at the way everything Black becomes minority, or diverse, or of color, or in some other way diluted. I'm not talking biology. I'm saying somehow whenever something is set up ostensibly to ease the anti-Black racism problem, it's too damn much for the public conscience to just say "this is because Black folks get screwed." It HAS to be spread around, HAS to be tailored so that EVERYONE benefits, SO even handed…

Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.

I will say it again: Black people's problem with racism is we are tired of being discriminated against. White people's problem with racism is they are tired of always being blamed for it. Fully half the reason progress is so slow is because we so damn busy trying not to offend folks over offensive shit.

Affirmative action was designed to get around white people's habitual prejudices. Somehow it became about Black people proving themselves worthy. And I could fill one of my overlong posts with nothing but links to respectable sounding folks who are dedicated to making sure none of the affirmative action programs are effective…remember, they were created to modify WHITE FOLK's behavior, not Black folks'. At the time, Black folks' behavior didn't need adjustment...well, maybe a little more aggression.

Remember what I quoted from Kathleen Cleaver the other day?

there was a amount of opportunity available under certain conditions for a certain number of people. A large number of black people already met those criteria. They were barred by race. They were not barred by deficiencies in education, deficiencies in ability, etc., etc. So those people who could take advantage of those

And I know you didn't read the article from the a 1925 issue of The Survey Graphic, so here's a part that applies here:

GLIMPSES of the whirring cycle of life in Harlem leave the visitor bewildered at its complexity. There is constantly before one the tempting invitation to compare and contrast the life there with that of other communities one has had the opportunity of observing. Should I not find there, if anywhere, the distinctiveness of the Negro, of which I had heard so much? Should I not be able to discover there his ability, of which we are so often told, to produce unique cultural traits, which might be added to the prevailing white culture, and, as well, to note his equally well-advertised inability to grasp the complex civilization of which he constitutes a part?

And so I went, and what I found was churches and schools, club-houses and lodge meeting-places, the library and the newspaper offices and the Y. M. C. A. and busy 135th Street and the hospitals and the social service agencies. I met persons who were lawyers and doctors and editors and writers, who were chauffeurs and peddlers and longshoremen and real estate brokers and capitalists, teachers and nurses and students and waiters and cooks. And all Negroes. Cabarets and theaters, drugstores and restaurants just like those everywhere else. And finally, after a time, it occurred to me that what I was seeing was a community just like any other American community. The same pattern, only a different shade!

THE PROBLEM WAS NOT BLACK FOLKS.

But now we think it is, for some reason.

Oh, I remember the reason now! It was because people claimed they'd be more than willing, mooooore than willing to hire a negro, just as soon as they could find a qualified one.

See, here's the thing. I've done a lot of hiring for Corporate America in my time and I know for a fact it does not take a college degree to do most of the jobs that require a college degree. It was added to the requirements to thin the herd. Because, you see:

[the] capitalist form of democracy, or I like to call it the "commercial democracy", needs people like us, or needs a middle class to function smoothly. It doesn't need equality. What it needs is inequality. It needs a certain number of people at the elite level, a certain number of people in the middle level, and the rest of the people scrambling and hoping they could get there, all following the same zealous commitment to making money.

(That's Kathleen again)

This is a mechanism that screws folks on an equal opportunity basis and always has. But it's not the only one, and the new ones strike me as a bit more targeted. Like decrying the lack of "soft skills."

Anyway.

What the article in today's The Black Commentator points out the Newspeak that lets people avoid facing the fact that the major bias is anti-Black, and that therefore efforts to eliminate anti-Blackism are crippled by trying to address the Newspeak concept rather than the real legacy of government-enforced aparthied. And it reminded me how much I HATE Newspeak.