What a Pro-Black Business Looks Like

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Stitcher

A listener of my podcast recently stated to me, “Why don’t we open up some pro-black businesses and get some real black communities?”  I told this person, “Because nobody will support them, not even pro-blacks.” This person then said to me, “Every other community supports their own but not us. I don’t know what the solution is.”  I then told this person, “The solution is take care of you and your family to the best of your abilities and stop chasing this black empowerment dream being fed to you on social media.” This person sent me one last reply saying, “Sad to say, but you are 100% right.  It’s still a white world and if you are going to have a halfway decent life you are going to have to conform to this white world. Sad but that’s what’s real. My mother explained this to me many years ago and that it’s not going to be the way you want it to be. This is not our country.  Yes we built a lot of it but it’s not ours. If whites said ‘blacks back to slavery’, blacks will be back in slavery. They still have the final say so. Always know that! You better be glad that there are a few white people who do believe that blacks should have something to live for otherwise you would see how much power blacks really have.”

So that was a little exchange I had in some comments on this video…

So I want to expound on this exchange a bit because due to recent events in the negrosphere of YouTube, I feel like giving my 2 cents on this whole black empowerment thing.  

So the first point that was stated by this commenter named Ron Williams is, he was wondering why black people don’t open up pro-black businesses.  I said it’s because nobody will support the business. The reason nobody will support a pro-black business is because way too many pro-blacks have no business sense whatsoever nor do too many even offer real products that you would buy over & over.  Most just offer novelty style products like t-shirts, they solicit funds for documentaries, they solicit funds to hear them speak in person or they open up a bookstore and sell books & incense. This is what the majority of self-identified pro-blacks do and then they try to sell you the white supremacy and corporate plantation story if you don’t buy whatever they are trying to push.  The stuff they are trying to push, well, is this stuff that you can foresee yourself buying once a day, once a week, once a month? Or is this novelty stuff, documentaries and speaking engagements where they speak about the same things they talk about on social media ad nauseam? If so, why would you support that? Better yet, exactly what the hell are you supporting other than their egos and their bank accounts?  These people aren’t opening up grocery stores or even raising money to fund financially struggling grocery stores that may be in and around some of these impoverished black communities before these very same communities turn into a food desert. What are these are people selling you that can actually impact your life right now? Most of them sell you nothing but hopes and dreams and white supremacy boogey men.

Some of you will say, “Dr. Boyce Watkins has actual products in his online school that he sells to help black people?”  Does he? I’ve been to his site quite a few times and he does offer some classes on some various topics, but the problem that I see with his school is that it’s too damn expensive in most instances considering I can sign up for a class on a website called Udemy to where they offer a gazillion classes on there for as cheap as $10.  Matter of fact, I bought a class on how to setup a drop shipping business for $10 on Black Friday taught by a white chick from Ireland. A week after I took her class, I set up my drop shipping site and have been generating quite a few sales thus far. I only paid $10 for her class and she walked me literally step-by-step on how to set the business up.  I hop on over to Dr. Boyce Watkins site called “The Black Business School” and he has a class on there called How to Sell and Make Money which I imagine is somewhat similar to the class I bought off of Udemy in terms of running an internet business and Dr. Boyce is charging $89/mo for that class. Now why would I want to pay Dr. Boyce $89/mo when this white chick from Ireland taught me some stuff about selling on the internet for $10 and her $10 class is actually working for me to the point where I would gladly break her off some more money on other classes in the future if I decided to seek out her expertise?  But I know you’re probably thinking, “B-b-but you should support Dr. Boyce because he’s black and he’s a black owned business…he has to charge more money blah blah blah.” No I don’t. When it comes to the acquisition of applicable knowledge, I’m not a race loyalist. I’m not going to keep it bliggity black-black just for the sake of keeping it bliggity black when I can get a similar product of similar quality for way cheaper. It just doesn’t make any sense to me. So that’s one reason why I say black people won’t support pro black businesses is because for the pro-black businesses that do offer a “legit product”, far too many of them charge way too much money when oftentimes you can find a similar product for way cheaper.  In this day and age, nobody has time and money to be throwing away on high priced pro-black products when the non pro-black person down the street is offering the same thing for pennies on the dollar. You would have to be an idiot to do that.

Another reason people won’t support pro-black businesses is due to trust issues.  Look at what is taking place right now with the light bright by the name of ZaZa Ali and her tomfoolery of collecting money from black women for a retreat and failing to take the funds to book the retreat then informing the women the day before the retreat that retreat was cancelled.  Then to make matters worse, ZaZa goes off on some of these women that she collected money from because these women reported her to a news station who exposed her. Another example pertains to Dr. Boyce Watkins…we all remember that Charles Wu thing that took place concerning Dr. Boyce. We’ve all heard what Yvette Carnell had to say about Dr. Boyce and his potential suspect ways of doing business.  Then there’s this chick named Paris Milan dropping videos about Dr. Boyce to where she’s calling out his alleged shady business practices. Another person we can add to this list is Dr. Umar Johnson and his school. We’ve all seen the videos and heard the commentary so there’s no need to rehash his story again. I’m sure it’s more out there, but you all get the point.

If not, the point is, either these pro blacks are selling you novelty items, collecting money for documentaries, they are trying to sell you overpriced courses and other products or their name has a cloud of suspiciousness around it for whatever reason.  Bottom line, when it comes to so-called “pro-black” businesses, 9 times out of 10 you’re not getting anything useful in your life that you either require on a daily/weekly/monthly basis to sustain life (like soap, toothpaste, food, cleaning materials, etc) or you’re getting other some random t-shirt or dvd to toss into a collection pile.  So why do people constantly support them? It’s for the same reasons Creflo Dollar can convince his congregation to buy him a $65M private jet. These people want to believe that they are a part of something greater that’s one day going to bring some meaning to their often times pathetic lives, so they buy these novelty items, they donate money to these documentaries, they sign up for these overpriced courses because they want to believe that their money is actually being used towards black progression and empowerment when in reality, it’s really just contributing to a person’s bank account at the end of the day who is going to use that money to elevate their lifestyle while finding new ways to repackage their message of white supremacy holding black people down all while they are chilling behind a gated community surrounded by a bunch of “suspected white supremacists”.

This leads me into the final comment Ron Williams made.

Ron stated, “Sad to say but you are 100% right.  It is still a white world and if you are going to have a halfway decent life you are going to have to conform to this white world.”  Ron is absolutely right. Believing in a pro-black ideology is cool in theory but practical application is a futile endeavor that will take you to the poor house unless you manage to develop a cult-like following to allow for you to push t-shirts, documentaries, speaking engagements and overpriced courses.  The vast majority of people who are really about this pro-black life on and offline, most of these people are in financial straits. For every 1 Tariq Nasheed, Jason Black, Dr. Umar & Dr. Boyce who go extra hard in the paint living that pro-black life, it’s probably 1000 who are living below the poverty line trying to figure out how to get their views and followers up so they can monetize their pro-blackness because pro-blackness has no real world value that can translate into a marketable skill set in the real world.  You know, this very same real world ran by whites who oftentimes employ the vast majority of these people who are only pro-black strictly online under fake names. I’m not telling people to conform or “assimilate”, but I am telling you that will be struggling and broke for the remainder of your days if you don’t because once again, other than selling t-shirts and monetizing your YouTube videos, being pro-black doesn’t pay the bills, put food on the table, keep the lights on or send your kids off to college. What does pay the bills is learning the same skill sets that whites, Asians and hispanics use daily which has allowed for them to build up their communities and dominate the world.

Somebody asked me why don’t I start up a YouTube channel or website talking about IT since that is what my background and education is in.  I have thought about it and I am currently in the plans for brainstorming content I would create. But here’s the problem for you all, those of you who check out my current Onyx Truth content would never know about my IT content because I wouldn’t promote it over here at all. The reason I wouldn’t promote is because I’m not going to create content over there specifically for black people, meaning, I’m not going to call that site THE BLACK IT GUY or IT FOR BLACK PEOPLE. Calling it BLACK would just cut down drastically on the number of people I would get to subscribe to my site which could potentially impact any monetization plans I may have over there. Another reason I’m not going to promote that content over here (especially the YouTube content) is because I don’t want a bunch of niggas running over to that YouTube channel to flag my shit down because they may have heard or read something I said over here and then they run over to the other channel to cause issues.  I’m not going to create content around my skill set to promote strictly to black people. Why? Because that is nothing but a plan for failure and disaster in my opinion.  But yeah, to the person who asked about me creating IT content, it’s in the works. You’ll just have to find it on your own because I won’t promote it over here. For those of you thinking, “You just worried about what the white people may say”…sure, if that makes you feel happy at the end of the day, fine.  The reality is, I have yet to meet pro-black in real life who is thriving off of pro-blackness in the real world. I’ve met successful black business owners and maybe they do harbor some pro-black views, but I can’t tell when I enter their place of business or whatever they may have going on because at the end of the day, the ones I’ve met, they prefer to keep their pro-black views to themselves in order to not restrict their potential income earnings. Meaning, they might have a nice barbershop. They shop isn’t called THE BLACK BARBERSHOP or BARBERSHOP FOR BLACK PEOPLE. It might be called Fresh Cuts or something like that and if Bob walks in wanting a fresh cut, they’re not gonna be like “I’LL CUT YOUR HAIR BOB, BUT WE PREFER TO ONLY CUT BLACK PEOPLE’S HAIR AND TALK ABOUT BLACK STUFF IN THIS SHOP, SO DON’T GET OFFENDED BOB…BUT I’LL STILL CUT YOUR HAIR.”  

All I’m saying is, if you want to start a business and promote it as pro-black business lead by pro-black values, do your thing.  Just understand that your business is only going to go so far in the pro-black arena because support from outside the pro-black community and within isn’t really going to be there.  Non pro-blacks may be turned off from it even if the non pro-black is black simply because they aren’t interested in hearing your thoughts on racism and white supremacy or buying products that may be related to racism and white supremacy and the pro-blacks within the community, to get their support, you have to bliggity blackest person on the internet with no dirt in your background that people can expose you on AND you can’t go against the so-called teachings of the chosen knee grows who currently wear the crowns in the pro-black arena (like Dr. Boyce, Tariq, Jason Black etc.)  Even if you do 100% agree with these people, good luck on pushing whatever product you push. The reality is, to be successful in the pro-black arena, you don’t even really have to push a product. You just need to figure out how to build up your YouTube following and monetize your content. That’s that. Let’s just keep it real, the vast majority of these pro-blacks more than likely make the bulk of their money off of YouTube Adsense. In this day and age, starting a so-called pro-black business is really just a person starting a pro-black YouTube channel and monetizing their content.  That’s it. Using the white man’s platform, the white man’s ads from Adsense & the white man’s super chat feature to monetize their messages about pro-blackness. So to the dude named Ron Williams, if you want to start a pro-black business, just whip out your iPhone and start recording some pro-black rants for YouTube and you will be on your way. That’s literally what a pro-black business is these days.