by Khalil Somadi
Apple Cart: 1. A pushcart used by a vendor of apples.
Idioms. 2. "upsetting the applecart" is to ruin plans or arrangements; spoil something: He was making a fantastic profit until a competitor upset the applecart by cutting prices.
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There is a practice that has been trending of corporations or business franchises enforcing policies on their Black employees that can mandate against them wearing their hair in natural or ethnic styles to work.
There's also the practice of passing them over for actually becoming hired based on their names 'sounding Black' and thus identifying them as non-white, making them privy to racist handling. These practices are examples of authoritarian, respectability politicking, and they will never be eradicated as long as there are those willing to keep enforcing them and they continue to go unchallenged. Such practices demonstrate in no uncertain terms the disdain and disrespect that is white privilege, where everybody ELSE " is ethnic " and thereby subject to forced assimilation into the tenets of a "dominant" culture!
They have run their course Kindreds, and wiping them out must be a part of the overall agenda to attack white supremacy!
There is more than one way to fight an injust system. I believe in fighting on an overall scale by eradicating that need which enables their ploys in the first place.
If you eradicate the need, attempting to force your inclusion becomes unnecessary. Period.
Many upwardly mobile Black people believe that not working for a corporation or franchise business is a luxury they cannot afford and is also impractical, as it limits their gaining income. But it isn't a luxury.
Not working for the status quo is a decision, based on a bigger decision that is part of a pursuance of another whole way of life!
I'm not saying any of this to knock anyone who has beliefs of attacking white supremacy via chipping away at it and altering it from within. I don't believe in knocking our people. I believe in making them aware of systems that are alternatives to systems already in place and workable ways of implementing these alternative systems.
As my Nana and other elders used to say, you have to crawl before you walk. In other words, ofcourse you don't quit your job for a year to pursue entrepreneurship; after all in addition to everyday living, you need capital in order to implement! You first have to commit to the endeavor. Then save toward bringing it into fruition, just like we save for a car or vacation a new wardrobe or whatever. Meanwhile we educate ourselves in the markets we intend to enter. (There are also affiliations to help seed black entrepreneur endeavors. It's part of what I do with regard to nation building. I however choose to do it using more than one method!)
We need to grow businesses. Our businesses. And no it will not happen overnight, just as pushing from the inside with Them will not happen overnight. The decision would be Ours though, and that is an important thing. If you're going to make sacrifices, (and you must make them to get to EITHER place you want to go!) then make them for your own steady progression.
For "I = Us", rather than "I-In-Conjunction-With-Them"!
Money runs this "economy ". But if you are going to worry about not upsetting the proverbial Apple cart and thereby messing with your money, then REALLY become about making YOUR MONEY, thus eliminating the whole damn Apple cart!
We have got to have our own apple carts and be our own vendors too!
A concerted movement where we aim and work to become owners of Apple carts, vendors of Apple carts, consumers from those apple carts, accountants for the apple carts, producers of the apples, teachers of Apple Cart Acquisition, Sustaining and Growing Apple Carts, as well as protectors of our Apple Cart Legacy.
You've noticed that I am not speaking at all of working from out of established systems and changing that scenario from within. I am speaking of an alternate system with its OWN scenario, of Recovery. Reconstruction. Black Wallstreet revisited. That aspect of nation building that, though cognizant of and educated about the Other system and scenario, is not intrinsic of it and is parallel to it in proximity.
Kindreds not only is this do-able, I believe it is essential to the financial ascendance of Us as a People. The only way to ever implement another Way, is to BEGIN implementing another Way.
