Its 2010 and I live in a city in West Virginia where the population for Black Americans is 4.4%. The West Virginia justice department’s records for 2008 indicated that the progress of the civil rights movement compared to national standards is dated back to 1958. This stat is staggering considering that the civil rights act was not even passed until 1964. However, the stats that’s consistent with the nation’s standard just so happens to be the rate in which minorities are incarcerated. Clearly something is wrong with this picture. This blog is not about racism but it’s about economics. There is a system in West Virginia that has not been nationally publicized. The industry jobs and the highest paying blue collar work are given to people by association without regard of aptitude or character. In the city of Huntington, WV especially you absolutely cannot get hired without knowing someone who works there or by family recommendation. The corporate and small business infrastructure is far worse. The wealth of the city is divided into certain families who own block after block of real estate and family owned businesses.
I know firsthand what’s wrong with the economy and civil liberties that make a city thrive into the 21st century. Considering that my junior high school was filled with racist jokes, slurs, and violence from both student and staff. There were certain neighborhoods that you just didn’t venture off to without being shot at or chased off by a mob of angry white people. Times have changed and to even talk about racism publically is a growing taboo. It makes most natives uncomfortable and they accuse you of “playing the race card.” A stigma put on Blacks because of the OJ Simpson trial and acquittal. The tactic is to take away our protest and to sell minorities low wage jobs to make the next generation rich. The old cycle of economic is ridiculously wrong. Should minorities be grateful to not be burned, hung and called nigger? Should we not point out when certain teachers sabotage the education of blacks and turn them out into a world of bottom feeders? Blacks have not protested since the seventies at least not in anything that extended beyond a one-night event. It’s an everyman for himself situation here.
The advantage that minorities have here is that we have been lagging about a decade behind everyone in economy nationally. The technology of the internet in the information age has changed our dilemma. The “trickle down” of national influence has put off the good and the bad. Recently, the bad has hit the nation with state after state in mild to serious recession and the federal deficit at all time high. Now golden opportunity has hit our local economy. Markets have opened up to us that are failing in other cities. The “old money” that has placed a lid on economic breakthroughs for minorities by refusing to invest and network with entrepreneurs and innovators of “new money” concepts, has been exposed. E commerce is international and our economy has been globalized. Consider that if old money doesn’t meet new money locally then we are going to appear to the national stage as cavemen unthawed out of the ice age. Where is the small town that offers nothing original and nothing new going to stand once the trickle down of recession hits home? Surely nothing that can’t be bought off of E-bay or Amazon.com. A word to the “old money” thinkers, investments should be made to the minority. Clearly the nation shows you that minorities are worth a lot more than minimum wage. Use all of the gifts that minorities are equipped with and see if the economy doesn’t flourish. Once the recession hits WV, the state is going to have to make budget cuts. That means no more state funding to handle the “black” problem. Let’s just try to raise the quality of life of minorities in this area by receiving an extended hand of peace. I can assure you that if there is no investment there will be nothing left to hold us into this economic cage of minimalism.
