The Gantt Report, by Lucius Gantt
Too many of your family members, friends and neighbors are happy with their status.
Wherever you are, you can leave your city, state or your community and come back there in ten years and find many of your people in the same place, perhaps on the same corners doing what they always have done.
On Richard Pryor’s Grammy Award winning comedy album “Bicentennial Nigger”, Pryor talked about Black people being happy in the United States because they’ve been here for 400 years.
By and large, Black people are happy about their place of employment, happy about where they live, happy about how they are governed and so forth.
I’ve been self employed since 1980 but when I was employed my African American coworkers tried to discourage me from striking out on my own.
They asked me, “Where are you going to find a job like this? Where are you going to find good white bosses like you have now? And, “How are you going to take care of your wife and kids if you stand up, speak out and fight?”
I told them the same thing that Harriett Tubman, Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner said, “Anywhere is better than here!”
I recently read something that one of my favorite rappers said. Ice Cube suggested that Black voters should be careful about jumping on the Biden bandwagon because Biden doesn’t really have a “Black agenda”. He asked where is the government bailout for Black businesses?
Come on Cube, I believe you’re smarter than that. You can’t take Nyquil, two Vicotin pain pills, lay your head on your silk pillow cases and go to sleep and dream that the U.S. government will do something meaningful and progressive for the masses of Blacks living in America!
I admire you for talking about government and politics but ç
All of the current activities that excite rappers, actors and others like marches, prayers, goofy protest songs and Black politicos with titles will not give your family and friends tax breaks that billionaires get, bailouts like white corporations get or opportunities like whites and other non-Blacks get.
The best Black movements don’t originate with government, they are conceived in the streets. Slave rebellions didn’t start in Congress or Legislatures, they were planned in cotton fields and in slave quarters. The marches people like to point to didn’t start in Washington, they rose up in Mississippi, Chicago and in other cities in the ghettos, projects and barrios!
In the “Roots” TV series, Chicken George told Kunta, “You’re going to make me lose my wood floor!”
George didn’t want to lose his status on the plantation and Blacks who believe they have a title, a good job or a little bit of money don’t want to lose their status either.
We have to support and get behind the brothers and sisters that have solid ideas and plans.
I want Black voices that have vision to see beyond the two candidates for President. I want Black leaders that know how to fund and finance Black community infrastructures that can generate revenue for all of us.
Exploiters and oppressors want us to believe that Presidents and governments are our friends, our defenders, our protectors and our saviors. They want us to think devils are not devils!
I’m not angry with people that are happy with themselves and their situations but we can be more and we can do more.
Nobody can save everybody! It’s good to be happy but it’s better to be happier, independent, self-sustaining and united.
Don’t ever be happy about your status and what government will or will not do to improve it!
Lucius is a contributing columnist to NNPA newspapers around the nation, and the author of “Beast Too: Dead Man Writing,” available on Amazon.com and from bookstores everywhere.