Introduction To Forty Million And A Tool

Forty Million And A Tool, the book, is a collection of essays that, in their pure essence, are a call to African Americans to transform the reparations for slavery debate into a true wealth building movement designed to establish a permanent and perpetual stream of wealth solely intended for the benefit and enrichment of every African American slave descendant. In it’s wider application it encompasses far more than those individuals who are American slave descendants, for those of us who claim such form only the foundation of Forty Million And A Tool and may be rightly viewed as being in the vanguard position.

Gradually this concept emerged as a powerfully personal enlightenment and vision of a movement that would galvanize African Americans to conduct among ourselves the vital conversation about our future as a people, honestly assessing our status in America and then doing what is necessary to once and for all elevate ourselves to our rightful place in America and the world. The components of such a movement, which I will touch on momentarily, would need to re-examine our history in America from a vigorously new perspective, retaining solid arguments with respect to slavery, racial discrimination and systemic exclusion from wealth, power and prosperity, but at the same time staying critical of our own failures.

The phrase “forty million and a tool” came to me in the Spring of 2000 as I sat contemplating the new millennium and what it had in store for African Americans. I reviewed in my head and heart everything I could remember reading and experiencing that would give me a clue as to what direction we were headed. While pondering this I’d watch and listen to the children play and run the neighborhood, finding myself at times close to tears because I could see their futures so clearly. A few would make it, perhaps even prosper, but most were either going to be murdered, go to prison or live broken and parasitical lives. I saw in them myself and many others I’d known. Also around this time the reparations debate was heating up again, particularly on college campuses and talk radio. I thought about the issue and while I tossed around the phrase “forty acres and a mule” I seemed to remember reading somewhere that the census count for blacks in America was approaching 40 million. I reflected further on the previous millennium’s Y2K worries toward the end, the digital divide (as it disproportionately affected African Americans) and the awesome power and potential of information technology and the internet. It was in this moment that the phrase “forty million and a tool” was born and I received instant awareness that my life was about to change.

The central theme of Forty Million And A Tool is the idea of African Americans taking complete control of our reparations claim and extracting it out of the realm of public debate by transforming it into a “birthright of wealth” claim. This will inject a strong cathartic element into the equation; it will provide a more accurate impetus than the perception of a debt owed; it will move us forward in the direction of wealth with a deeper connectedness to ancestral aspirations and speak to a much greater purpose than mere acquisition of money.

One component introduces the concept of “self reparations” as the way to secure our birthright and take full ownership of the responsibility for repairing ourselves. Paul Robeson told us “our greatest ongoing failure as a people is that we’ve yet to make it impossible for others to deny us equality.”  This method will require only that we re-direct a portion of our dollars in the American economy into our own control.

A plan of self reparations naturally leads to the next component, which is the establishment of the African American Slave Descendants Reparations Fund (AASDRF), overseen by a trusted and competent Leadership Council comprised of individuals knowledgeable in wealth accumulation and management; individuals who can provide highly visible and inspirational excitement around the cause of true black wealth; and individuals with a proven track record of dedication to the comprehensive upliftment of our people.

Perhaps the most crucial component is maximizing the use of information technology and the internet to synthesize and power every aspect of the movement and connect every African American household to the AASDRF and Forty Million And A Tool via the internet. To this end it is critical that we establish Self-Reparations Education & Resource Centers (SERC) to coordinate grassroots support, teach our people advanced computer skills within the Forty Million And A Tool philosophical framework and provide free computer systems to all those who complete the training.

To facilitate the integration of these components we must first have a solid organizational structure in place. That would be Forty Million And A Tool, the not-for-profit administrative agency. Once established, this entity will need to emerge as a major internet service provider (ISP) to provide for its own funding, staffing and support services, carrying out a full array of administrative functions, information dissemination and web services to the AASDRF, SERC and our internet subscribers, a market said to be upwards of 40 million.

The essays in the book, which are now freely available on this site, strenuously and repetitiously revolve around these components in order to stress the importance of understanding that this movement is about more than reparations for slavery. Our forefathers were not in the business of reparations. They sought not a hand out, only a hand up as they stood ready and able to do for themselves what they did for others. It is we who seek reparations because it is we and our grandparents and great grandparents who were denied the legacy and wealth inheritance our newly freed ancestors wanted to create and leave to their succeeding generations.

Today, instead of enjoying the fruits of wealth and American prosperity, African Americans by and large are identified as the working poor and are encouraged in no uncertain terms to stop whining and harping on the subject of slavery or what our forefathers may have wanted. Yet, no one seems to find it the least bit peculiar that most white Americans, especially politicians and scholars, readily and frequently cite what white founding fathers said, meant, wanted or intended when attempting to resolve or understand current conflicts. And when reparations for slavery is brought up there’s this massive outcry and attempt to disconnect African Americans from their forefathers and what they intended. All of a sudden it’s in the past and so long ago that it can’t possibly have any bearing on the present. Ain’t that something?

We can sing the praises of white founding fathers; we can establish holidays in their names, build monuments in their honor and place their images on the nation’s currency. Men who bought, sold, traded and owned human beings, our forefathers and mothers. They are the men who planted not only the seeds of this nation’s future greatness, but also of our shameful wretchedness and of our last class citizenship – both of which continue to go strong. It is an absolute insult to teach and encourage our children to sanitize or diminish the horror and long-stemmed consequences of our enslavement; and even more of an insult to teach them to be uncritically thankful for the men who bought, sold and traded their ancestors. Trillions of dollars in reparations payments won’t absolve them, but it would reflect well on current generations of Americans, for it would represent their strong rebuke of those seeds that produced America’s ugliest blight.

Some would say this position is extreme, UN-American even. I would very emphatically disagree. What would be extreme is calling for the destruction of all monuments, busts and statues honoring slaveholding presidents and demanding that history be re written to reflect these men as immoral human rights criminals. Extreme would be asking the American government to enact laws that would turn over one third of the American economy to descendants of slaves and another one third to Native Americans. Extreme would be petitioning the U.S. Mint to remove from our currency the images of slaveholders and racists or leading mass protests demanding that the names of slaveholders and slave traders be removed from America’s street signs, institutions of learning and all local, state and federal buildings. Extreme would be a proposition to ban both the Confederate and American flags as symbols of oppression like many throughout the world ban the swastika. I could take this line of reasoning to the extreme, but I think my point is made: merely pointing out the truth can never be extreme.

Furthermore, you don’t shut up about the truth of history no matter how painful it might be, and you definitely don’t shut up about the truth of history just to make others feel better about themselves. It is precisely the opposite of shuttin’ up that has caused to materialize any social, economic or political gains for African Americans. Let’s see any of us go tell Jews to shut up about the Holocaust. You feel me? They certainly don’t need to beat us in head with it because not only do they have reparations still coming in, they have their own country with which they can get on with the business of being a people. African Americans better get off this notion of distancing ourselves from the truth of our history in America in order to go along and get along. We are constantly asked to leave slavery in the past. Some even have the gall to demand it, yet everywhere we look stands erected institutionally entrenched ghosts and demons of the African American nightmare, often in the form of honoring those who carried out our enslavement and marched us headlong into Jim Crow and beyond. There’s no possible way for any conscious black person to not see the African American holocaust through the lens of slavery. Our slavery is American history and if we don’t teach it to our children properly we abdicate that responsibility to a dangerous and debilitating cultural and environmental osmosis.

African Americans, as a people, will never fully embrace America until we have the economic security to truly compete equally and know firmly that our stake in America’s future is just as solid as any other American. Nor will an effective dialogue on race in America be conducted until black and white sit at the table as equals. Multiculturalism and the melting pot notwithstanding, black and white America have a date with dialogue; unfinished business that cannot be wished, legislated or sanitized away. It is my hope that this book will help spark the necessary conversations among African Americans that produce a unified, balanced and coherent voice.

To help facilitate these vital conversations the entire thrust of Forty Million And A Tool, particularly from a standpoint of ideas, will concern itself with many collateral issues African Americans grapple with and provide a forum where we, as a people, can embark upon constructive clarification of root causes, as well as the complex myriad of problems that continue to render us powerless and excluded. Essays like Black History Month, Role Model vs. Life Model and The White Man’s Education represent just three collateral discussions; many other concepts that some of us take as gospel, but in reality may very well be harmful or stagnating, need to be critically examined and, where necessary, boldly challenged and corrected. This can only happen when we honestly engage in the type of raw and purposeful discourse befitting a people determined to unite as one.  Not to become monolithic, just united as one around an idea and a plan to accumulate collective wealth.

We are not lacking in sincere and eloquent leadership, yet everyday African Americans can’t help but have the perception that their so called leaders have gone soft or are bred from a “don’t upset the status quo” cotton field. Their rhetoric lacks the fire and appeal to ignite prolonged grassroots mobilization because it’s too neatly packaged in the politically correct mantra of the day. All too often our specific and peculiar oppression is not championed in the uncompromising manner real and conscious black folk have always demanded.

Ralph Ellison said that “the way to create a false identity is to think that you can ignore what went before.” This is part of the quandary our political leaders are in; the other is their insistence that we actively participate in a political system and environment where a raw, powerful black voice is not and never was welcome. Consequently, what often results is that they deliver little for their people while undergoing a radical change of posture and constituency that keeps them hanging around the halls of power alternately as a facade of inclusion and a periodically erupting powerless side show.

It’s painfully evident that the forces that have historically sought to mute the raw, powerful black voice has succeeded in shaping the public mind to automatically reject such a voice as too scary, too militant, highly vindictive and hatefully vengeful. No black politician can withstand such characterizations and public sentiment. At this stage of the game the greatest strategic value black politicians can have is that they, from an eyewitness vantage point, tell the rest of us plain and simple what our enemies are plotting so that we can plot accordingly. This must be a non-negotiable requirement for us to keep them in office. Their other task, as they go about their legislative and official duties, should be to vigorously combat the notion that a raw, powerful black voice is somehow threatening to Americans – and further to assert that a decisive investment in black America by black Americans (monetary and otherwise) to remove the “monkey of reparations for slavery” from our backs and our psyche, once and for all, does not represent a divestment in America.  It represents our strongest contribution toward the achievement of true and lasting equality.

Having stated the above, let it be clear that Forty Million And A Tool is not an anger based or revenge-seeking movement. While the rhetoric is emotionally potent, with several accusatory fingers pointed at white supremacy and the American government, nothing about Forty Million And A Tool should be construed as a sweeping indictment of all white Americans for the condition of African Americans. Past or current history will never support such a view. Unfortunately, when black folk in America begin to mount a serious effort to deal with the hard truths of our sojourn in America, most white Americans – good, bad or indifferent – tend to get alarmed. That is because in dealing with these hard truths the subject of slavery and our unique oppression in America is bedrock and cannot be dislodged from any serious examination of where we’ve been as a people or where we’re going. It is at this alarmed state that fear mongers of the worst ilk prey upon their fellow white citizens, causing many to close ranks and many more to acquiesce to further schemes, legislation and subterfuge that ensure continued disenfranchisement and exclusion of black folk. History does support this pattern.

Therefore, we have to be vigilant, and we have to be very discriminating when we point fingers. Many white people are our wives, husbands, children, business partners and allies of all sorts. They understand on the deepest of levels that we have family business (as a people) that we must tend to. They also understand that they cannot lead that initiative, but they can and do give loving and material support to our historic cause. We must have the courage to embrace them openly and still pursue our birthright.

It must also be clear that Forty Million And A Tool will in no way be a political organization. One’s political affiliation, civic activities or voting choice will not matter one iota and will not serve as a qualifying or disqualifying element where Forty Million And A Tool is concerned. Our belief is that with true attainment of African American wealth our people in their respective localities, states and regions, will mobilize politically as they see fit to address all issues affecting them and their community.

Forty Million And A Tool is also not a religious organization and will not promote or endorse any religious or spiritual doctrine. African Americans are a people belonging to various faith communities and spiritual disciplines. Many of our people have no such affiliations. Neither will factor into the pursuit of African American wealth under this umbrella. The manner in which an individual or household cares for their spirit is a sacred personal responsibility and commitment.

Finally, let me stress that Forty Million And A Tool is most certainly not an entitlement program. We must build the wealth we share with our own productive hands, our own vision and our own institutions that guarantee wealth remains forever within our control. We must develop in ourselves that same resolve our newly freed ancestors had, but with the current day certainty that nobody can come along and take from us what’s rightfully and legally ours; that no hooded thugs will come ridin’ through our communities to burn down our homes and businesses and that no one ever again will deceive us into believing that they, not us, have the best plan for our lives and our chance at prosperity in America. The time has come for us to answer that age old American question of “what to do with the blacks?” All of the answers heretofore have not gotten us anywhere near our birthright.

As for the wider application of Forty Million And A Tool alluded to above, there are emerging discussions around the country designed to foment senseless internal division among black folk by exploiting the well known inadequacies of the term “African American,” as well as certain ethnic and geographical results of the African diaspora during the last 500 years. Debates are currently underway with regards to African immigrants who find it difficult to find kinship or acceptance among those of us who claim slave descendant status. While they came to America from Africa they, like Euro-Americans, can also identify with a particular country in Africa and therefore be more accurate and specific about their identity. (See We Are A Produced People for a fuller examination of identity).

Then there’s Alan Keyes’ assertion that Barack Obama’s heritage disqualifies him from calling himself African American. You see, Mr. Obama’s father was a black African from Kenya and his mother a white woman from the American Midwest. Along with these examples are blacks from the Caribbean or Central and South America who migrate to America and call themselves Haitian Americans, Brazilian Americans, Mexican Americans, Cuban Americans, etc. We may very well be on the cusp of the next wholesale attempt to pit black and African peoples against one another in this hemisphere; at the very least it would appear to be a plausible card to play should any real movement espousing black and African unity were to take hold.

Forty Million And A Tool will not play this game. Critics and opponents of reparations for slavery have long used this kind of argument to say, among other things, that it’s literally impossible to determine who would or would not qualify for reparations. That may hold true if the reparations are to come from without. As for Self reparations, however, we will not entertain any quibbling as to who gets reparations. To contribute to and benefit from the AASDRF any African ancestry in any flavor of humanity will do just fine. As stated earlier, African Americans who can claim American slave descendant status form only the foundation. From there we reach out and evolve accordingly. From there we “accomplish what we will,” as our great leader of Jamaican descent Marcus Garvey, admonished us.

With this book I have attempted to put forth clear, concise, truthful and thought provoking challenges regarding the current and historical drama of African Americans, pulling no punches and giving no ground to weak-kneed, spineless excuses of any kind. That is the inspiration I’ve received and it’s only appropriate because I know of no other way to talk to black folks except straight up. Though we’ve learned how to fake reality with other people to survive in America we’ve always kept it real in our ‘hoods and in our hearts. I have every confidence that Forty Million And A Tool speaks to African Americans of all walks of life and also very forthrightly extends the proper love, camaraderie and acknowledgment to all those who embrace us, love us and struggle with us. With that, I’m clear.