The following is an excerpt from a book entitled "Blueprint for Black Power" by Dr. Amos N. Wilson (1998). In this book, Dr. Wilson describes the process he thinks that African Americans should take in order to gain political, social and economic freedom.
These steps seem to be all-inclusive in regards to social, political and economic behavior and actions of a people who seek social, political and economic freedom.
What are your thoughts on this process? Do you think this process can work for Afrikan Americans given your view on how this country and international affairs are conducted around the world?
Dr. Amos N. Wilson said:1. Perceive itself as a nation among nations in America and organize itself and act according to its own national plans.
2. Develop its human resources appropriate to its achieving national goals and to their broadest and most superior extent. It must commit as much as practically possible those resources to the exclusive and creative use of its developing enterprises and collective economy.
3. Reduce its consumption as much as practically possible of the goods and services produced and sold by other communities while increasing its consumption of those goods and services produced by its own members and organizations.
4. Increase its savings by reducing consumption of extra-communal goods and services and by engaging in prudent, productive, investment strategies; depositing and investing monies in community-owned financial institutions by utilizing traditional modes of savings and investment such as "susu" and cooperative savings arrangements. It must in turn use those savings to invest in and finance its economic growth and development and to increase its individual and communal wealth.
Note: Susu is an equivalent banking system which collects savings from one group and lends them to another group.
5. Protect its fledgling economy and enterprises from alien competition though not in ways which reinforce economic inefficiency in its own businesses and service institutions but in ways which allow them to accumulate the necessary resources and highly efficient organization to compete in the open market. The community should note as does Lake (ibid) "that protection is not necessarily a sign of domestic political failure....Both protection and free trade are legitimate and effective instruments to be used in national advantage. We should not allow an economic ideology...to blind us to this historical and deeply political reality."
6. Pursue protection and export expansion. The community and its relevant institutions must discover and develop routinized ways of exporting and importing goods and services throughout the Afrikan Diaspora, Latin America, Asia, and North Africa. "Local export" in the U.S. involves manufacturing, wholesaling, distributing, and retailing in the general American market; selling professional services and job skills in the general market and returning the income gained from these "outside" activities to the community to be saved and expended there with community-owned enterprises and institutions.
7. Found international corporations which include Afrikans from various countries and which operate in two or more Afrikan diaspora nations. Investments in these nations should be rapidly increased along with the establishing of numerous enterprises therein. Portfolio investment, i.e., the purchasing of shares in Afrikan corporations and other enterprises, should become a well-known, well-practiced tradition. Enhance institutional investments in important non-Afrikan multinational corporations, in start-up and growing corporations likely to have important impact on Afrikan lives and nations. These investments should be significantly large enough to influence their trade and economic policies in favorable ways.
8. Continue to found small, well-niched companies. For these compaines are the engines of economic growth and employment in America. Continue to apply strong political and consumer pressure to gain set-asides and other preferences for Black-owned enterprises. Have no fear of demanding such preferences as forms of reparations for Afrikan people who endured the concentration camps of America.
9. Become the most educated and best-trained group in America and the world. Demand equal and preferential employment at all levels of American industry -- in the name of Afrikan ancestry, not as a "person of color" or as a "minority." Be self-centered. As the development and utilization of human resources are the sources of the value of all other resources, are the foundational sources of all other human powers, heavy investments in the productive capabilities of its members are of the utmost importance to the Afrikan community.
10. Become actively aware of the fact that competitive advantage and economic growth and expansion are now being driven by the planned coordination of individuals and groups or teams who participate in divisions of labor within business organizations and charted coordination of economic activities across business organizations. While Afrikan-owned firms may compete against each other, they must not let such competition constrain cooperation among themselves for developing their national industries, gaining competitive advantages as industries, and achieving the common interests of the community.
11. Develop and practice cooperative economics wherever and whenever appropriate. Afrikan entrepreneurs must become keen students and practitioners of corporate organizations and economies. They must master the art of forming "virtual corporations," i.e., developing operationally efficient joint ventures and strategic alliances; temporary networks of companies which rapidly organize among themselves to take advantage of fast-changing opportunities; form communicational and informational networks which facilitate their working together to begin and finish a mutually beneficial project, each contributing company bringing its "core competence" to their joint efforts; build in mutual interdependence, trust, and a sense of "co-destiny" in their relations; and demonstrate a willingness to cross the traditional boundaries and borders of legally distinct but interrelated companies.
12. Be willing to challenge convention and tradition, assume risks, and reconstruct, reconceptualize customary and accepted rules or routines. Develop "horizontal corporations" if they lead to that generation of productive internal and external economies. That is, reduce hierarchical structures by utilizing coordinated teams of equal status organized around processes for achieving specifiable and specific performance and product goals.
13. Invest heavily in the development of the community's productive capabilities, individual and organizational members, as prerequisites to stable and remunerative employment.
14. Community members must thoroughly prepare themselves to work for and succeed in both for-profit and non-profit organizations, in powerfully entrenched governmental and private agencies in the nation and world. They must also invest in their own enterprises and financial institutions as well as those of others as a way of best positioning themselves to gather intelligence, earn a high standard of living, and maximally exercising power in the interest of the community.
These steps seem to be all-inclusive in regards to social, political and economic behavior and actions of a people who seek social, political and economic freedom.
What are your thoughts on this process? Do you think this process can work for Afrikan Americans given your view on how this country and international affairs are conducted around the world?