By Jordin Polite
Today is the first day of Black History Month, but what does that mean? Usually, when the shortest month of year rolls around all of the black people I know are super excited… for the first week. On social media, you’ll see people sharing quotes and pictures of our past heroes and legends. Red, Green, and Black profile pictures start popping up. A Black movie marathon might jump off on BET. Even twitter might dedicate a hashtag for the occasion to get more people talking about it online.
However, I noticed in the past that as the month goes on fewer and fewer people start to share information and photos of our heroes from the past, and by the second or third week February becomes just another month for Black People.
So, as a Black man with tremendous pride in who I am, this resulted in me trying to come up with a way we can show our pride all month long. But in a constructive way, a way that will shed light on where we need to improve as a community, whether it be economic, social, or political. To be honest, we need major improvement in all of these areas, but I got a great idea while watching Killer Mike’s new Netflix series, “Trigger Warning”.
In the First episode of the series, Killer Mike touches on how a dollar will only circulate for 6 hours within the Black Community. When you look at the Jewish Community, a dollar will circulate for over 20 days and even 17 days for Asians. Like myself, this was an embarrassing fact for Killer Mike, who decided for 3 days to only spend money within the black community. African Americans have deeply rooted mental issues, and barriers to overcome. Most of which have been genetically passed down to us from our ancestors who lived every day of their lives on the edge, probably with some of the worst cases of anxiety and depression you could imagine, as they fought for their survival. Thanks to slavery, even today we often treat one another with contempt instead of respect. We would rather spend more money on the same product at a store owned by white people than with people of our own race. These are the lasting effects of physical slavery. Its proof that we lack high racial esteem and we have yet to free our minds from the shackles.
Killer Mikes challenge inspired me to do the same. As he showed its incredibly difficut RIGHT NOW to get everything you need on the daily from Black-owned establishments because there just aren’t enough of them around in most places. But I challenge every African American to do research on the Black Owned establishments in your area and spend money every day at one or more of these establishments. For myself every morning I would grab a bagel or egg and cheese from a white-owned shop around my job. Today I went to my local black-owned Vegan health store, “PK Blendz” in Peekskill NY for a healthy smoothie. Tomorrow I will go to a black-owned shop in a nearby town for some sage to cleanse my home.
The point is we need to start trusting and loving one another enough to commit to rebuilding our communities. This will only start if we support one another by spending our money with the black-owned businesses around us. There are websites available like Webuyblack that only promote products from black-owned manufacturers for all of our online shoppers out there. Of course, supporting each other is something we need to do all year round and not just for one month. But starting this challenge during Black History Month should incentivize more people to get involved, because “Black Pride” is at the highest it will be all year long. So this BHM lets celebrate our history by securing a better future for ourselves.
For those that wish to take part in this challenge, post a picture to any of your social media platforms and use the hashtags #BlackHistoryChallenge #BuyBlack.
