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URBAN THOUGHT COLLECTIVE.COM: Recession Proof
Hello from Everyone at www.urbanthoughtcollective.com!
*A friend of mine asked me if I think folks in the hood feel the recession. He was halfway joking but it made me think about it. What does it really mean to be in a recession? It’s like traffic. I just don’t get it. It should be free-flowing no matter how many people are driving. And what about money? The money isn’t gone. It hasn’t disappeared. It just isn’t flowing freely to everybody.
These questions crossed my mind, and then Sunday morning I woke up, walked into my living room and found the TV still on. Joel Osteen was almost done with his sermon. It was titled “Thriving, Not Surviving.” And he touched on the negative talk about the recession. He reminded me of something I’m really working on, which is reprogramming myself to know that as long as God’s presence is all around me I should never want for anything. I’m still working with this one!
Have you ever joined an organization for a particular cause that works towards the betterment of black folks? I’ve worked with a few – some broke and couldn’t pay me a dime while others were very prosperous and only paid me a dime, and all in between. There are a couple of things I’ve learned working with my people on saving our people. One is a collective acceptance that healing our people condemns us to a life of impoverishment. We struggle to uplift our folks and then we go home and struggle to pay our bills. But we’re not supposed to complain because we’re working for a greater cause. And, God forbid if we actually make a come up, some of our brethren will label us a sell out because those who are really down for the ‘struggle’ aren’t rich.
The second thing I learned is that there are those who recognize this sickness, and are more than willing to take advantage of it. They sell us the pipe dream of how ‘we’ are going to save our community. We do the work. We make the sacrifices. We get the high blood pressure. We opt out of our non-paid vacation and we dare don’t complain. And they get the credit. They pocket whatever minuscule or large profit made. They tell us more work needs to be done. And when we quit from being burned out, they recruit somebody just like us who only wants to make this world a better place but doesn’t understand that they deserve a piece of it too. Ahh, memories!
One of the things I’m learning is to stay in my lane. It ain’t my job to stimulate the economy so I’m not worried about…
TO FINISH THE THOUGHT, VISIT: http://urbanthoughtcollective.com/2008/07/21/yaminah-ahmad-recession/
Urban Thought Collective is a new digital community exploring everything from pop culture to politics from an African-American perspective. Yaminah Ahmad is editor-in-chief of The Atlanta Voice and contributing editor to Collective Voices, a newspaper published by the non-profit, SisterSong: Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective. More information on the group can be found at www.sistersong.net. Ahmad can be reached at missyaminah@gmail.com.
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