Friday, March 29, 2024

Charlamagne’s Book on ‘Black Privilege’ Doesn’t Make Much Sense (Video)

Attorney and Emmy Nominated Film Producer Antonio Moore discusses the new book by Charlamagne the God “Black Privilege,” critically evaluating the book’s meaning.

Moore uses financial data from leading researchers, the federal reserve, and the U.S. Census to debunk the idea that Black Privilege exist in America. Delivering a scathing review of the concept, and real alternatives of how wealth has been applied to America’s racial story.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/…/black-wealth-is-nonexiste_b… “Black Wealth Hardly Exists, Even When You Include NBA, NFL And Rap Stars” by Antonio Moore

I believe a large part of the reason we can’t get honest is a decadent veil of black celebrity has been used to mask the massive amount of black poverty. African Americans have increasingly come to base their view of the current economic state of black America on the reflections of Jay Z’s purchase of Tidal for 56 million dollars, rather than the millions of black American families that as a whole lost by some reports half of their wealth over the last several years. For a generation of blacks, celebrity exceptionalism and its results has been confused with the economic progress, or the lack thereof that has been achieved by the black race as a whole since the days of the Civil Rights Movement. This approach has come to create an escape for far too many, one where vision boards on bedroom walls filled with quotes of overcoming odds from wealthy African American celebrities, proves more important than their very own real economic struggles of the moment.

In addition, a middle white America overexposed to a few million-dollar NBA stars, has become apathetic to the normal plight of black Americans as a result. We must remember the empathy of the white middle class was among Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s greatest tools in the fight for equality and civil rights. Now apathy has set in as white Americans say, well you have rich people too black America. All this being believed while failing to deal with the data, which shows a different story altogether. A set of numbers that show these African American celebrities are of such small numbers, and limited level of real wealth, they shouldn’t frame anyone’s idea of a population of over 40 million black people. Thomas Piketty in his acclaimed book “Capital in the Twenty First Century” stated

Recent research, based on matching declared income on tax returns with corporate compensation records, allows me to state that the vast majority (60 to 70 percent, depending on what definitions one chooses) of the top 0.1 percent of the income hierarchy in 2000-2010 consists of top managers. By comparison, athletes, actors, and artists of all kinds make up less than 5 percent of this group. In this sense, the new US inequality has much more to do with the advent of “supermanagers” than with that of “superstars.”

Bloomberg recently gave a racial framework to the information above by reporting that only 1% of the S&P 500 CEOs are black, with African Americans making up a mere 2.6% of those holding posts within striking distance of becoming next to head one of these major companies. White males and white females collectively hold nearly 90% of these top spots, which, according to Piketty are the type of supermanager positions that are making most of the money in America.

Just last week Forbes released its annual Forbes 400 report on the richest people in the U.S., focusing in on the top 25 people on The 2016 Forbes 400, they are all white, and have a combined net worth of over 900 billion dollars. That is over 37% of the total 2.4 trillion dollars in wealth held by all 400 members on the elite list. Together, this data makes clear white supermanagers, and white capital holders are making most, if not nearly all of the American held wealth being earned in the U.S. today. Wealth in America is not diverse, in fact, it is really white. This remains true no matter how many times we are shown Lebron James in his mansion in feel good commercials. Because for every singular sports phenom like Lebron James playing basketball, there is not just a Bill Gates controlling computers, there are countless white wealth holders making money that black Americans are locked out of accessing. The great irony being that whites also make up the bulk of the 5% of entertainers in the top .1% of earners Piketty refers to as well.

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