Black America Speaks. America Should Listen by Byron Allen

I am a 59year old AfricanAmerican man and this brought back vivid childhood memories On April 4 1968 18 days before my seventh birthday I was in the middle of the street in my hometown Detroit Michigan playing urban baseball with my friends using a hubcap as home plate and neighbors39 cars as first second and third baseThat evening I heard my mother and grandmother scream quotThey killed him They killed him They killed Martin Luther King Jr They killed my MartinquotI had never witnessed my mother and grandmother in such emotional pain before Moments later I turned my head and immediately noticed National Guard troops coming towards me with rifles and bayonets and before I knew it I was looking down the barrel of a tank My mother and grandmother screamed to me quotGet in the house get in the house before they kill youquotEvery kid on that street including myself ran as fast as we could I asked my mother and grandmother quotWhy did they kill himquot She answered quotBecause they are racist and they would rather kill us than treat us fairlyquotThat was the very moment I lost my innocence and I went from being a young boy to being a young man I immediately became a child of war A war that has tragically taken millions of George Floyds Breonnaamp160Taylors Ahmaud Arberys Trayvon Martins Laquan McDonalds Mike Browns Eric Garners Samuel Duboses Tamir Rices Frank Smarts Sandra Blands Phillip Whites Freddie Grays Jordan Bakers Philando Castiles Walter Scotts Emmett Tills and a horrifying list of many more that seems to never endThat evening I watched as riots erupted throughout the country and smoke from the burning buildings consumed my neighborhood Through my tears I could not understand the reasons whyI became fascinated with Dr Martin Luther King Jr The more I read about him the more I wanted to learn He was a prophet he was the greatest American who ever lived Dr Martin Luther King Jr is the only private citizen to have his birthday celebrated as a national holiday and helped changed the world by the age of 39 with his teachings and brilliant mindIn 1967 one year before he was assassinated Dr Martin Luther King Jr gave a speech to students at Stanford University The name of that speech is quotThe Other Americaquot 53 years ago Dr Martin Luther King Jr taught us and warned everyone that there are two Americas ONE America has access to opportunity a good education jobs bank loans human and civil rights The other America does not We cannot survive as two Americas We must become ONE AmericaToward the end of his life Dr Martin Luther King Jr had just started the Poor People39s Campaign to achieve economic justice He was speaking on behalf of all poor people which mainly included poor white peopleYesterday I phoned Martin Luther King III and I asked if he was watching TV and did he see what I was seeingamp160 He said quotyesquot I told him quotI see people of all races coming together as one amp8212 risking their lives protesting amp8211 and demanding the ONE America your father envisioned for all of us Your father sacrificed his life to help us achieve this momentquot Martin agreedNow how do we TRULY achieve quotONE Americaquot1 A True PartnershipI am getting lots of calls from white people wanting to know which charities to send donations I tell them there are plenty of organizations more than happy to accept their money But I also tell them please don39t donate to help eliminate your white guilt Don39t look at Black America as a charity case that needs to be saved by you Black America does not want nor do we need a handout but rather an extension of your hand so we can shake on what we agree to be a real and equitable partnership going forward2 Police ReformEnact laws at the federal state and local levels to achieve absolute and total police reform nationwide This must include zero tolerance of chokeholds We must also have consistent comprehensive independent investigations and severe punishment for police brutality corruption and murder3 Justice Reform End mass incarceration Former Attorney General Eric Holder told the world that black men in America are getting sentenced to prison terms that are twenty percent longer than white men who are committing the same crime America must stop this racial discrimination Our prison population is the largest in the world This is just another form of genocide4 ReparationsAs a nation America must acknowledge and apologize for the enslavement of AfricanAmericans for nearly 300 years for zero compensation The newlyfreed slaves were never given the opportunity and the land they were promised and that lack of proper compensation for helping to build this country has hurt their descendants for many generations5 Education ReformEducation is the key America if we do not get access to a proper education you will continue to position us to fail Education needs to be completely reformed especially preschool through sixth grade Higher education needs to be free and available to all Americans As a matter of national security America does not have enough intellectual capital to compete against our rapidlyemerging foreign competitors We need to invest at least ten times above current levels At the top 100 universities in America black students represent a disproportionately low percentage of the entire student bodyThe AfricanAmerican student body population in colleges should reflect the AfricanAmerican population of the nation as a whole which is approximately thirteen percent If we do not improve these numbers absolutely nothing will change As for America39s historically black colleges and universities they are great institutions always in need of financial support and should be properly funded6 Economic InclusionIt should be noted that Dr Martin Luther King Jr was completely frustrated that white liberals supported civil rights but disappeared when it was time to talk about AfricanAmerican economic inclusion As Dr Martin Luther King Jr once said quotIt39s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps but it is cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstrapsquot Stop using lack of access to capital as a form of economic genocide Audit the banks and you will see that Black Americans do not have equal access to capital Banks always tell us they have a great record lending to minoritiesThey always show a black face on their minority brochures but for lending purposes in actuality they redefine quotminorityquot as white women and by doing so intentionally using them to mislead the public and government regulators to act as if they are lending money to black people The United States government controls over a one trilliondollar federal pension fund and very little if any is managed by AfricanAmericans and invested in our communitiesWhen Black America gains equal access to capital that is not predatory we will be able to buy homes and participate in the appreciation and tax benefits enjoyed by white Americans The muchneeded capital will allow us to invest in and acquire businesses to help employ people in our communities7 Health Care ReformWe need to make sure that every American has access to the best health care free of charge We need to completely eliminate hunger and food insecurity nationwide We also need to recognize the mental illness epidemic that plagues our country and invest heavily to combat it Homelessness must be completely eradicated8 Environmental JusticeEliminate racial disparities in environmental safety Many AfricanAmerican communities are exposed to very harmful toxic environments not just Flint Michigan My elementary school in Detroit was demolished due to toxic waste Marathon Oil built a 250acre refinery less than two miles from my childhood home The air is almost impossible to breathe and the health conditions of many AfricanAmericans is disproportionate with those in the rest of America partly due to environmental injustice in our communities Stop exposing our families to toxic chemicals and waste9 Jobs Opportunities Internships and MentorshipsAmerica needs to lean in Include us on your boards Include us in your Csuite Include us in your workforce Include us as some of your vendors And include us in your investments Stop the analysis and paralysis and take action now No more excuses Chairmen and CEOs you also need to take on the added responsibility and personally become your own company39s Chief Diversity Investment OfficerMy mother got pregnant when she was 16 and gave birth to me seventeen days after her seventeen birthday But what changed our lives is when she got accepted into UCLA and earned a bachelor39s degree and a master39s degree in CinemaTV Production As a single mother attending college fulltime she secured an entrylevel position at NBC network Soon after she asked an NBC executive a question and received a reply that changed our lives forever She asked if the network had an internship program at the executive level The answer was no She then asked quotWill you start one with mequotThank God the answer was quotyesquot As a young child waiting for my mother to get off work as she gave tours of the NBC studios I went from soundstage to soundstage and watched them tape hundreds of hours of television including Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show Redd Foxx on Sanford ampamp Son Freddie Prinze on Chico and the Man Flip Wilson on The Flip Wilson Show and Bob Hope and George Burns starring in their own specials This opportunity helped me to see myself differently and changed the trajectory of my life Exposure to a better life can quite often lead to achieving a better lifeI started my company 27 years ago from my dining room table Today it is one of the largest privatelyheld media companies in the world with approximately 1300 employees 9 cable television networks including The Weather Channel over 64 original television series currently on the air thousands of hours of content and 15 ABC CBS NBC and FOX affiliate television stations nationwide I own my company one hundred percent not because I planned it that way but simply because no one was willing to invest in me Along the way America never stopped reminding me that I needed to work ten times harder than my white counterpartsI have had at least four white sales executives who work for me tell me on separate occasions that potential clients have said to them quotI will never do business with you as long as you work for that Namp8212amp8211quot Since I was a child I have conditioned myself to deal with situations like this one but my four white male sales executives were not I could see in their faces and hear in their voices they did not know how to process this pain and shameOver the years I39ve lost top sales talent because racism was too much for them to bear so I knew I had to help them deal with it I found myself having to console and guide them to a better place I told them that someone calling me 39Namp8212amp821139 is no reason for us not to achieve our sales goals but rather another reason for us to exceed them My excellence will always dominate and overshadow their ignorance every time10 PeaceAmerica you are very quick to call us thugs and tell the world we are not peaceful Tupac Shakur taught us when you see THUGS what you really see is The Hate U Give When the first slave ship showed up in Jamestown in 1619 we said quotPEACEquot and you chose slavery When we peacefully tried to end slavery you chose the Civil War After slavery we tried to peacefully build our communities and you chose to lynch us and bomb us When we tried to peacefully achieve civil rights you chose to murder our civil rights leaders When we peacefully tried to vote you chose to violently stand in our way When we put our hands up in peace you chose to shoot When we went to church to pray for peace you chose to execute us When Colin Kaepernick exercised our First Amendment rights to peacefully take a knee in protest you chose to punish us and instead took a knee on George Floyd39s neck for 8 minutes and 46 secondsWhen you came to this country our Native American brothers and sisters said quotPEACEquot and you chose war rape and went on to burn down their villages and steal their land When our Hispanic brothers and sisters came here seeking a better life just like your ancestors they said quotPEACEquot and you chose to tell them they broke the law by crossing a manmade boundary literally took their children out of their arms incarcerated babies and sent the parents back across the line without their loved ones Unfortunately this atrocity continues even to this dayAmerica we will never have true peace until America stops protecting nurturing and fostering hate groups The white supremacists the neoNazis and the KKK are nothing more than terrorists with a long history of violence against us America must deal with these hate groups appropriately the same way it deals with foreign terrorism because domestic terrorism is much worseAmerica you constantly hit us with the quotfour Dsquot 1 When we share our thoughts you DISMISS us 2 When we express our frustration you DISCREDIT us 3 When we protest you DEMONIZE us 4 After you demonize us you feel selfrighteous and you move on to that fourth and inevitable D you DESTROY usEven today we are protesting to achieve basic civil and human rights We39re talking about murder and you39re talking about looted merchandise Your buildings will be rebuilt and your shelves will be restocked but you can never bring back the lives you have stolen America you kill us in the class room you kill us in the board room and you kill us in the court room long before you kill us in the streets America we have been saying quotPEACEquot for over 400 years and you chose to suffocate us I CAN39T BREATHELet me be clear NativeAmericans want PEACE HispanicAmericans want PEACE AsianAmericans want PEACE MuslimAmericans want PEACE JewishAmericans want PEACE and Black Americans want PEACE America has been denying us what we all want the most amp8211 PEACEI am sharing some of my thoughts for many reasons mainly because I want America to live up to its fullest potential My wife and I do not want our children sitting in their living rooms 52 years from now looking out their windows watching the National Guard enforcing a curfew simply because we have not achieved quotONE AmericaquotBLACK LIVES MATTER and we must ALL work together to achieve REAL SYSTEMATIC CHANGE PEACEThis Byron Allen Op Ed piece was originally published here and appeared in the NY Times the WSJ and the Washington Post

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