Same fish, bigger pond
Comparing two issues of a trade journal for radio sponsors provides a sharp view of the transition from the self-sufficiency of Booker T to the plantation of MLK and LBJ.

Sponsor magazine had a yearly supplement dealing with the Negro Market. The 1960 version gave lots of statistics showing that the black population was getting richer and closer to median, and presented this as an opportunity for commerce.

Excerpt from the intro:



Important piece:

Except at the very highest and lowest income levels, Negroes outspend whites in almost all consumer product categories. These are facts which advertisers and agencies can no longer ignore or minimize. They add up to this rare and happy prospect for the seller: an enormous expanding market which has yet to be tapped for its dollar potential.

Crass commerce? You fucking bet. Crass commerce is a NON-DISCRIMINATORY way of looking at a group. When you want them to buy stuff, you also want them to succeed. You want them to have better jobs.

Segregation provided many of those jobs. Because the black community had to serve its own interests, black-owned businesses multiplied. Small towns had black radio stations, providing jobs and skills and STATUS for local talent. One page of the station list shows the pattern:



Los Angeles had one station. And Butler, Eufaula, Evergreen, Flomaton, Florence and Gadsden also had one station each.

= = = = =

By 1963 the goal had changed. Excerpt from the 1963 intro:



Important piece:

Because of their color and being a minority group, Negroes are relegated to a subordinate status in American society which they cannot rise above. Whether the individual is Ralph Bunche, George W Carver, Jackie Robinson, Joe Louis, Duke Ellington, or a billionaire, he is still a Negro and unable to enjoy the full benefits and blessings of Amercan democracy.

It is obvious that the primary interest of Negroes centers around day by day situations calculated to improve their status.....

Note the withering condescension in the second paragraph. Those day by day situations are no longer commercially interesting. NYC no longer sees them as profit sources, therefore NYC no longer needs to maximize those improvements.

Status, like all other human senses, is strictly based on DELTAS and PROPORTIONS. There's no such thing as absolute status. It's always a COMPARISON to some larger pool, which is defined by culture. When individual status compares only to your neighborhood, the ratios are closer and the percentage of each upward movement is noticeable. When status compares to an entire nation, the proportions are huge and the visible result of an increment is zero.

From 1960 to 1963 the fish didn't change. The pond changed. Instead of focusing on status within the black community, we're now assuming that everyone must swim in one big national pond. Within that big pond, the individual black man has much lower visible status and less hope of improving. Before 1960 a black doctor was important and respected within a black neighborhood. After we decided to THINK GLOBALLY, a black doctor was expected to compete against NYC Jew surgeons and specialists. ACTING LOCALLY has no purpose now because the good doctor has no hope of doing important work like facelifting Carol Channing. He only saves insignificant lives.

Why did MLK and LBJ enlarge the pond? Specifically to halt the upward movement of the fish. And they succeeded magnificently. The black fish no longer had any hope of free-swimming INDIVIDUAL SUCCESS. The only way to "succeed" was by attaching himself to a DC political shark like MLK. And this remora mode continues today.

After 1980 the same process was applied on a larger scale to working-class whites (and blacks as well). When American industries were segregated within the American neighborhood, ordinary men could use their skills to earn a good living and support a family. By forcing industries to swim in the same pond with China and Mexico, we devalued and eliminated the jobs an ordinary man can do, and thus devalued his status in the global community.

SOROS DELENDA EST.

Labels: Carver, skill-estate

  ¶ 1:56 AM