How can you speak truth to power without a voice?

How can you speak truth to power without a voice?

“But Peter and John answered and said to them, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to give heed to you rather than to God, you be the judge.”    Acts 3:19

By Bobby R. Henry, Sr.

      You know, the more things are supposed to change the more they move in the opposite direction.

After being engaged on WMBM’s Tuesday Talk Radio Show this week, I realized the need for our Black consumers to really understand the value of their Black spending power and the need for our preachers to carry the same message: That our Black dollars will be spent based upon advertising in our Black owned media!

Just like Black Lives Matter so does where our Black dollars are spent.

I’m not putting a price on Black lives but what I am putting a price on is the life on Black owned media.

If our Black owned media does not get an adequate share of the Black dollars spent in proportion to them, we are being taken advantage of and if our leaders do not see the value of this unequal treatment then we are being led by the wrong people.

It is our responsibility as leaders, preachers and media owners to bring to the attention of our readers, listeners and congregation, the discriminating things that might not be seen as such by the average person-the old saying of, “You can’t see the forest for the trees,” would be a fitting analogy here.

This is the prime time to begin the conversation of asking the important questions related to where should we spend our dollars and watch to see which candidates spend money with Black businesses and Black owned music.

The political season is heating up and one of the most proliferating spending periods in our country is about to begin while grand openings of department stores and other entities where we spend.  Yet the signs of reciprocity are as scarce as hen’s teeth.

I do believe that you will find a snake with hips before these businesses will engage with good corporate citizenship by spending their ad dollars with Black owned media, unless they were made to by their bottom line being affected. In other words, the only way that they will respect the Black owned media is when the Black dollar leaps from their cash registers like people running from a burning building.

How do we then show those who constantly take and patronize us with the excuse that, “They will still spend their hard earned dollars with us even if we don’t support their Black owned media?”

STAY TUNED FOR SOME SUGGESTIONS IN NEXT WEEK’S ARTICLE!

But how can people call for help if they don’t know who to trust? And how can they know who to trust if they haven’t heard of the One who can be trusted? And how can they hear if nobody tells them? And how is anyone going to tell them, unless someone is sent to do it? That’s why Scripture exclaims, a sight to take your breath away! Grand processions of people telling all the good things of God! But not everybody is ready for this, ready to see and hear and act. Isaiah asked what we all ask at one time or another: “Does anyone care, God? Is anyone listening and believing a word of it?” The point is: Before you trust, you have to listen. But unless Christ’s Word is preached, there’s nothing to listen to. Romans 10:15 MSG

AND AS YE WOULD THAT MEN SHOULD DO TO YOU, DO YE ALSO TO THEM LIKEWISE. Luke 6:31