How We Can Progress

The Gantt Report

By Lucius Gantt

       Where do we go from here? Most African Americans and Africans are happy. We want to sing and dance. We want to laugh and smile.

We are content.

Well, I’m not. I don’t enjoy suffering and smiling. I’d rather stand up and speak out than bow down and idolize wicked and deceitful people.

So, how can all of us with African ancestry progress?

First, we must understand what The Gantt Report is based on, economics and politics.

You see, money and politics are on parallel paths. Wherever there is money, you’ll find politicians seeking to tax the money, regulate the money, and sometimes steal the money and the resources that generate money.

The people in power want you to be ignorant about the importance of money. They want to encourage you to believe no matter how exploited you are, how oppressed you are, and how poor you are you will be rewarded with pearly gates and streets of gold when you die.

In my humble opinion, too many rich people get their riches from the ghettos and barrios.

The impacts that colonialism and slavery perpetrated have caused us to believe that our “master plan” for progress must be based on the plans that are acceptable to our oppressors.

For the most part, we Africans and African Americans do what we are told to do. We work how and where we are told to work, we worship and pray how we are told to worship and pray, we protest how we are told to protest, we vote how we are told to vote, and we live how we are told to live!

Every day, people of color around the world are suffering and smiling.

But we don’t have to. African Americans and Africans are smart enough to succeed on earth like other races and ethnic groups if we listen to the progressive progress plans and ideas articulated by true Black thinkers.

Just give our brothers and sisters opportunities to share their progress knowledge and ideas.

We should stop letting people with devilish intentions tell us who our leaders are, tell us what our path to progress should be, and tell us how to manage the money and politics in our communities!

American Jews will drive past 10 or 15 soul food restaurants, Chinese restaurants, Mexican restaurants and, Muslims selling bean pies on the corner to get to “Goldbergs”, or a Jewish restaurant or diner.

We need to spend our dollars with each other as much as possible.

Blacks in politics have always tended to solicit campaign contributions from Black donors but they are very reluctant to purchase political resources and products from vendors who look like them, who live near them, and who have the same issues and conditions as they do.

We are not inferior. Anything that others can do, we can do if we get the opportunity.

As far as money, Oprah Winfrey is not the richest Black person in the world and not even the richest Black woman in the world.

The richest Blacks on the globe have products to sell like cement, like oil, and other commodities. Even the music queen from Barbados, Rihanna, sells fragrances and other products and generates billions of dollars.

You can too.

I could go on and on, but I won’t. I try to keep The Gantt Report short and sweet.

I want to end this column by saying the people we mostly admire are rich, but they are not wealthy.

Black millionaires buy million-dollar stuff like jewelry, houses, and cars with their dollars, but billionaires do billion dollar deals and don’t take a penny out of their bank accounts.

Only the smart Black men and women know if you want to buy a hundred million barrels of oil, you don’t take a billion dollars to Exxon, Shell, Aramco or Texaco, billion-dollar deals are done with a piece of paper.

While you are striving, you bankers, accountants, and financial professionals are thriving while you get 2% interest, at best, on your savings accounts, wealthy money traders can make 100% interest on some financial investments.

We can progress and do better in the world once we realize our people have our answers.

The people who have been designated as our Black community leaders and experts probably couldn’t lead flies to an outhouse!

We can progress, make money and win elections if we give each other opportunities to show us how and if we stop others from misleading us.