By: Travis L. McGee Sr.
If you haven’t noticed, historical BLACK communities which include ours are being bought out, priced out, taxed out, flooded out, and more importantly SOLD OUT at a record-breaking pace. Some of our Black “Elected Employees” are selling the “Hood” out and some of the White “Elected Employees” a long with property vultures are buying the “Hood” out for pennies on the dollar.
How can they see the value in our communities when some of us don’t? Being a home, business and property owner in the Black communities is a lifetime achievement in and of itself. The value of the properties you worked a lifetime for should be priceless, but if you had to sell it, it shouldn’t be for pennies on the dollar.
Black Wall Street can be every street if we keep our property and protect our communities from the neighborhood killer called “Gentrification.” There should never be halfway houses opening and schools closing in our communities. Soon there will be more halfway houses than churches, and that’s a lot of halfway houses!
Trades should be available as an option for our children just as college is. Trades are the backbone of this country and the start of independence. This is the real reason why they were removed from the schools where they were offered for free and as a part of the curriculum. Now if you want access to those same trades that were once free, you either have either have to pay at a trade school or community college or be incarcerated in a correctional facility.
However, there are issues with these “options.” Not having them in the schools is not convenient nor accessible to the masses who really need them. Trade schools and colleges are often not affordable for many. Although trades should be an option in correctional facilities, they should first be an option in our tax funded schools. In other words, it should be prevention before detention.
Various trades made up Black Wall Street. By contributing to and controlling our communities through ownership of our homes, businesses, and properties, we collectively create our own Black Wall Street. This is the only way to fight gentrification and keep our communities. If we continue to allow them to take our communities, they will.
How can we consider this our community, if we’re giving up ownership of it and refusing to fight for it? If we continue to ignore the obvious this will affect us more than we might think. Taxes will steadily increase, and city services will further decrease. This is taxation without representation and it should be considered a crime.
We are worth more than “Ima do” speeches, excuses, photo ops, cheap smiles, the latest line dance and free stuff. It’s time for us to wake up and take our neighborhoods back! We as one can accomplish much more together than we can apart. Both the young and old have to be involved in this well overdue movement. The elders have to remind the youth of how far we have come, so the youth can understand its “No Limit” to how far we can go. Our elders made it through racism, segregation, the depression, and many other hardships due to their sense of unity and their faith in GOD. Other than God all they had were each other, so they had no choice but to be united. During the civil rights era we stood for something, but now we fall for anything. If we don’t take pride in our neighborhoods and know it’s our responsibility to hold Ourselves and our ”Elected Employees” accountable, we should expect more taxation without representation.
We owned more during the depression and Civil Rights Era when racism was at its peak. We had very limited resources, elected officials, and black millionaires were almost unheard of. Times have somewhat changed for the better. Now we have money, can live where we choose, attend colleges of our choice, apply for any job we want, and the privilege to VOTE. Your right to vote is priceless, so your vote should be equally as priceless. Neither should be taken for granted. It must also be an educated vote and not “Just vote” (motto) or the popular vote.
We made it through all of that. Why give up and be bought out now to be sold out later? We still have a long way to go, in which a broken generation will have to get us there. We rather complain and make more excuses than come up with a solution for our problems. The only solution is taking responsibility and contributing to our Black Wall Street.
We can’t complain and be upset when we see our neighborhoods being taken over if we’re not investing in and claiming ownership of them ourselves. We have been here for years and some a lifetime, but we just been praying without works.
There was a time when we were denied the right to vote, access to loans and grants, the ability to buy property, to superior jobs, equal trades, and quality education. Additionally, we will never have a fair trial or adequate representation whether it be in the courtroom or in politics until we demand more and not settle for anything less.
Though we experience most of these injustices even today in 2022, many of us still vote on a whim versus being an educated voter by doing our own research. It shouldn’t matter if we’re young or old, the agenda should be the same. It’s time because we still have time to stop procrastinating.
If we want stronger, more sustainable, educated, financially stable, environmentally hazardless, and safer communities, it will take ever man, woman and child. I repeat, every man, woman and child in that order. With zero zoning and detrimental ordinances like Chapter 42 our communities become even more vulnerable to gentrification. Chapter 42 allows developers to construct larger multiple structures on minimal size lots with prehistoric infrastructure. Chapter 42 is city ordinance that has to be approved by Houston City Council and therefore has to be amended by Houston City Council
If our communities are below the poverty level, who in the hell can afford $300,000 homes in the hood? Their idea of affordable does not translate the same in our communities. We can’t afford to be neglected nor misrepresented not a second longer. This will take a very unapologetic movement that can’t be dictated by anyone, other than, “We the People,” because there is no compromise with dictatorship.
We have been thinking too small for too long. Why just 40 acres and a mule? It’s 2022? Why not unlimited acres and creating generational wealth in our own Black Wall Street? Voter registration, Voter Education, and Voter mobilization is a must!!!! Things that happen yesterday are the past, anything happening now is the present, and the goals we set and achieve will determine our future.
