Integration is not the Opposite of Segregation

[Rhondazvous]

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Yes, there were a lot of things going on. When you have a nationwide phenomenon, it’s never just one cause.

You can call it failed integration or whatever it was it failed the black community. It did not result in an integrated economy. There was money going out but none coming in and that too had several causes.

Financial services was one area where there was an integrated economy (if there weren't....then the blank banks could not have lost their customers).  An integrated economy does not mean that money flows back to the community.  Frankly, it doesn't do so for "white" banks or communities either.  

For one thing, blacks did not understand there’s more to business than the retail store. They opened up little mom and pop stores and restaurants but they didn’t go into manufacturing, wholesale and distribution.

Well, more than a little bit of that had to do with available capital.  There weren't alot of black people with enough cash to open a factory - mom and pops were more achievable.  Since then, however, all the mom and pops are gone.  White, black, what have you.  It's unfortunate that history left black americans with few opportunities when they became enfranchised, and perhaps even moreso that those opportunities open to them then were, with the full light of history available to us now, very shortly doomed regardless of the ethnicity of the owner.  

So what happened? They had to get their products from Koreans, who over course overcharged them and gave the Korean storeowners discounts.  Then the retailers had to overcharge the black consumers just to break even, much less make a profit. “Oh, you call yourself a brother and charging me $6 for a jar of cream I can get from the Koreans for $2!”

Add to that the government is subsidizing Koreans to set up businesses in the black community. The Koreans hate us because that’s what they saw fighting them during the Korean War.

Not a whole lot of koreans where I'm from, whites blacks and hispanics..mostly, so I can't really comment on what the koreans did wherever you're from. Pretty sure a korean who hates americans because of the korean war is going to be an equal opportunity hater with regard to ethnicity.  Why did you have to get your products from koreans..btw?  

Now we got integration. We can go work for “the man.”

You could always work for "the man"......you just couldn't bank at the same institutions or eat lunch at the same counter or go to the same schools or drink from the same water fountains or marry his son..... 

But they don’t go out with the idea of using the money to support black communities. Growing up in the ghetto, the black child learns to think of his neighborhood as someplace he must escape. Like a jail. The only income coming in from the outside is when white kids come to buy drugs. Black businesses where doing good when they were supported by policy, but first the Irish and Italian gangs then the government took that over and now it’s called the state lottery. Again money going out, none coming in.

I also grew up learning to escape my neighborhood.  Again I;d suggest that your problem lies..not with integration, but with divestment in local communities, wich is endemic to all communities, at present, regardless of ethnicity. 

I've gotta say, these things that you've been laying on the koreans, and the irish, and the italians...they seem more like self inflicted wounds, and nothing at all to do with integration itself.  Integration gave black communities choices and oppurtunities they did not previously have.  What they did with those, well.

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As you said integration doesn’t equal incoming  cash flow. And as I said integration is not preclusive of segregation (when a community is controlled by those outside that community).

You’ve pointed out some things that all communities share in common, i.e., the financial abandonment of the local entrepreneur.   I see this happening across the board, so I can’t disagree with you there.

I used to live in Los Angeles where the Koreans were the only people selling black hair products. Why was this the case? Why were black businesses trying to sell me $300 African dresses but never things I would buy?

Irish and Italian gangs violently wrested policy (playing the numbers) away from blacks, shooting up establishments so that customers were afraid to go there. Calling this a self-inflicted wound is like calling the brutalization of the Freedom Riders by the KKK a self-inflicted wound.

I do not, by any means, think that all blacks’ problems can be laid at the feet of other ethnic groups, or that blacks are always the innocent victims in their encounters with others.  I do think that we are in a cycle where everybody plays a part and few are willing to take responsibility for the part they play.

BTW, I don’t have a problem. As a child, I grew up in Washington D.C. when the city was 87% black, but I never lived in that part of the city that could be called the “ghetto.” I never felt underprivileged because of my ethnicity.

Notice I use the term ethnicity rather than race, because to my knowledge there’s no scientific evidence that Homo sapience are divided into meaningfully distinct races. But ethnicity involves heritage and culture.