A few months ago, everyone was up in arms about a Chinese laundry detergent commercial that was deemed racist. It is understandable how some may have been offended by it, but I still firmly believe that it was nothing to cry about. There is, however, something far more devastating to the Black race going on in China.
Is it Black folks being denied teaching jobs?
While this does happen, and it can be detrimental to one’s economic status, this is not what I am referring to. I also know plenty of Black men and women teaching here in the Middle Kingdom.
Is it the Admiral’s superior genetics being drained into a Chinese woman instead of a “big booty Black woman” mayne?
Nope.
Is it the massive Chinese population’s consumption of KFC and watermelon, two foodstuffs stereotypically associated with Black America?
Negative. We’re doing a good job eating their takeout and paying them for it anyway.
China Has Conquered the African Market
China has flooded the African continent with cheap products, much as it has done to the entire world. Although the cost of manufacturing is rising in China, and some production is going elsewhere, the Middle Kingdom is still a huge manufacturing base.
A portion of the products manufactured in China ship to Africa. Of course, trade between China and Africa is not a one-way street. Many of the raw materials that China has been using in its recent construction boom come from the African continent. As it is to be expected, however, the Chinese get the better end of the bargain.
It seems that once again, the Black man has been knocked out of a market. This time, it has happened on his own continent!
The Proposed Stopgap Solution
Guangzhou is a city where thousands of Africans reside. Many of these people are here doing business shipping cheap Chinese items from factories back to their home countries. There is an entire subdistrict of factories in Baiyun (a northern district of Guangzhou) that specializes in items made to be sold in Africa. This shows you that business with Africa is quite lucrative for the Chinese.
Arabs and Indians have caught wind of this, and do business with the Chinese, serving as a middleman in selling items to Africans in their own homelands. This is a one-two punch of economic defeat for the African continent and for the Black race.
It is often said that Black people need to build businesses in order to escape the stranglehold of other races. This is true. If we are to control our own destiny, then we must become productive on a mass scale, and compete in the economic arena.
However, it is also true that at this period in time, we produce little of what we use. If other races are going to produce, we can at least have a place somewhere in the supply line.
I do not support the usage of items of pure vice, like narcotics, but weaves and Jordans are fair game. Spending on these accouterments may be wasteful, but it is unlikely to go away. Regardless of how many group economics lectures we hear, we gotta get them Jays. Hell, clothing, food, and water are likely going to remain necessary, at least for the foreseeable future, and we (at least in the case of the Black American) produce little of these for ourselves either..
If Black people are going to buy these “luxury” items (and necessities), then at the very least, they can buy them from a Black middleman. Once enough economic power has been garnered, we can work on building and investing in our own means of production. One step at a time, as the saying goes.
In Conclusion
I understand that we should not be satisfied until we have the means to be self-sufficient. We have to start somewhere though, and halting the consumption of goods and services provided by other races won’t stop overnight realistically. Therefore, procuring and selling the goods of others for profit is a viable stopgap solution for the time being.