In today’s episode, I have Cashh with me to talk about police brutality in line with what is going on, like the George Floyd and Brianna Taylor incidents and the things we need to do to move forward. It is high time that we get accountability from these guys as police harassment and brutalities happen worldwide, affecting our communities at a large scale.
The police force is supposed to serve and protect us; not exploit their power and feel that they are superior, not to inflict fear into us, not to intimidate us, and especially not to kill us. There’s a difference between what’s written on paper and what we experience as people.
The origin of the problem and the recent turn of events
When looking at history, according to others, it can be seen that the police force was made to keep slaves from running away. The introduction of the black community stems from slavery and that police forces were created to protect their wealth and commodities, which was us.
It’s all about connecting the dots and seeing the bigger picture, the entire picture of how things are run. Unfortunately, we’re connecting the dots through our negative experiences.
Recently, with George Floyd’s death, there’s been a greater movement and some people ask: they’re marching and protesting, but what difference will it make? The answer to this question is that sometimes you need to hit the door many times to send it flying away and things don’t change overnight. What’s happening right now is a step in the right direction. It has also become a catalyst for people to go and research about these specifics.
What is the change we want to see?
The ultimate change won’t happen in our lifetime but it is up to us to set it in motion. We need to select some leaders that we vote for to represent our community. We need to appoint leaders who are already in this field, people who know about the specifics and who have been fighting for this cause for a long time.
The current situation has caused a major impact on us as we are now focusing on various things such as black companies, manufacturers, and all. We need to collectively work towards supporting our own by starting businesses for ourselves. Do we have black car manufacturers? Grocery stores? It’s time to set these up for ourselves and support our own.
This is going to be very difficult, like taking medicine, to get the change we want. We have to bypass the comfortability to support ourselves and bring us forward. This way, no one is going to kick us out based on our racial profiles.
What is needed to attain the change?
To achieve change, we need to make sure that we are standing with our own, to have the same energy as we have now and consciously keep fighting because our fight happens every day. We’re fighting for simple things such as music. A cousin of Cashh’s doesn’t drive with loud music on if there are cops close by, even though he has every documentation and everything is legal. This is the condition that we’re in. Police brutality is ingrained in our daily lives.
We need to keep the thought in the forefront, in our consciousness and keep the same energy for our empowerment. The process through which we can do this is divided into five parts that include education, self-reliance, business, investment, and believing in something higher than yourself.
Education: we have to be clear about how we got our education. We need to make ourselves aware, we need to educate our children with the right information. It is essential to teach our children about our actual history so we need to redirect our books and focus on information that is real. Slavery is not our history, it is the history presented to us by white people. It is only a displacement of our history.
Self-reliance: We should be aware that nobody is coming to save us. We have to understand that we need to save ourselves and rely on ourselves. Black people, in general, are creative. Whether it is through music, visual arts, or just building something, we can rely on ourselves.
Business: We need to support our own, not just temporarily, but sustainably. We need to continue with it and not just focus on a specific day like blackout Tuesday; there must be a complete blackout! We have to realise that we need to support our businesses in continuity to create the impact we want.
Investments: Investing in ourselves and our businesses is important. In this step, we can also invest in ourselves in a way that we add money to a pot and then whoever needs financial or any other help in our community, then we take the money from the pot and assist them.
Believe in something higher than yourself: We’re all about instant gratification. Because of this, we aren’t able to circulate our money better and make a difference in our community. We need to let go of this mentality so that every dollar we spend can make a difference in our community.
If we do these five things and be vigilant in doing these things, then we will surely be able to see a difference in the future. We need to be able to exercise tolerance to be able to get things flowing. As businesses and consumers, we need to make sure that we can take constructive criticism to be able to maintain, grow, and give.
In order for these steps can only be attained, we need to have a change of mindset. This can happen if we’re able to communicate it to our youth and instill it in their minds. What we need is to be united and organised now because people treat you the way you allow them to treat you. With a united front, others will think twice before repeating similar actions as before because we will have organised people in departments, in other various fronts to whom they will be accountable to.
We need lawyers, judges, economists, and much more so that we can create a system and benefit from it. Our community needs to have a position of ownership, leadership, and organisation to be able to attain the power to make a difference.
More so, we need to empower ourselves within so that we can meaningfully contribute to the betterment of the world. Enroll here to begin the journey of optimizing your greatest potential: https://andreoferguson.com/membership/
