My topic today is the Black Race - it is not about Africans from the continent, Africans in the Diaspora,  African West Indians, but about the Black Race. My discussion is about truth, it is about honesty and frankness.  It is about no more lies and blaming others for what is happening to the Black Race.  It is about accepting responsibility for our actions; playing the same games that others are playing and becoming very successful. It is about being intelligent on how we make decisions on where to spend our hard earned money. It is about no more playing the victim-mentality game. In this 21st century, we have to accept the truth of our situation, and nothing but the truth, so help us God. There is nobody more qualified to debate the state of the Black Race versus others, other than you and I.  We cannot, as usual, in our lackadaisical manner abandon this debate to others with better access to the media.

In Africa, we have a saying that \"when a child grows up, and he is able to wash his hands, he should sit at the same table and eat with his elders.\"  The Black Race has grown up, it has washed its hands, but the question is, why is it not sitting at the same table to eat with its elders? Why is it not sitting at the same table with other races to eat from the same table? Why is it still eating from the floor?

Another saying in Africa states: \"you don\'t need a mirror to look at what you are wearing on your wrist.\" You see, you can look at your wrist and see clearly what you are wearing. You don\'t need a mirror to tell you what time it is or to know what kind of jewelry you are wearing. But unfortunately, the Black race, prefers to look at what it is wearing on its wrist with a mirror. Just try it, and you will see why we have a very distorted image of our situation.

We are afraid of looking at the truth.  We prefer the fuzzy image. We know the truth, but we don\'t want to talk about it. Yes, we say to ourselves, people are going to seize that as a weapon against us.  We believe that they will say, you see even the Blacks themselves are saying what we have been saying all along. \"They are lazy, non-productive, can\'t govern themselves and unruly.\" Well, let me tell you the facts of life. That era of not looking at the truth in the face is dead, and gone.

Again, where I come from, there is another saying that \"you don\'t chase after a mouse when your house is on fire.\"You know what would happen if you started chasing after the mouse when the house is on fire. You will perish and the mouse would have escaped. Our situation is critical. We need drastic action if we are to discover and cure the seemingly insurmountable virus devouring our whole organs of life. The first bitter truth we have to accept is that the Black Race is a consumer race, depending on other communities for culture, language, feeding and clothing.

Despite our abundance of natural resources, we are economic slaves because we lack the \"killer-instinct and devil-may-care attitude\" of the Caucasian and the \"spider web economic mentality\" of the Asian. The Black Race is the most hospitable race I have ever seen.  We will not have any difficulty throwing out our own brothers or sisters just to accommodate any other race. We would rather be poor but let our guests be comfortable.

I am tired of a people who have one mind set, a people who complain and whine about what others do to us.  We complain and complain and whine and whine ad nauseam about what others have done to us and are still doing to us. We think the world owes us something. I am sorry to say that we are delusional. Nobody owes us a thing. Nobody is willing to give up what they have, on the excuse that we want it. If you want something you have to go out and get it. You cannot continue to beg for manna to fall from heaven.

Most African countries have been independent for more than 40 years.  The promise of independence is yet to be fulfilled. We had thought that Manna would fall from heaven but rather than manna falling from heaven, what we have are wars, famine, disease, military dictatorships, human rights abuses, despotic leaders who prefer to loot the peoples\' treasuries for their own personal aggrandizement, leaders who prefer to force the adulation of the masses with the barrels of a gun rather than with the provision of simple amenities to the people - like good roads, health care facilities, good environment for learning and opportunities for employment.

Africa is worse off today than when the colonial masters left.  Everything we use in Africa is imported. Do you know that we still import candles from Taiwan?  Yet 40 years after independence, we still blame our colonial masters for everything that happens in Africa today. Our leaders are not men enough to accept responsibility for the abject poverty of our people. We accuse Europeans of plundering and pillaging the natural resources of Africa.  But I ask you, tell me, who are inviting them to do this? Are they not our own people? I am sure you have all heard of the late tyrants and dictators Sani Abacha of Nigeria and Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  Abacha stole more than $5 billion of the impoverished Treasury of Nigeria and took that money and deposited it in Swiss Bank accounts.  Since his death, the Swiss authorities have \"found\" only $1.5 billion of that money. On his part, Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire took $6 billion to the same Swiss banks. After he died, the Swiss have told us that they have only found $7 million of that money.  Tell me, which white man left Europe and took a gun to their heads and forced them to steal $12 billion from a continent where the per capita income is less than $500 per year?  Do you know what $11 billion could have done for the starving and disease prone children in those countries?

We have to sit back and look in the mirror and see the culprit of our misfortune.  It is not the white, the red, the green, the yellow or any other color.  We are responsible for what is happening to us today. When we allow others to come into our neighborhoods and buy up our businesses because we are stupid enough not to patronize our own people, we blame it on racism forgetting that those who came into our neighborhood started with almost nothing.

It is your fault, and it is mine as well. We are not even intelligent consumers. Let me give you two examples here. We as a people spend approximately $40 million a day eating Chinese food.  That is $40 million a day, and that comes to about  $15 billion a year. (I am not advocating that we should boycott Chinese food). In economic terms, using the economic multiplier effect, we are actually investing $120 billion a year into the Chinese community, and inversely taking that much money out of own community.  No wonder their children go to the best schools, and they live in the best neighborhoods because we cannot curb our taste and our laziness to cook for ourselves.

The Asians have perfected what I call the Spider Web Economic Doctrine, which is a highly effective system of achieving economic power. Of course, I am sure you all know what a Spider does? When it spins its yarns, any fly that tries to enter its web is caught and never able to escape. It is the same thing that happens in the Asian community. So, in my Spider Web Economic Doctrine, when a dollar enters a community, it does not escape from that community.  It circulates within that community, and that is where truly what economists call the \"multiplier effect\" is classically practiced. Indians are the greatest practitioners of the Spider Web Economic Doctrine.  When a dollar comes into their community, it doesn\'t leave.  It circulates within their community, because the Indians believe in patronizing one another. They don\'t eat other peoples\' food. They eat theirs.  Their women hardly wear anything other than clothes made in India, and even the suits their men wear are made in India. The Indian, and other Asians, will travel hundreds of miles to patronize one another.

Let me tell you what this has done for the Indian community in America. When they arrived in New York, long after continental Africans, they bought one newsstand in New York City, and eventually took over all the major newsstands, including Grand Central, Penn Station and Ports Authority stations. You have to pay them $3,000 just to get your newspaper into those locations. From this, the Indians set their eyes on the taxi and limousine industry of the City.  They took over 90% of the medallions, and now control most of the taxi and limousine services. Then from there, they set their eyes on the motel business. As has been expansively written by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Newsweek, Forbes, Fortune Magazines, plus a plethora of television network newscasts, the Indians control over 85% of the motel business in America.

According to the same sources, they are now poised to take over most major five star hotels. In Silicon Valley, as has been well chronicled, Indians control more than 750 high tech companies in the Valley, with the result that several Indians are now billionaires.  And are using their wealth to create incubators in universities throughout India and Pakistan to train future leaders in the high-tech age, for even now more than 50% of the professional visas awarded by the United States each year are given to Indians. India, which got its independence barely nine years before African countries, possesses nuclear power and exports a great deal to Africa.

The Spider Web Economic Mentality of the Asians has brought them enormous wealth and respect. It is the only economic doctrine, I believe, that is capable of rescuing us out of the abyss of our present economic doldrums. Unfortunately, you and I, as a people, have always believed that whatever a Black man produces must be inferior. If we were to have two people, one black and one white, open a store offering the same quality of goods and service, we will not patronize the black store; rather we would go to the white store, because we believe it is offering a superior product and service just because of the color of their skin. You can\'t pretend you don\'t do it. You do it, and I do it.  It is even reflected in how we see our professionals.  Just go to doctors\' offices.  When you go to a Black doctor\'s office, all you see are black faces.  But, on the other hand, go to a white doctor\'s office, and what do you see but black faces more numerous than even white faces.

The Black race must abandon its current path to oblivion and total annihilation, its current practice of wearing its success on its sleeves. We prefer to run before we walk, and prefer the best things in life when we hardly have a penny in our bank accounts. Rather than provide simple amenities to the people, African leaders prefer to buy palaces in Europe, spend $10,000 a night at hotels around the world, and ride in luxurious limousines. In fact, there are more Mercedes Benzes in Africa than in Germany itself. Africa owes the world more than $375 billion, and there is no place in Africa you could point to as evidence of that money being used.

I want the younger generation of the Black Race to understand that they cannot carry the same baggage the older generation has carried for so long: the notion that somebody owes us something. We are as endowed as any other race of people.  We have to believe in ourselves.  We have to believe in solving our problems ourselves.  We cannot continue to depend on others to do everything for us.  We have to become intelligent consumers; we need to become a productive race. We must become economic warriors. We must destroy the transportation that brought us into the enemy\'s territory.  We must fight our way to victory or perish. We must think of ourselves as superior individuals.  

If you and I were to be charged to the court of public opinion, we would all be shot for the serious economic crimes we have committed against the Black Race.  We must atone for our sins.  Black - is a dynamic virtue. We must stop wallowing in the feaces of slavery, colonialism and racism.  For me, the stench is too much, and I am getting out. I hope you join me in getting out and breathing in the fresh air of ruthless honesty, truth, freedom and the stupendous economic prosperity before us.


Keynote speech by Dr. Chika Onyeani at the Morgan State University\'s Bill of Rights/TransAfrica Convocation.