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It is important that blacks/Africans begin to rally to support and enhance business opportunities for their own who are experienced and qualified. In Africa, black businesses are shunned foreign corporation, and in US America, it is more like pulling a tooth with tooth pick. Mr. Richardson’s expose below is a tip of the iceberg and can help form dialogues across the oceans how to enhance black/African owned businesses. The notion that ‘no prophet is recognized in his homeland was invented for blacks.’ Those who keep succeeding recognize their own and make sure they only give others what they are unable to get from their own. 
 
 
I have had enough insult to my intellect! Regardless to; "Qualifications," "Certifications," "Professional Licenses," "Experience," and "Expertise,"  it is an insult to my intellect to be asked to:

• Come do forensics and design for a water treatment facility in Oklahoma City (OKC); then to be told we only select those we are comfortable with
• Come design urban streets in Tulsa; then to be told I am a thief to ask to be paid for work done
• Come solicit Department of Transportation (DOT) projects; then find DOT, etal, has a horrible record of working with folk who look like me
• Come solicit United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) projects; then find the DOD, et al, has a more horrible record than DOT working with folk who look like me
• Come design and build power facilities in Nigeria; then to be told you got to be an "investor"
• Come design and build power facilities in South Africa; then to be told you want to take and not give
• Come let me help you find projects; then find the last time projects were found for someone who looked like me was 30-years ago
• Come master plan, design and build a port city in Ghana; then find your Ghanaian government signed MOU means nothing
• Come design and build a hospital, a road, housing, and infrastructure in Libya; then be told to wait three or four years
• Come learn how to write a FIVE PAGE Letter of Interest by Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT); then be told we did not use the right "buzz words "
• Come save Langston University facilities from flooding and collapse; then be told your work is of NO value
• Come design roads and bridges for TXDOT; then be told most of the work is being done by a Spanish firm for the next 52 YEARS

So could there be something common to all the struggle just to be provided the opportunity to practice a well-honed craft?  It is a ridiculous to find it harder to get the work than to do the work. But fair equitable outcomes appear to have burst with the housing bubble and resulted with postings on every street corner: "Blacks Need Not Apply."
 
Oh, you say how could this be true in 2013!?!  I say to you; the truth is the truth no matter how ugly and inconvenient! Have you talked to that clean cut waiter at Red Lobster? Most likely he is a multiple degreed "LI-FO" (last in, first out) Black from a high tech firm.
 
Outside of singing, dancing and playing ball the Black culture is seen, perceived and believed to be a collective 'we'  that’s inherently intellectually inferior to White culture and as such naturally shuns intellectual curiosity in exchange for the lazy "comfort" of hand-made Gods! Unfortunately, this is a deep seeded perception and belief held by most Whites and many Blacks and it's a belief always denied when placed on center stage in the public square of racial discourse.
 
Outside of the bling and materialistic addictions of Black athletes, many black people strive to attend White sanctioned, name brand, colleges and universities to study their majors of choice squarely based on the promise of future pecuniary benefits as touted by white capitalism’s systems of economic deprivation and inequality. So when Black architects, engineers and scientist  show up on the avenues and boulevards of Global Business and A&E mainstreams that went to school, because they were genuinely interested in spending a lifetime thoroughly understanding how stuff works and are fully capable and qualified to perform at demonstrable intellectual levels to build stuff that works, they are routinely, disingenuously engaged for the sole purpose of being summarily marginalized and dismissed by the same Global Business and A&E mainstreams.
 
Firms like HPTS have 40, 50, 60 and 70 year old Black academics, architects, engineers, scientist, designers, marketers and constructors with industry tested and proven skills and capabilities that continue to be summarily marginalized and dismissed by the same Global Business and A&E mainstreams, because White people are believed to possess superior, intellectual capabilities when it comes to thoroughly understanding how stuff works and how to build stuff that works.
 
Over the last 9 years, HPTS has expended mind boggling time and treasure having its professional persona disrespected and its intellect insulted by Blacks and Whites alike who don’t know how stuff works and don’t know how to build stuff that works. However, they are very addicted to bling and materialism they are willing participants in the White capitalism’s systems of economic deprivation and inequality, to the degree that they are complicit in the marginalization and dismissal of genuinely capable Black businesses and entrepreneurs that can facilitate the kind of positive changes that are desperately needed throughout the Black diaspora.
 
By Charles A. Richardson, P.E.
Program Manager, High Plains Technical Services, Inc.
http://www.hptsinc.com/