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In this Aug. 11, 2014, file photo, police wearing riot gear walk toward a man with his hands raised in Ferguson, Mo. The fatal police shooting of Michael Brown has prompted a flurry of legislation in his home state, where politicians are proposing to curb police tactics, prosecutorial powers and even traffic fines in an attempt to address concerns that have fueled nationwide protests. Image Credit: AP

What if African-Americans were as politically unified as our racial attitudes make us appear to be? Suppose, for instance, we did more than believe that racial discrimination exists but actually used our political and economic muscle to remedy race-specific problems?

There are 42 million African-Americans in the US, with a combined purchasing power expected to hit $1.1 trillion (Dh4 trillion) this year. If Black America were an actual nation state, instead of just a shaky state of mind, it would have a population slightly less than Spain’s and rank as the 46th-richest nation in the world, according to a statistical profile published in the Atlantic last year.

And yet, African-Americans spent much of 2014 on bended knee — pleading for justice, crying for jobs, begging for equal treatment, with US President Barack Obama declaring that “a country’s conscience has to be sometimes triggered” to bring awareness to the killings of unarmed black men and boys by police.

Stand up, Black America.

Leading up to the 2014 mid-term elections, Obama urged his base of support not to sit this one out. Too much was at stake. Black people needed to be as fired up as elderly white Republicans. Yet, a poll by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee leading up to the elections found that 67 per cent of Obama’s base didn’t even know that an election was being held.

No point in complaining about Republicans in Congress now.

An Associated Press survey two years ago found that 56 per cent of Americans have explicit “anti-black attitudes” — and the rest do not love you all that much, either. Harvard University professor Michael I. Norton found last year that many whites now believe anti-white racism is a bigger problem than anti-black bias — the latter having been all but eliminated, they say. On the most important issues, an NBC News/Marist College poll found last month that 52 per cent of whites have a “great deal” of confidence that police officers in their community treat blacks and whites the same, compared with only 12 per cent of blacks.

So whose “conscience”, exactly, are black people trying to prick?

The answer ought to be their own. Black people have serious problems, to be sure — extraordinarily high incarceration and homicide rates, for starters. But the resources at their disposal are enormous, if not always used most effectively.

“African-Americans make more shopping trips than the average consumer,” reports Target Market News, an authority on black consumer habits. “They are more likely than average to buy beauty and ethnic products, children’s cologne, toiletries for both men and women, frozen meats and fresh vegetables and grains.”

There are sweet-smelling children, but no major black-owned publishing company that can reflect their sweet little faces in children’s books.

There are fewer than 30 black-owned banks in the US, according to the Federal Reserve, compared with about 130 such institutions at the turn of the 20th century. You would think black people would be seeking more community-oriented banks as alternatives to the big Wall Street firms that ripped them off during the Great Recession.

Black-owned businesses are the second largest employer of black people, next to the federal government. But only 7 per cent of small businesses are owned by blacks. How unfortunate that the president must go hat in hand to Corporate America, asking for $200 million to help black men and boys stay in school and get jobs. The programme is called ‘My Brother’s Keeper’. Better the black people start more businesses and hire these black men and boys. Let the brothers keep themselves.

“As shoppers, African-Americans are influencers and trendsetters whose purchasing habits affect others,” Target Market News said. “They set trends in their purchase of apparel, autos and food and in their use of social media.”

Surely they can influence more than that.

The Atlantic article cited a speech by the black scholar W.E.B. Du Bois, delivered more than 80 years ago, titled A Negro Nation Within a Nation. In it, he declared: “The peculiar position of Negroes in America offers an opportunity ... With the use of their political power, their power as consumers and their brainpower ... Negroes can develop in the United States an economic nation within a nation ...”

At the very least, the black community in America could stop expecting people who hate them to save them.

— Washington Post