May
30
Written by:
BMTT Staff
5/30/2011 12:44 PM
A Chain Letter of My Own
By Marlon Aldridge, Sr.
Upfront, I admit that I have forwarded emails sent from others with blatantly false content such as this one,
Found this interesting - Children of congress members do not have to pay
back their college student loans. How nice!
Monday on Fox news they learned that the staffers of Congress family
members are exempt from having to pay back student loans. This will get national attention if other news networks will broadcast it. When you add this to below, just where will all of it stop?
35 States file lawsuit against the Federal Government
Governors of 35 states have filed suit against the Federal Government
for imposing unlawful burdens upon them. It only takes 38 (of the 50) States to convene a Constitutional Convention.
This will take less than thirty seconds to read. If you agree, please pass it on.
This is an idea that we should address.
For too long we have been too complacent about the workings of Congress.
Many citizens had no idea that members of Congress could retire with the same pay after only one term, that they specifically exempted themselves from many of the laws they have passed (such as being exempt from any fear of prosecution for sexual harassment) while ordinary citizens must live under those laws.
The latest is to exempt themselves from the Healthcare Reform... in all of its forms.
Somehow, that doesn't seem logical. We do not have an elite that is above the law.
I truly don't care if they are Democrat, Republican, Independent or whatever. The self-serving must stop.
If each person that receives this will forward it on to 20 people, in three days, most people in The United States of America will have the message. This is one proposal that really should be passed around.
Proposed 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution: "Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators and/or Representatives; and, Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators and/or Representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States."
According to Politifact.com, who called the U.S. Department of Education, it was false. It only took about 20 seconds for me to verify this information.
I have received many others. Every now and then most of us get them.
Why do people send fake chain letters when the information is so easy to verify with a quick Internet search? My suspicion is that people want to believe this type of information because they know that the elite in this country abuses its privileges, especially the political elite. I suspect that these emails will continue to be forwarded without the sender(s) fact checking the content.
The email did, however, trigger an interesting thought in my mind: the power of email to affect social, political, economic action, etc. Here is one that I might consider emailing:
Black Middle and Upper Class Selling Out the Race: Tell Them to Stop!
The majority of the Black middle and upper classes have disempowered the Black community because they have adopted the beliefs and attitudes of the majority community without critically analyzing them. These two classes fall into two ideological camps: assimilationists and moralists. Although I admit the lines between them are blurred.
In the case of the assimilationists, they race full speed ahead trying to gain entry into mainstream America without regard to the vacuum that it creates in Black communities throughout the U.S. nor do they bring the acquired knowledge and skills back to their communities. What plans do they have to fill the vacuum that they create? What plans do they have to replace the lost human capital?
In the case of the moralists, they rationalize that everyone is equal regardless of their race or creed and therefore should be included in all aspects of American life. They totally dismiss cultural factors that tend to influence group behaviors like sharing similar values, attitudes, beliefs, customs, mythologies, folktales, and religion and the benefits that come from them like mutual support, protection, cohesion, and generational integrity.
The values, attitudes, and behaviors transmitted to both groups by White Americans (e.g., individualists) have tainted their collective spirit, which puts them and their communities at-risk of further marginalization or even worst, biological annihilation. The sad part is that they do not see it or accept it even if they do see it.
The incomes, materials, and statuses given to them only reinforce their acquired values, attitudes, and behaviors. Even sadder, they believe that they have been endowed with qualities that set them above others in their group such as hard work ethic, moral righteousness, will, fortitude, risk-taking, etc. Moreover, many of them claim because of their accomplishments that their children will do well in life even when the statistics do not bear this out. The Black middle class is shrinking.
Like most individualists, Black assimilationists and moralists do not account for or acknowledge external factors like being at the right place at the right time (e.g., luck), affirmative action, bequeathments or inheritances, nepotism, social connections, or affiliations (such as being a lonely Black neo-conservative in a space with many White neo-conservatives or graduating from an Ivory league school).
The folly of Black assimilationists and moralists is that their strategies of diversity and inclusion, civil rights enforcement, and forcing Whites to live up to their Christian values amount to nothing more than dependency on Whites. How can they tout individual endowment or equality when they are indeed dependents? What’s worse, by strength of their numbers, they force all of us to be dependent because of the economic opportunities that we lose both individually and collectively by not building our own large corporations, foundations, and institutional endowments. We need these assets to build our deteriorated communities. Individual efforts alone will not do.
To date, their strategies and plans have not addressed the income and wealth gaps between Whites and Blacks that have persisted for decades. Nor have they even considered building collective wealth, which is what you find in publicly-traded corporations, private and public foundations, and institutional endowments like college and university endowments. Without collective wealth, we cannot rebuild our communities. In even worse, our children will be no more likely to advance as a group because we have not built anything for them as an inheritance. As global competition threatens the economic advantages that Americans have accumulated because of isolation from foreign wars, military hegemony, economic and political collusion, corporate hegemony, and luck, Whites are ignoring the so-called equality demands of the Black assimilationists and moralists.
Tell the Black assimilationists and moralists to STOP IT! Let’s work together to build not only individual wealth but collective wealth as well. OUR survival depends on it.
Marlon Aldridge is founding president and CEO of the Black Man's Think Tank. He may be reached at info@bmtt.org.
Copyright ©2011 BMTT Staff