IN SOUTH Africa, we have a term to describe those who were restricted by the previous Apartheid laws before 1994. We call them “previously disadvantaged”. I fully recognise the impact of being “previously disadvantaged” through promulgated laws, but I do have a problem with people perpetually embracing a disadvantaged reality and then blaming that reality for lack of progress. A couple of years ago, I read the cheeky book, "Capitalist Nigger: The Road to Success, a Spider-Web Doctrine" byDr Chika Onyeani which I was later to discover most of my African-American colleagues do not really like. In it, he raised some pertinent questions on how the black community has the least amount of circulation of money in their communities compared to other communities like Korean, Chinese, Indian, Greeks or Jews. Onyeani’s point was that as soon as we make a bit of money, or even borrow it in some instances, we then go out and spend it in other communities. In some cases we are almost proud as Africans to be the first to arrive at the Greek, Thai or Chinese restaurants. I have an acquaintance of Jewish ancestry who I have known for years. Each time we meet at some forum and an expert is solicited, he always has a name. When I started looking back years later, I noticed that nearly all the people he profiled also happened to have a Jewish ancestry. When I raised it with him, his defence was that the experts in his community were the ones he could vouch for. It was an awakening lesson for me, so now I recommend people from my community without apology. I was sharing the Word at a Zimbabwean men’s church group and many were complaining how difficult it was for them to get business. I casually asked them one by one what each one of them did. There was a cross-section of skills and though many of them had worshipped together for years, they did not know what each other’s vocation was. We then did an exercise to ask what skills each one of them required and I was amazed at the degree of intersection of requisite skills. They worship and bound demons together compartmentalising the Christian life yet from Monday to Friday they all toiled separately in the same market place without making any effort to synergistically share leads and get more business. I am a beneficiary of people profiling and opening doors for me so I have made it my lifelong purpose to try and open a door for someone else.
Posted on: Sat, 03 Aug 2013 23:14:34 +0000
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