The Black American Party advances the producer class of the Black American community — through ownership, enterprise, constitutional principle, and economic solidarity. What is good for Black Americans is good for all Americans.
One cultural practice we defend with humour is measurably harming the next generation.
Corporal punishment is more prevalent in Black American households than in most others, it is defended with pride and comedy, and it is doing damage. Exposure to violence in childhood is associated with worse cognitive and emotional outcomes. A community that then wonders about its children's school performance is declining to connect two things it already knows.
This is a hard paragraph to write and a harder one to read. It is also the kind of thing a serious party has to be willing to say to its own people.
It is not African tradition; it is largely inherited from the plantation and from a rational parental terror that a Black child's small mistake could be fatal in a hostile world. Parents beat children to keep them alive. That origin deserves respect and does not make the practice correct now.
We are permitted to keep what was protective and discard what was protective only under conditions that no longer apply.
Discipline is not in question - the party is not arguing for permissive parenting, which has its own casualty list. It is arguing for discipline that does not require violence: structure, consequence, and the presence of two parents, which makes consistent discipline dramatically easier.
Article VII's call for human psychology to be taught to children from around age eight belongs here too. A generation that understands why people behave as they do will parent better than one that does not.
That it is over-prevalent in Black American households, that exposure to violence in childhood harms cognitive outcomes, and that the practice - inherited from the plantation and from rational parental fear - should end.
No. It argues for discipline through structure, consequence and two-parent presence rather than through violence.
A community serious about its children cannot leave them in other people's systems.
A party that cannot say precisely who it represents will end up representing whoever funds it.
A vote that is guaranteed is a vote that is worthless.
The mechanics are public, unglamorous and entirely achievable. Most people have simply never been told them.
A PAC is how a constituency speaks in the language the political system actually listens to.
We keep producing extraordinary leaders and no machinery. Then we lose the leader and start over.
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