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.
Some businesses locate in our communities precisely because the alternatives are thin.
Payday lenders, rent-to-own stores, buy-here-pay-here car lots, cheque cashers, subprime brokers and title lenders are not accidents of geography. They cluster where mainstream credit is scarce, and their margins depend on that scarcity. The product being sold is not the furniture or the car. It is the interest.
This is extraction, and it is legal, and it removes more money from Black American neighbourhoods each year than most of what is publicly debated about our economics.
People use predatory lenders because the alternative is a missed rent payment or a car that does not start on Monday. Telling someone in that position to make better choices misunderstands the position. The choice set is the problem.
Which is why the answer has to be a better option rather than a lecture: community development credit unions, employer-based small-dollar lending, and Black-owned alternatives in the same categories. Replace the extraction with commerce.
Extraction depends on the customer not being able to compare. That is precisely what a community rating system fixes. A directory that lets neighbours warn each other - and that can flag a business after reviewed complaints - turns a private bad experience into shared knowledge.
This is the least glamorous function of the Black Dollar app and possibly the most valuable one.
Businesses whose margins depend on the scarcity of better options - payday lending, rent-to-own, title loans, subprime auto - clustering in Black American neighbourhoods and extracting more than they contribute.
By replacing it rather than lecturing about it: community development credit unions, Black-owned alternatives in the same categories, and a community rating system that turns private bad experiences into shared knowledge.
Not conservative. Not progressive. American - and specific about what that means.
Conserving Black America is not the same as joining the conservative movement.
Progress has to be measured in assets, not in acknowledgement.
Both parties tell a version of this history that flatters them. Neither version is a reason to hand over your vote.
The change this platform proposes does not require a march. It requires several million people doing ordinary things differently.
The critique is of a political arrangement, not of anyone's sincerity.
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