Virtual Nation: Reaching beyond The Black Divide!

African Americans of the 21st century will engage the world with an entirely different set of tools than our forebears of even decades past. As we enter an aggressively globalizing world economy we will find allies far afield of our communities and neighborhoods and forge alliances in every more eccentric circles. COntrary to many who feel Presidential candidate Barack Obama's purported ties to corporate America is a negative, that his very successful effort to create a coalition of Americans from all walks of life is tatamount to selling out African Americans, and that a policy of healing racial division is to deny historical grievances of African American descendants of slavery, I believe these efforts to bridge the African American paradigm are critical.

Globalization of the world's national economies will continue unabated, not only because of corporate energies committed to cheap labor and reduced regulation but also because our communication tools have almost completely eliminated time, distance and language barriers. The Internet has shrunken the playing field and create numerous opportunities and challenges to typical American ways of creating a livable income. It is imperative that African Americans think in terms of how we can most effectively leverage technology tools, skills and resources to accommodate the relentless and blistering pace of change engulfing us, which truly has nothing at all to do with race.

A quick look at where America stands in relation to world economic efficiency and growth can be had from this excerpt from Money & Markets Report which quotes a Bloomberg source of information on the state of our economy in the world:

For 2007 Stock Market Returns, 64 Countries Out-ranked the U.S.!
Rank

Country

% Return
1. China-179.8
2. Ukraine-135.4
3. Slovenia-96.9
4. Nigeria-90.9
5. Botswana-86.2
6. Croatia-80.8
7. Brazil-72.4
8. Turkey-71.9
9. Mauritius-70.0
10. India-65.2
11. Oman-61.9
12. Bulgaria-60.1
13. Egypt-56.3
14. Hong Kong-55.5
15. Serbia-55.0
16. United Arab Emirates-51.8
17. Indonesia-45.5
18. Peru-45.0
19. Philippines-44.3
20. Israel-43.7
21. Saudi Arabia-40.9
22. Malaysia-40.6
23. Pakistan-38.5
24. Cyprus-36.6
25. Jordan-36.3
26. Botswana-35.7
27. Germany-35.2
28. Qatar-34.3
29. Thailand-32.7
30. Kuwait-32.0
31. South Korea-31.4
32. Czech Republic-30.7
33. Norway-30.4
34. Greece-30.3
35. Portugal-28.5
36. Romania-27.7
37. Lebanon-26.8
38. Singapore-26.5
39. Ghana-25.6
40. Canada-25.1
41. Bahrain-24.6
42. Australia-24.1
43. Vietnam-23.6
44. Poland-23.6
45. Luxembourg-22.9
46. Slovakia-21.5
47. Chile-21.4
48. Russian Federation-19.2
49. Tunisia-19.0
50. South Africa-18.7
51. Spain-18.6
52. Denmark-16.2
53. Hungary-15.9
54. Lithuania-15.4
55. Netherlands-15.1
56. Namibia-14.5
57. Finland-14.3
58. Malta-12.0
59. France-12.0
60. Austria-11.8
61. Iceland-11.5
62. Mexico-10.8
63. Taiwan-9.3
64. New Zealand-8.5
65 United States-6.4
Source: Bloomberg

This dismal performance can't be ignored and suggests we have serious problems to address before we can reclaim either moral or political authority in world leadership. This dismal performance is color blind. It includes African Americans, and white Americans of all persuasions. Any time Botswana leads the United States of America in economic performance by over 150% percentiles, the problem has long been out of hand and the people we have all relied on to protect our interests, meaning the public interest-our jobs, our credit, our dollar and our tax revenues have sold us out in ways considerable only as treasonous. It is no longer a matter of who to elect to another term of this insanity but who should go to jail for participating in the most horrendous betrayal by American political leadership, in the entire history of this country.

Is it possible that our inability to collar our criminal politicians of local, state and federal ilk, operating in advanced stages of greed morbidity is having this enormous impact on our ability to compete in the world markets?

Is it also possible that because we insist on being divided by race, within race, by religion within religion and by the least of all reasonable divisors-political opinion, which amounts to squat in the grand scheme of things, that we are dividing ourselves right out of existence? Even with the best of intentions, An Obama Presidency will take all of one term and half of another before we can see a turnaround and that only if he takes extraordinarily drastic measures.

African Americans absolutely must join forces with our like-minded Caucasian, Asian, Latin and other ethnic American countrymen and women if we are to correct this very alarming state of affairs. The alternative is to continue to slide into chaos and oblivion; a state of struggle that will only encourage and increase the constrictor grip of fascism upon us all and destroy our freedom, relative though it is.