Fighting the good fight

Those who are longtime readers of Issues & Views know about the many blacks who, during pre-integration days, thrived and prospered in businesses, which gave them the leverage and clout to improve their communities and sustain indigenous institutions, such as schools. (See Section, "When We Were Colored"; also, "The Dual Mind of Black America.")

Over the years, here in New York City, I've interviewed black owners of restaurants, shops or real estate properties, all of whom express exasperation for what they see as the unfortunate mindset of so many blacks. Misled for decades by self-serving and fraudulent elites, the typical black has come to believe that taking entrepreneurial initiatives is for every other group except his own.

Back in 1987, Harlem businessman Jimmy Murrell lamented the "lack of consciousness" among blacks of what could be done by way of business development ("On Economics and Attitude," I&V;, January 1987). He claimed that blacks with financial means habitually ignored prime parcels of available real estate, but then complained when others (usually whites and Asians) came into Harlem and seized the opportunities.

Murrell had done it the classic way. Along with his brother and a friend, he pooled his financial resources, delayed enjoying some of life's pleasures for several years, and built one enterprise and then another. This old-fashioned system is the manner in which many blacks made America's capitalist system work for them--in Durham, Chicago, Philadelphia, Birmingham, and numbers of smaller towns and cities--during a period that spanned the late 19th century into the 1950s.

Now comes news of Kenny Gamble, a determined black entrepreneur, who has learned the sad fact that the pursuit of integration "has cost African-Americans too much." According to an article by Earni Young, "Gamble: Revive black areas run by, for blacks," in the Philadelphia News (4/17/03), Gamble, a well-known music composer and producer and now a land developer, speaks of the thriving black communities where people once came to "enjoy black food, music and clubs." Reciting a fact acknowledged by so many regretful blacks before him, Gamble says, "We created a community for ourselves. That's the reason why I think the integration movement was not well-thought out, because you devastated the black community." Young writes:

Now, Gamble has a new plan and, with the fortune he earned as co-founder of the hit-making Philadelphia International Records, he has the power to implement it.

Gamble's gambit: Forget integration. Focus on reviving distinctly African-American neighborhoods with better housing while empowering their residents to control their neighborhood's economy. And restore the mix of incomes in the community that existed before integration.

Gamble is pursuing his vision in a chunk of South Philadelphia, where he grew up. He's acquired hundreds of properties there, intent on reviving the neighborhood while keeping its African-American character intact.

"I had been thinking about it for many years, what could be done to make our communities viable again," Gamble said. "I guess my faith in humanity and us as a people, made me think we could do better. . . .

Gamble started out building and renovating low-income housing. Once his construction business got rolling, he branched into education creating a charter school and taking on public school management, job training and business creation, and health and social services.

"Our plan is about rebuilding the family. It's about educating our children and their families. It's about private and economic development and supporting local leadership," Gamble said.

Among Gamble's goals is the creation of at least 1,000 new jobs within the next five years. During that period, he also plans to create or help grow 200 black-owned businesses. An Associated Press article (3/31/03) tells more about Gamble:

Looking to give something back to the city that inspired his music, Gamble in 1990 shrugged off fear of crime and drug dealers and moved into a rehabilitated brick row house in the blighted neighborhood where he grew up.

The nonprofit firm he founded, Universal Companies, has purchased hundreds of abandoned houses, refurbished old storefronts, and is constructing scores of tidy new townhouses to replace a demolished high-rise public housing project.

First you reclaim the community you have to own, says Gamble's business partner, Abdur Rahim Islam. "Then you can manage all the connecting systems--the economic, education, the family system, the religious system. Then you can have life, the highest-quality life in America, right in the black community." So he is quoted by Maida Odom in the Boston Globe (3/30/03), who writes further:

That's what Universal hopes to do. It also wants someday to turn the area into an entertainment and cultural destination. To that end, Universal has acquired, and has announced plans to renovate, the long-vacant Royal Theater on South Street--where movies were featured and where entertainers like Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, and Pearl Bailey once performed for African-American audiences.

Gamble seems distinctly qualified to pull off this multifaceted vision, said Islam, whom Gamble jokingly called his right arm and his left arm. ''A person like Kenny Gamble has the right conscience,'' Islam said. ''He always thought about how to improve the conditions of the African-American community in America.

''He's independently wealthy,'' Islam added, ''so he brings resources to the table, the kind of resources needed to sustain yourself while you're making different types of decisions. He's not trying to worry about how to survive when he makes a decision. He's put 13 years of his life, when he could have been writing hit songs on hold so he could do this.''

In "Black entrepreneur may bury integration" (4/25/03), syndicated columnist Sam Francis discusses Gamble's plans and points to some ironies and truths that are detrimental consequences of past decades of government-forced integration:

There happen to be two small problems with his ideas, however. Problem one is that they're probably illegal--he plans to sell his properties only to blacks; that's the whole point--and Problem Two is that it violates every liberal preconception about race and society you can name.

One of the "achievements" of the civil rights movement was to outlaw discrimination in buying and selling, which is why white areas turned into black areas and whites left the cities almost entirely. The law works both ways, and blacks can't discriminate against whites in selling property either, but that's exactly what Mr. Gamble seems to have in mind. "I want to see us owning the hotels, restaurants and businesses in our own community," he told the News. But the legal problem is nothing compared to the crunching of ideological toes his plan involves. . . .

When Mr. Gamble talks about blacks, it's "we" and "us," and one of his explicit goals is to halt the process of "gentrification" through which whites are beginning to take back the cities from which integration drove them.

The legal problems with Mr. Gamble's plans could easily be fixed--by getting rid of the phony constitutional concepts that justices like Earl Warren and William Brennan foisted off on the country--but getting rid of liberal delusions won't be so simple. Liberal ideology now stands guard around a set of material interests with immense investments in its falsehoods, in addition to its deeply rooted delusions among those who still believe in it.

Mr. Gamble's ideas may slow down "gentrification" and the return of white yuppies to the cities their ancestors created, but the more important effect is that they may also kick the stool from underneath the racial liberalism that helped wreck entire cities as well as the Constitution in the first place. By championing a concept that rejects liberalism and accepts the reality of race, class and community, Mr. Gamble may be pushing both blacks and whites down a path where liberals and pseudo-conservatives don't want either race to go.

And, if he succeeds in such a mission, more power to him.

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