The Best, Most Highly Effective Strategies for Black People

This is Part 1 of a series.

I am going to cover some of the most effective, most powrful strategies we can use as people of African heritage.

(1) Know the power of your mind.

The human mind is incredibly powerful.

Black people have been brainwashed to believe that we don't have power - that all power rests in the hands of the white man, the white woman, the government, other people, etc.

You might think economic power lies in the hands of the banks, the stock market, or even the Bingo and lottery people. To read more about this, see: The Key to Financial Prosperity.

Yet, even when we deny our power, we still have it. You have the power to transform your life.

(2) Honour your history, your heritage and your ancestry.

When Europeans wanted to deny us our power, the first thing they did was to deny our history. Lies were told about our history and achievements. For example, white historians said that Great Zimbabwe must have been built by interplanetary travellers!

Malidoma Some was forced to speak French, forbidden to speak his own language, and never shown a map of his own country (Burkina Faso). He was one of the young people in the seminary being prepared for leadership. When he finally managed to escape, he could not even ask for directions to his home village. To read more, see Of Water and the Spirit.

He makes the point that all African leaders were educated in the same way.

This accounts for a lot of the corruption that is perpetrated by African politicians.

The second half of the book describes how he healed himself of his early experiences by reclaiming his traditions.

When you understand what was done to Black people, and the damage we have suffered, you begin to understand why we are not achieving our full potential.

We are the only ones who can repair the damage, and we have the power toheal ourselfs.

For more about this, see Success Strategies for Black People.

See also: Why We Need to Heal.

Learn the lessons of history. There are many Black history posts on this blog - please read them to learn more.

What do you think of this blog? Please comment below.

Click here for the Success Strategies fan page.

Here's to your success!

Black Man Buys Gatwick Airport

You heard it here first. Nigerian-born Adebayo Ogunlesi is set to buy Gatwick Airport. Now that's what I call Black success!

He wants to work with the airlines to significantly improve passengers' experience of using the airport.

Click here for Black Success Stories.

Click here for More Black Success.

Capitalism, A Love Story

I watched “Capitalism, a Love Story”, the excellent Michael Moore film the other day.

Moore talked about the plight of inner-city areas such as Detroit and Chicago, and how greedy corporations shut down factories, and put hundreds and thousands of people out of work, in order to increase their profits and pay higher salaries to their senior executives.

He contrasted this with a bakery in which every worker had an equal vote in decisions made by the company. Moore termed this “democracy”. Yet, I would argue, this is another form of capitalism, one without corporate greed. It’s still about running a business for a profit – and what’s wrong with that?

In this bakery, workers on the assembly line earn £60,000 a year. I want to work there myself. I could bake some bread.

What Moore does not reveal in the film is whether his own production company operates along similar lines.

To read more about the demise of Detroit, click here for Celebrating the Legend that is Motown.

Republic Windows and Doors

Workers at Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago staged a sit-in. They refused to leave the premises after being laid off.

They had been fired without notice, denied vacation and severance pay, and had their medical benefits cut off. They refused to leave until they were paid what they were owed.

Their spokesperson stated that he realised some bad business decisions had been made but, as he said, “We don’t make business decisions. We make windows and doors”. He reasoned that the Bank of America, which financed the company, had been given bail-out money, so why shouldn’t the bank give some of the money to the workers?

Bishop James Wolkowski, son of a Chicago steel-worker, visited them. He told them that they were teaching people that it is jut to challenge what is unfair. He had seen at first hand what happened when the steel works closed down, and the effect this had had on local families and communities.


Click here to read about President Obama’s support for the strikers.

After six days, the bank and the company agreed to all of the workers’ demands.

Moore’s grandstanding is always entertaining to watch. In this film, he makes several attempts to arrest senior executives at investment banks for their corporate crimes. Failing at this, he surrounds the buildings with police crime- scene tape.

One shocking element the film reveals is the practice of taking out “dead peasants’ insurance”, whereby corporations become beneficiaries of their workers’ life insurance policies. In other words, the company profits from the deaths of its workers.

The Effects on Our Families (2)

It is quite striking to note the amount of resources, in terms of time, money and energy,that the South African apartheid regime put into breaking up Black families. To read more about this, and about two films made in secret during apartheid, see: ANC Welcomes Ruling

Winnie Mandela’s story illustrates how apartheid impacted on women in South Africa.

To read more, see: Nelson Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom

See also: The Effects on Our Families.

You Couldn't Even Try on Shoes

I've heard about this from my parents. When they were young, in the 1920s and '30s, and perhaps even later, Black people were not allowed to try on shoes. They had to buy them. You could not go into a shop and try on a hat - you had to buy it.

To read more about this, see "Dr. Ambedkar, Visionary".

See also: "Black Facts" in Black History International.

This is similar to what Winnie Mandela described as her experience under apartheid in South Africa.

But recently, I have read that a customer would trace his or her feet on a brown paper bag, then bring the drawing to the store to indicate what size of shoes they wanted.

The Effects on Our Families

We often try to deny the effects of what was done to us by slavery and the racist brutality we have suffered.

We say, "I'm okay, I'm all right, we're all right". In other words, we front. This is also known as denial.

This is why I wrote the article "Why We Need to Heal".

When we look at what our ancestors experienced, it is inevitable that this is still having an effect on us, our relationships, our families and our communities.

Sometimes the wounds are so deep, and the pain is so deeply buried, that we don't even realize we are still carrying it. It is unconscious. But it is still there, and it is still having an effect on our lives, our families and our communities.

When we begin to acknowledge this, we can begin to heal it.

For more about how we can begin to heal our relationships, see
How to Get What You Want in Your Relationships, and

Success Strategies for Black People.

The Truth about Article Writing

This blog has moved to my Writers' Secrets blog.

New Radio Show - History, Heritage and Healing - What U Need to KNow

Please join us for my new radio show, What U Need to Know, which I am co-presenting with Joan E. Gosier, author of Cotton Pickin' Paycheck.

This show focuses on history, heritage and healing for people of African heritage.

The first show is tomorrow, Saturday 5th June at 2 p.m. EDT, 7 p.m. UK time.

We will be discussing Juneteenth. This is the first of three shows looking at independence, freedom and liberation.

What is Juneteenth about, and what is the significance of this celebration? Do you celebrate Juneteenth? Please feel free to phone in at (001) (347) 637-1099 or join us in the chatroom to add your questions and comments.

We will be joined by guests from the African Cultural Arts Council of the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art in Orange County, CA.

I hope you will join us. Click here to listen.

If you miss the live broadcast, you can listen to the recording here:

What U Need to Know.

Where Were the Black People at Dunkirk?

The UK is currently commemorating the 70th anniversary of Dunkirk. There will be a celebration in Dunkirk later this week.

In case you are not sure what this refers to, in 1940, during the early days of the Second World War, Britain and France suffered defeat at the hands of Germany, and their troops were stranded on the French beaches at Dunkirk.

More than 900 little ships came from Britain, evacuated the British and French forces and ferried them across the Channel to safety. They were able to rescue thousands of troops over the course of several days. This is often reported as an example of wartime British bravery and comradeship.

What is rarely talked about is the fact that many troops in the French Army were from Africa, and the little ships refused to take the Black soldiers. They left them on the beaches for the Germans to capture, and many ended up in Auschwitz. Senegalese director Sembene Ousmane mentions this in his film Camp Thioroye, which is based on the true story of a massacre of African soldiers by the French Army during the war.

To read more about the experiences and contribution of Black people to the war effort, see: Hidden Histories: Black People in World War II.

See also: London Black History Walks

Black Books I Have Tagged on Amazon

Please help me by tagging my book Success Strategies for Black People on Amazon.

Click here, then Scroll down the page until you come to “Tags Customers Associate with This Book” and click on “add your first tag”. Then add any tags you want to, or just click on the tags that are already there. You need to be signed in to Amazon to do this.

Or just type tt quickly and you can add tags or click on the ones on the screen.

Thanks very much for your help with this.

Here are some books I have recently tagged on Amazon:

Cotton Pickin' Paycheck by Joan E. Gosier

Joan and I will be presenting a new radio show starting in June. Stay tuned for more details.

Nubian Women of West Aswan by Anne M. Jennings

Click here for a video by the author.

How Ya Like Me Now! by Leslie A Morris

Chained and Bound by Allyson Campbell

Your Greater Self by Antwan McLean

Sweetest Revenge by Nahisha McCoy

Situations by Shawnta C. Richard

Please tag their books as well and help improve their Amazon rankings.

To read interviews with some of these authors, get your free copy of More Black Success Volumes 5 and 7.

See also: Books for Truth-Seekers.

Celebrating Nappturality

I have recently discovered this website and these excellent blogs that celebrate natural hair and nappturality.

Nappturality includes advice on styling and transitioning. It also gives you the opportunity to blog.

Holistic Locs contains amazing photos plus uplifting, inspiring and sometimes amusing videos, like "Can I Touch Your Hair?".

Napptural Beauties celebrates sistas with napptural hair.

I remember when someone slammed me on Facebook because I used the word "nappy", which she somehow found offensive.

We need to unlearn all the negative stuff we have been taught about our hair, our appearance and ourselves. We need to celebrate ourselvs in all of our nappiness, naturalness and nappturality. I'm so glad to see these sistas doing that.

See also: The Key to Confidence

Why We Need to Heal

Free Advice for Black Businesses

We have loads of articles about how to build your successful Black-owned business in More Black Success.

For example, MBS 5 contains an article by Mercy Gilbert of Art Connoisseur about how to build your business. She talks about her work as a business advisor. Plus check out the article by Basmatie Littles about how she started and built her Karma Kidz fashion business.

In MBS 3, Shola Arewa talks about how to help and inspire your customers to find the money they need to pay for your services.

To get your free copies, go to More Black Success.

For more information, or If you would like to submit an article, go to Books for Truth-Seekers.

Come Back Africa: Two Early Anti-Apartheid Films

On Saturday, I attended a screening of two erly anti-apartheid films at the BFI.

"Come Back Africa" is an extraordinary film set in Johannesburg and Sophiatown in 1950. It features a cameo by Miriam Makeba.

The documentary "The End of the Dialogue" was made in 1959. We were fortunate to have two of the filmmakers at the screening.

These were the two earliest anti-apartheid films. "Come Back Africa" was made at a time when no one outside of South Africa was interested in apartheid.

Both of these films were made in secrecy and exposed the evils of apartheid to international audiences.

These films broke my heart. They didn't really tell or show me anything I didn't already know about apartheid. But seeing how Black people were treated, the patronising attitudes of the white people, the abuse, the poverty, the sense of helplessness as Black people tried to live normal lives under this appalling system, made this a very strong experience.

One thing that particuarly struck me was the level of resources, in terms of time, money and energy, the apartheid regime was willing to invest in breaking up African families.

These films remind us that not only were we stolen from Africa, Africa was stolen from us.

To read more, see ANC Welcomes Ruling.

To read more about the psychological effects of apartheid, racial discrimination and caste oppression see Dr. Ambedkar, Visionary.

See also: Why We Need to Heal.

Black Film: Babylon

New Black Author Interviews

I am particularly excited about the new More Black Success Volume 7. For the first time, I have devoted the entire volume to interviews with fiction and nonfiction authors.

Allyson Campbell has written a number of books. Her novel Chained and Bound describes what it is like for a woman to survive an abusive relationship.

Antwan McCLean's book Your Greater Self: An A-Z Guide to Becoming the Person You Most Admire encourages people to fulfil their highest potential.

Nahisha McCoy's novel Sweetest Revenge serves as a warning to young women not to let a man or a relationship dominate your life.

Plus loads of resources.

To get your free copy, go to More Black Success.

If you would like to be interviewed, or for more information, go to Books for Truth-Seekers.

Black Film: "Babylon"

I recently attended a screening of "Babylon" at the NFT.

As you probably know, "Babylon" depicts life for young Black men in South London in1980, the year before the Brixton riots.

The film shows Black youth being hunted by their white neighbours and the police, who were eager to brutally beat them.

In "Operation Swamp", the police stopped a thousand Black men in Brixton in three days. Boys were stopped going to school as well as in school, beaten up and taken to jail.

In his novel East of Acre Lane, author Alex Wheatle described his experiences of living in Brixton before and during the riots, being pressured by the police and being thrown into a prison cell. To read more, visit: Alex Wheatle, Brixton Bard

At the same screening, the NFT showed a short film made by a group of Black and white young people called "Some Other Way Forward", about the "stop-and-search" procedure by the police.

Sir Paul Condon, former head of the Metropolitan Police, in 1999 justified the targeting of young Black men with stop-and-search, stating that these are the people most likely to commit street crime.

One thing he failed to mention is that young white men are those most likely to be involved in public order offences.

This fascinating film was made by the young people. It depicted them being stopped, sometimes four or five times a day, by police officers demanding their ID.

What this reminded me of the most were scenes from "Schindler's List" in which the Nazis patrolled the Jewish ghettoes, stopping the inhabitants four or five times a day and demanding their ID. People would be on their way to work or to the shops when they were stopped. They were often then made to perform menial tasis such as shovelling snow.

What most interested me was that, a few weeks earlier, I had attended a discussion about President Obama's success. We were shown film clips about what happened in Philadelphia in the 1970s and '80s, when the police targeted the MOVE organisation. In 1978, the police bombed the home of the MOVE members, killing 11 people including five children, and destroying an African American neighbourhood.

The fire department allowed the fire to burn for hours. The bodies which were recovered afterwards were really just ash. People said they looked like bodies from Beirut. They were also found to have bullets lodged inside of them.

During the discussion, I asked the question, "Is stop and search any different, in practice, from the old 'Sus' laws?"

These laws were used in the 1970s and early '80s to stop - you guessed it - young Black men on suspicion of committing pcrimes and throw them into prison cells. Often, there was no evidence of any crime having been committed.

People in the audience assured me that things are differeent now because you can take down the ID of the officers involved, and report them if necessary. But on the basis of this film, I would have to say, things are not that different now.

One of the very positive things about the NFT screening was the discussion that followed. I will blog more about this soon.

See also: What Are the Police Up To?

What Are the Police Up To?

I watched several recent shows on the BBC about Detroit and Motown during the '60s.

One thing that struck me was how similar the story of the riot of 1967 was to other riot stories.

In 1967, the all-white Detroit police force put the local Black community under heavy pressure with threats and brutality. Eventually, the community erupted under the pressure and five days of riots ensued. 43 people were killed, 33 of them African American.

What does this remind me of?

Lama Rangdrol's film, Festival Cancelled on Account of Rain, describes his experience as a young Black man growing up in Oakland, CA, being hunted by the police. Meanwhile, other young African American males were being killed on the front line in Vietnam.

The Brixton riot of 1981 - young Black men were being put under a lot of pressure by the police under the Sus laws. The police would harass Black youth whenever they went into central London and beat them up either in the back of the police van or in the prison cells, or both. To read more, see this interview with Alex Wheatle.

Anybody else see a pattern here?

Of course, I was aware of police brutality from a very early age. I just wonder - have the police learned their lesson yet? Or did they deliberately provoke Black communities to explode, over and over again?

Just a thought.

I am sure there are people in the Metropolitan Police and other police forces who are working to bring about positive change. What are people's experiences of this?

What's going to happen this summer if it's a hot summer and if there are still high levels of unemployment?

I watched the film "Babylon" recently. More about this soon.

Why Is Black History Important? Interview with Brother T. of London Black History Walks

Today, I published my interview with Brother T. of 100 Black Men of London, in which I asked him why Black history is important. He replied: "All the great scholars talk about the importance of history and how you should learn from the past and recognise your ancestors' contributions. That's why you'll see loads of statues around of Churchill, Nelson and Nightingale".

To read the rest of this interview, see London Black History Walks.

Overcoming Victim Mentality

When I was teaching at Holloway Prison, I had a lot of students who had bought into victim mentality. They blamed everybody but themselves for the fact that they were in prison. I had one student tell me she was a a thief because "god" had made her one. Another student told me that the only reason babies develop was to do with instinct - nothing to do with our determination to grow and thrive.

These are extreme views, but they indicate what can happen if we allow victim mentality to dwell within our minds and our consciousness.

To read more, see Overcoming Victim Mentality.

How to Get into the Top 3 Percent

Article-writing is a highly effective way to attract traffic, customers and sales.

Perhaps more importantly, it helps you to spread your message and reach your audience - the people you are trying to help.

Article site Squidoo is one of my favourite sites on the internet. I am now in the top three percent of members at Squidoo.

To find out how I reached this position, check out these articles:

Make Money through Writing Articles
The Best Content for Your Ebook

Joining Squidoo is easy and free. It can help you promote your business and you will be part of a 50% profit-sharing scheme. To join, click here to post an article on Squidoo.

Click here for lots of ideas for generating income through Squidoo.

To read some of my articles, see:

Black Success
Achieving Fabulous Success

How This Affects Our Businesses, Families, Health

I have been posting an ongoing series on Why We Need to Heal. We have been brainwashed to hate ourselves and distrust each other. To read about how this affects us, our families, our businesses and our health, see

Why We Need to Heal Parts 1-3.

Stay tuned for Part 4.

My work is all about the healing. To read more, see Success Strategies for Black People.