Black Friday [Bills or Benefits}

When you die, what will you leave Behind?.....That’s tha main question posed by tha upcoming documentary film by Ric Mathis,  An ATL videographer and film maker. Tha question is applicable on a personal and collective level; one each of us should honestly answer. Mr.Mathis has captured tha essence of that question, as well as tha practical solutions to tha frivolous African-American spending phenomenon, in his upcoming film, Black Friday: What Legacy Will You Leave? He transposed all tha Black Friday rhetoric into appropriate action, not only for that day but throughout tha entire year and for tha rest of our lives.

Topics of discussion in tha film include negative spending habits, introduction of financial literacy to our youth, and tha absence of support for African-American owned businesses by African-American consumers. Mathis says, “Black Friday is the Noah’s Ark of Economics, if you are not up on this you risk drowning in a sea of debt.” After discovering tha alarming imbalance of African-American spending compared to economic growth within tha African-American community, Mathis used his videography expertise to educate and stimulate appropriate behavioral change with his film, Black Friday. He lays out tha deficit-based economic model by which most of our people are living, and then presents an asset-based model for which we must strive.Considering tha fact that Black Friday has saturated our mental tablets to tha point of becoming just another cute phrase with no substance, writing and even doing a film on tha subject of Black Friday is tantamount to trying to find a new angle to sell a bag of ice.

Having written about Black Friday for a decade or so, and even though I heeded tha calls for blackouts and staying home on that day, my response has always been that blackouts would not really make a difference unless we implemented a long term strategy that directed tha dollars we withdraw back to ourselves and our own businesses. It’s not just about what “not” to do; it’s more about what “to” do. Mr. Mathis deals with my contention in a positive manner by covering tha short term and tha long term repercussions of our withdrawal and recycling Black dollars in his film. It’s not just about Black Friday itself or tha few days preceding and following Black Friday. Rather, it captures tha various aspects of a successful economic empowering strategy, beginning with an introspective question each of us can answer, and then building a foundation of information regarding frivolous spending, economic literacy, saving, investing, business development and support, cooperative and collective economics; then Mathis caps it all off with practical solutions to stop the bleeding and reverse our trade deficit with other groups in this country.

Tha term Black Friday did not emanate from Black people. After several iterations of tha term as far back as 1961, it has been promoted as a positive reality of businesses reaping huge profits not only from African-America consumers but from all consumers. Although quite apropos when it comes to tha African-America consumer, vis-à-vis our penchant for spending our money on everything anyone else makes, tha term “Black Friday” does not have to be our reality, which is tha basic message from tha film. We deserve what we accept, and we must stop accepting tha self-deprecating images and self-defeating characterizations attributed to Black people as it pertains to our economic interests. Our economic imperative must be rooted in tha reality of our relative economic position in this country. Many of these stories we read in dominant and social media are centered on African-America athletes and entertainers who spend tremendous sums of money on material things and/or waste it in clubs on liquor and strippers. We read about robberies and murders by young people who want a certain pair of shoes or a jacket—and tha latest craze: young girls are stealing hair![W.T.F] people Except for African-America Enterprise Magazine and a few other African-America owned print media, not counting African-America newspapers, tha stories about African-America entrepreneurs and others who are doing great things in tha economic arena are buried, if they are in print at all. So who bears the responsibility of changing that reality? A long time ago I wrote, “The answer to media bias is ‘media by us’.