Capitalist Nigger
Admitted, a somewhat controversial and sometimes offensive title! But as they say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.
Chika Onyeani uses this book as a wake up call to black people both on the African continent and in the diaspora. Chika rebukes the black person for being more of a consumer than a producer. He points out painfully but clearly the fact that there is no black African country that produces anything that it can trade with the rest of world be it sowing needles or cars. Similarly there is no black person that history has credited with any invention, scientific or otherwise. Black people are gifted with the talent of song and dance. Even with this, we have failed to make music our thing by dominating this industry from production of sound equipment to distribution of the music.
A black parent can buy an expensive pair of shoes for his/her child even if this same parent has not even thought of saving up money for the child’s college needs. The author admonishes the black person to be more like the Asian who saves to prosperity. The Indian is willing to barely get along for some time so that he saves enough money to open that shop or open that shoe factory. Simply put we black people do not seem to know the meaning of the phrase ‘delayed gratification’.
Chika Onyeani calls black people to take pride in things black. Blacks must be proud of black business. Blacks must cherish black business and thus help in growing the black economy by patronizing other black people’s businesses.
This is what Chika calls the spider web economy as practiced by Indians and the Chinese. A cent that goes into an Indian neighborhood will never leave that economy instead will continue circulating within that economy. In the mean time owing to the multiplier effect this cent will create more wealth within the Asian economy. The strength of the spider web economy is to lure money from outside your economy and to try as much as possible to ensure that that money stays in your economy as long as possible. Chika however warns the black business man and woman not to expect to ride on the generosity of their brothers and sisters without offering quality goods and services in return.
Black people must demand respect from other races by first respecting themselves. Why for example do we patronize businesses that have no respect for black people and have sometimes come out openly to insult us? Some of the world’s big business owe their prosperity to black’ people’s patronage but will go right ahead and disrespect black people. Why? Because we have allow this status quo to continue by continuing to buy their goods and services.