Author Archives: James Clingman

This is a call for all eligible Black folks to register and vote in every election from now until eternity, so we can stop the rallies, marches, and demonstrations related to voting. Despite being the most party-loyal voters in history, and receiving the least for that loyalty (No quo for our quid), we continue to […]

Jim Clingman, founder of the Greater Cincinnati African American Chamber of Commerce, is an adjunct professor at the University of Cincinnati. If you and your children were sitting at the dinner table, with no food and no prospects for getting any, what would you say to them and what would you do? Would you tell […]

“Let me issue and control a nation’s money and I care not who writes the laws.” – Mayer Amschel Rothschild I often wonder if most Black people in America really understand the across-the-board impact economics has on our daily lives. Or, have we just been beaten down so badly that we have fallen into a […]

We may as well call it “Edu-pay-tion,” as far as many prospective students are concerned. The cost of a college degree has risen 1,120 percent since 1978, but wages have increased a mere 6 percent during that same period. The national collective college debt is more than $1 trillion. We have college grads mired in […]

The Kenyan Proverb, “When elephants fight, the grass suffers,” is apropos to us, the grassroots. Only in our case, we are fighting over elephants and donkeys, but we are still the ones suffering. We watch the two parties fight every day, and then we take sides and jump in. Who is hurt by that? Certainly […]

“I assumed that with knowledge, sacrifice would automatically follow. In my youth and idealism I did not realize that selfishness is even more natural than sacrifice.” W.E.B. DuBois spoke those words when he reflected on the failure of his vaunted “Talented Tenth” concept. He was, as many of us are today, very idealistic about what […]

When the tax man cometh, Black dollars “goeth.” Where will they goeth? Down a myriad of paths in pursuit of new items such as furniture, cars, clothing, and other niceties. But first, unless you do your own tax return or get it done for free by someone, Black dollars goeth to tax preparation firms, the […]

According to the 13th Amendment, slavery in this country has not been fully abolished; there is an exception that says if one is duly convicted of a crime he or she can be enslaved. Read it for yourself; don’t take my word for it. So, if you have been enslaved by either doing a crime […]

“Stop that! I’m not going to tell you again.” I am sure many of you have heard your parents say those words more than once. Why? Because you always repeated what they told you not to do, right? Now that we are adults ourselves, some of us who are consciously aware of the state of […]

The latest negative programming coming from the dominant media is a ridiculous show about a Black guy who has 11 children by 10 different women. “All My Babies Mamas” was planned for the coming season, but now it may be completely scrubbed, mainly because a sister, Sabrina Lamb, sent out a petition protesting the show […]

Will we jump from the cliff? Congress and the president will determine whether we fall, jump, or back away from the cliff. While I trust they will get together and make the right decision, I think we should be prepared for the worst case scenario. How do we prepare? First of all, learn what the […]

Over the past year or so, I have been wondering how Black folks would react to the election outcome. Two questions kept coming to mind: What will we do if Obama wins? What will we do if Romney wins? Let’s make it personal: What will you do? Four years ago I wrote a similar article […]