Dr. Martin Luther King said in his famous "Dream" speech in 1963: "100 years after slavery, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity." That same problem persists today.

White Americans point to the individual successes of Black Americans, failing to note the stagnant data that reveals no substantive change for the collective Black America, while individual successes come DESPITE broken systems, chronic economic neglect and institutional biases. Individual successes reveal the untapped potential in Black America.

The Great Migration sent 6 million black people from the south toward urban regions in the north and west seeking job opportunities. What they found was societal hostilities, institutionalized discrimination, and chronic poverty within quarantined slums.

Today's 21st century knowledge-based, tech-driven, globally competitive innovation economy has left the vast majority of black Americans behind. The prerequisite STEM education requirements to compete for job opportunities simply doesn't exist in most of the public schools serving low-income black communities.

From the day the last slaves were freed in Galveston, Texas, a war against the integration of the Negro was launched. Unlike the welcome that European immigrants received when they arrived, freed slaves experienced propaganda from a hostile society that would ensure their continued subjugation for at least another century.

The Great Migration sent 6 million black people from the south toward urban regions in the north and west seeking job opportunities. What they found was societal hostilities, institutionalized discrimination, and chronic poverty within quarantined slums.

The same rhetoric that was used to describe newly freed slaves in 1865 (dependent on government, victim mentality, lazy, etc) is recycled through modern mouths today who sit in seats of power and influence yet have done nothing to change the institutional biases that sustain the status quo that subjugates black Americans born into generational poverty.

The same rhetoric that was used to describe newly freed slaves in 1865 (dependent on government, victim mentality, lazy, etc) is recycled through modern mouths today who sit in seats of power and influence yet have done nothing to change the institutional biases that sustain the status quo that subjugates black Americans born into generational poverty.