“You Can Do It, We can Help” This is the slogan for the Home Depot. It is a simple enough concept yet a powerful one. If you are a homeowner you are well aware of the toll that upkeep can have on your time and wallet. The expense and headache is exponentially higher if you have to hire a contractor for every job.
The Home Depot makes an emotional connection with the homeowner simply by telling them they can make those changes and their staff is available to help with them with it. This is reassuring because in no way are they saying we’ll turn you into a general contractor or make you an expert at dry walling. The message is: you need to lay a hardwood floor; we’ll show you how to do it correctly.
When it comes to improving the black community, the conversation often includes aspects of unity, self-love and coming together, knowing your history and a lot of other psychological and social notions. The challenge of starting with changing a mindset to change the condition of a community is that it is abstract and it has no definitive end point. How much knowledge of black history does it take increase the level of self-love and love for the black community? There is no real answer to that question.
Let’s say you your deck is falling apart and you go to the Home Depot to get the material to repair it. They’re not going to put you through some sort of psychological analysis to see how much you love your deck. They are going to give you the material and instructions to make you feel comfortable and confident enough to tackle the task on your own. This is where you place the footings; this is how your joist should run; use this many lag bolts in the header.
But there is another level of knowledge that comes into play that will help you maintain the value of the home. And for this, you will have to have some historical aspects of your home. How old is the home? What style of home is it: Craftmans, Colonial, or Modern? How does the house fit in with the rest of the neighborhood. Taking all of this into consideration is what gives the home owner a thoughtful plan to repair the deck and also increase the value of the home.
So how does this apply to black people? When a black man walks into the Life Improvement store, he is looking for the tools and materials to improve said life. This is the focus. The challenge is finding adequate tools. Most black children do not have access to high quality education. Most black businesses do not have access to capital. Despite these challenges, we must make better of the limited resources that are available.
To achieve success, we must push black children to read and write at a certain level; perform math and science at a high level. We must push them into engineering and computer science fields. While they are acquiring these requisite skills, we can address the unique historical and cultural challenges in the black community. As is the case with creating designs that stay true to character of a home to maintain value, there are life choices that can add to the experience of an individual while at the same time adding value to the black community as a whole.
When discussing ways to improve the black community we have to start with what individuals can do to change their lot in life. Debates that involve paradigm shifts of an entire community are great for academic banter but are not practical for addressing immediate needs. For many black people, they are dealing with a deck that is falling apart. We should first address that concern and then discuss the historical reality that allowed for improperly built deck in the first place.
