"that is your main problem."

That is what my big time Republican, Baptist, super RICH, KOREAN (yes, I said KOREAN) employer told me.

I was 100% dumbfounded.

Then he said: "Your 'leaders' who care about you the most, you allow outsiders to discredit. Why do so many of you people allow others to dictate what you think about each other? Why is it that more of your people did not listen to Malcolm X? I do not agree with his religion, but if more of your people listened to him 40 years ago, you would be much better off now."

I tripped totally out a few months ago when we were having a discussion, and he pulled off of his bookshelf Amos Wilson's "Blueprint For Black Power", and "Powernomics" by Dr. Claud Anderson. I told him I had read both, and asked him what HE was doing reading those books, his reply was: "These books specifically explain what whites, Jews, and Asians have been doing for generations...but they are written FOR YOU. The bigger question is why HAVEN'T more Blacks READ THEM? Why aren't these books on the best seller list?" (I felt like somebody kicked me in the nuts.)

I admire my boss for several reasons: He will tell you point blank that he is a PAN-ASIANIST. And this viewpoint affects many, if not all of his BUSINESS DECISIONS...he speaks not only Korean, but Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, and Vietnamese, and is BIG into the Asian Chamber of Commerce. He owns 4-5 large shopping centers that have nothing in them but Asian businesses, he owns a Japanese restaurant, a Korean restaurant, and is opening another restaurant that is going to serve a variety of Asian dishes. He owns a construction company, a building maintenance contracting firm, several residential real estate properties, and business interests in Korea, Japan, and Costa Rica. And most intriguing: He and several of his Korean friends / business associates are looking to open a "school" where on the weekends and during the summer Korean kids born here in the U.S. will go to learn to speak, read and write Korean perfectly, learn Korean history, and learn business from an "Asian perspective".

My ongoing conversations with Mr. Kim (my boss) have made me ask some questions that I would like to pose here in OkayActivist::

Is the lack of cohesivenes among Black people THAT obvious to everyone else, including Asian immigrants?

Isn't it amazing that Black "Conservatives" seem to distance from Pan-Africanism /Black Nationalism, but Jewish or Asian "Conservatives" EMBRACE their respective ethnicity?

In your opinion, how important (if at all) is a sense of history and culture to the economic success of A GROUP?

Let's build...PEACE