Watching the current fiasco called "an election", Black America needs to pay attention to the Indians.

Once thought to be extinct by years of segregation, onto white controlled reservations they have become power brokers in the upcoming California election, donating millions of dollars to the politicians they believe will best serve the interests of the Indian Nations. They have suffered discrimination, negative publicity, and genocidal themes such as: "The only good Indian is a dead Indian," and still they rose out of the generations of deprivation to play the game of politics as good, or better, than the so-called American white man.

There is a lesson to be learned from all of this. It’s not a new lesson. The Indians are not the first ones to play it but it is the first time a so-called minority has played it for another minority. The Jews play the game all of the time. The Japanese also play it well, but Black America has not played the game well. But it is not too late.

The lesson is simply this: Don’t worry about the spotlight as much as you work on and develop your economic power base. First, there must be land. The Indians had this land taken away from them by the White immigrants from Europe. They tried to kill all of the Indians. By the way I use the word Indians because it describes the Indigenous people of America. I don’t hear the Indians calling themselves the band of Native Americans. As far as I know, they call themselves Indians. Like, the Band of Morongo Indians.

After the prime farming and mining was taken away they were placed on reservations. It was less desirable land but land nevertheless. What was not taken away was the sense of who they were and their sense of survival. And so under the radar they suddenly appeared with the solution to much of their government inflicted poverty. If you can’t grow crops or farm on the land, find a new way to bring money to the land. And so the gaming casinos were developed, and before you knew it White America was bringing the money back to the Indians. Not through Charity, but as a purchase of goods and services.

We next watched as white conservatives tried to take back the right of Indians to have Casinos, obviously because of the power the casinos held. And now as the Indians support a Latino Candidate for Governor, white conservatives, who alleged that they believe in the free enterprise system are upset that the Indians may have both some economic as well as political power. Oops. Maybe they just believe in free enterprise for themselves.

We have seen this scenario played out before. America destroyed the Japanese and we all used to laugh at the little sign on cheap products that said "Made in Japan." Until they made an automobile, and then a computer, and then the conservatives said. "Oops, too much power in the hands of non-whites."

Those of you who are old enough to have traveled Route 66 from Oklahoma, Texas, and Arizona to California a few decades ago can remember the Indians sitting on the side of the road selling baskets, beads, and blankets to anyone who would buy. We thought they were pitiful and believed they were poor, but we never thought that they would provide a lesson in economic and political power. Oops.

They may have been poor economically but they never lost the love for their people and their culture. They never mainstreamed sang songs and created images that demeaned their mothers and their people. They sang songs of hope and prayed, and inch by inch, they rose.

The question is what will we do. Black America is in a good position right now. We are probably the most educated so- called minority, individually wealthy, socially organized with thousands of churches, Fraternities, Sororities and Civil Rights Organizations that depend on the largess and generosity of White America. Our votes are still the statistical edge that elect more white politicians than any other group in America, who then ignore us until the next election.

What we don’t have yet is an economic or land base that forces people to sit up and take notice. In other words, like the Indians on Route 66, we are still considered a pitiful, poor people who grow more criminals than collegians, more pimps than professors, more drug dealers than doctors and more Rappers than Realtors. Our Civil Rights organizations pay rent requiring them to be beggars from the very same people and companies who discriminate against us and from whom they seek equality from. In my book, "I Will Not Apologize", I say it in a chapter named "Beggars don’t‘Lead and Leaders Don’t Beg."

Unlike the Indians, many of us have given up our culture to be popular. It’s a mistake and I am reminded of Jewel Diamond Taylor’s poem, " I ain’t giving my Black back." Our Black culture is part of what makes us great. Economic unity and some type of land base will make us truly great. Marcus Garvey told us this and Elijah Muhammad has told us this. Buy land and build businesses as individuals and as groups, then we can "buy" us some politicians too.