You are standing outside a room. The room has a door. The door has a lock. The lock has a key.
Everything inside the room is evil. Poverty is inside the room. Sickness is inside the room. Violence is inside the room. Inequality is inside the room. But there is also a billion dollars in the room. You are given two choices:
If you let everything out of the room, the billion dollars is yours.
If you lock the door, you will ensure that nothing evil will ever escape the room.
Now most people will say that they would lock the door. But whatever you choose, eventually, someone is going to unlock that door and get a billion dollars. And since no single individual could ever prevent the inevitable outcome, doing nothing ensures that someone will open the door.
For some, locking the door means that everyone on earth will not have to face poverty, racism, sickness and violence. Others are more realistic. For them, opening the door guarantees that their children and their children’s children will never have to worry about money – especially if someone is eventually going to open the door and subject the world to evil anyway.
Of course, the people who descended from the door openers would be wealthy and powerful enough to escape poverty, violence and racism that came out of the room. After a few generations, they would be celebrated as “job-creators” who opened the door to the “land of opportunity.” A few would start to believe they were superior to the people who were too lazy to open the door for their communities. Eventually, they’d stop people from learning the story of the people who opened the door.
I’ve always thought that this was a great analogy to explain capitalism, racism and all of the world’s ills. Then, one day, one of my students asked a more interesting question:
“Why did the lock have a key?”
We are standing outside a room…
Today’s reading list:
The Black Book by Middleton A. Harris
A History of James Island Slave Descendants & Plantation Owners by Eugene Frazier Sr.
Reminiscences of My Life In Camp by Susie King Taylor
“Black Capitalism Won’t Save Us” by Aaron Ross Coleman
The Myth of Black Capitalism by Earl Ofari Hutchinson
