By James Clingman
SPECIAL TO SACOBSERVER.COM

You know, we talk a real good game when it comes to economic empowerment. We talk about what "we need to do," what we should do, what we can do, and even what we will do. We get together, usually in someone else's hotel or meeting place, and discuss our economic plight and how we are going to finally change things when it comes to our economic destiny. We are tired of the White man running things and keeping us out of the game. We are really upset, this time, and we are going to leave this meeting (this time), go home, and put into action the things we discussed. Yes, this time we will do it!

Haven't you seen it all before? Haven't you heard it all before? Aren't you tired of the emotionalism, the feel-good speakers, the rap and clap sessions, and the sheer madness of eating chicken dinners every year in hotels owned by the very people with whom we are angry? Aren't you finally ready to do good rather than to merely feel good? I know I am. No, I have been for a long time.

When I speak at various gatherings I usually say, "I did not come to make you feel good; I came to make you do good." Because well done beats well said every time. We can spend the rest of our lives "getting ready to," "fixin' to," and "being about to." Just look at our past and see how much time we have wasted gettin' ready to overcome rather than overcoming. We are still singing, "We Shall Overcome." When?

As quiet as it's kept, we will overcome when WE decide to overcome. As our dear Brother, Amos Wilson, wrote in his book, "Afrikan-Centered Consciousness Versus the New World Order," "Recognize that power ultimately has to do with a relationship between people and that the white man's so called power is to a large degree based on the nature of the relationship he has with the Black man. We empower him by the nature of our own behavior and attitudes as a people. He cannot be what he is unless we are what we are."

Brother Wilson continues, "We waste a lot of time trying to transform them (whites) when through transforming ourselves they will be transformed automatically. The power is in our hands." Don't you agree with Amos Wilson, especially when you consider how much time we have wasted "gettin' ready?"

When it comes to economic empowerment, we have wasted at least 35 years, if not more. The night before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, he was instructing us on what to do economically in order to change the relationship we had with those oppressive people in Memphis, and I am sure he was speaking to the rest of as well, no matter where we lived. Since that fateful night on April 4, 1968, instead of continuing on the path he discussed, we decided to take that other road-that road called political empowerment.

Thirty-five years later, we have thousands of Black folks in public office, and we get so excited and hyped about that next election. But we have spent and continue to spend little time doing anything about our collective economic empowerment. Politically, we are living large, or some would have us believe. Economically, we are no further up the ladder than we were in 1968. As a matter of fact, according to a report by the Urban Institute, Black households were better off in 1968 than they were in 1995. (You may notice I always refer to economic empowerment in the plural rather than the singular.)

We have had 35 years of leadership that has talked from time to time about doing something about the collective economic plight of Black folks, 35 years of leaders getting their own individual economic thang together, 35 years of speeches, threats, protests, scandals, and rip-offs, but virtually no progress on building an economic legacy for our children, virtually no ownership and control of income producing assets, and virtually no means even to provide the very basics of life for our children without depending on the very people about whom we complain.

Yes, well done beats well said. We had better get about the business of doing more business with one another, like the Vietnamese are doing in their newly found nail salon businesses. We had better start supporting our businesses a lot more than we do now. We had better start teaching our children about entrepreneurship. We had better move from the demand side of the tourism industry over to the supply side. We had better start pooling our money and get into the businesses that supply our sustenance. We had better take a breather from the partying, the conspicuous consumption and the emotion-laden get-togethers, and we had better start DOING things that will strengthen our economic future.

Don't just talk about economic empowerment; be about economic empowerment. Give and buy Black. Because, well done beats well said every time!

James E. Clingman, an adjunct professor at the University of Cincinnati's of African-American Studies department, is former editor of the Cincinnati Herald Newspaper and founder of the Greater Cincinnati African American Chamber of Commerce. He hosts the radio program, ''Blackonomics,'' and is the author of the book, "Economic Empowerment or Economic Enslavement-We have a choice."