What is the permanent underclass?
The underclass is the segment of the population that occupies the lowest possible position in a class hierarchy, below the core body of the working class. Black women in America will hear this and will probably dismiss it as another thing to focus on later. Another one of millions of warnings heard in the media. Yet another lecture that can be worried about in the distant future. But it can’t. In a matter of years, Black Americans will be a permanent underclass in the United States.
While Black women are statistically shown climbing up the ladder of wealth, as a collective, Black women are still on track to fail. The demographic will be placed in a position of society where social and financial mobility will be impossible. This is a place where Black American women have been before but this time no amount of hard work, higher education, or fighting the system will fix it. The permanent underclass is permanent.
How to avoid it?
As a collective, you can’t. As an individual you can take steps to ensure yourself and your daughters are as far away from perpetual poverty as possible. But it won’t be easy.
#1 Income
Black women are very proud of being the fastest growing group of business owners in America. This is a great feat, but unfortunately it won’t help. The vast majority of businesses being opened are not recession proof, let alone underclass proof. These businesses tend to be side hustles rather than profitable and growing organizations. Instead of beauty products, Black women will need to make the shift to STEM related fields and high earning, recession proof career paths. I personally believe most Black women thrive in careers such as healthcare and more creative tech careers. Same as the businesses, we can often hear the boasting of Black women being the most college educated in America. But again, we can see the income and social standing is not reflecting this higher education. Why? Besides Black women’s poor choice in male partners and negative culture indulgences, Black women have not kept up with turns in the economy and failed to adjust for the future. We unfortunately are held back by doing what’s familiar or comfortable, instead of breaking barriers or floating to careers that bring political influence and higher incomes. The best thing we have is that we are also one of the fastest growing groups of property owners and land, is a wealth building tool.
As one person, you should research what STEM career would fit your personality. How much schooling are you willing to go through to secure this future? Have you looked into the various free resources available to get into tech or medicine? Which jobs are not going to be replaced by AI?
Prepping and investing is one of the best ways to prepare for the upcoming economic depression. Buying gold, silver, and other assets that increase in value when the value of the dollar continues to decrease. Anyone that hasn’t started prepping now is already late. I personally started prepping around 2020 and the price of the items I got now has doubled or tripled. Buying toiletries, canned food, long lasting food like rice and beans, is the only way to ensure you have food in your belly when everyone else is scrapping together $20 for a piece of bread in the near future. It’s important to also prepare for the civil unrest and crime hikes that follow high prices and chaos. Everything you prep and collect should be protected by a firearm. The Black American woman’s way for hundreds of years has been to petition the government and protest when things go wrong but this will do absolutely nothing to stop you from sliding into the underclass. The normalcy bias everyone has in their brain conditions them to think everything will be fine and stay normal, this prevents people from acknowledging problems and taking proper steps to jump over hurdles. The growing Black femicide rate that’s also been largely ignored by Black women will be the biggest jump in crime in this country, and most Black women will be too late in their responses to this. Black women have been unwilling to protect themselves from the terrorist of their communities and mostly refuse to protect themselves financially. This is a guaranteed ticket to the underclass and being the biggest targets for criminals.
Unfortunately some Black women have allowed themselves to fall for distractions and social media propaganda to engage in discourse about celebrity gossip and marriage. Some of these women seem to think getting married and just having a “father in the home” will fix all the issues they have. The truth is, when Black women marry males who look like them, they lose wealth. Unless you are marrying a man of means in a community that actually has resources, your focus should not be on marriage or males. Dating and marriage is not all about money but you also have to worry about abuse and what values you want your children to learn. Even still, other people are not your heroes and your priority should be helping yourself first and other likeminded Black women. Depending on others is not an acceptable solution.
#2 Don’t let yourself be chained and dragged down
You can’t separate yourself from your demographic, but you can’t rely on other Black women to do better for you. If you are the only Black woman you know aware of what’s going on and taking proper steps, you can try to educate others but understand this journey will be lonely. You cannot control the actions of other Black women. As Edna Mode from the Incredibles would say, “No capes!” You have to burn the cape if you want to move forward as yourself. Not as a woman, Black person, or an American. Allowing your group or other groups to grab onto you is detrimental to not only your financial success, but also your safety and social mobility. Black women let their empathy for others and desire to be needed be their downfall and you should be mindful of not participating in this. You are the target for people in need, the one group people go to, knowing Black women have a history of putting the needs of others before their own. They need attention, clout, money, protection, or defense and you should provide none of that. Only providing for yourself, your daughter, and other likeminded Black women in your immediate circle is the proper way to move forward.
You have to do what you can as an individual, while being mindful that as a Black woman you are treated by others as a monolith. You can walk into an interview being perfect, and that could not stop a hiring manager from throwing every stereotype onto you and not giving you the job. But before dismissing your image or collective reputation as a factor in your finances and social mobility, understand your “community” can provide nothing to you. Has never and will never. The hospitals, jobs, first responders, grocery stores, banks, etc that you interact with are all owned by people who don’t look like you. To me, respectability politics is just a buzz word used to dismiss uncomfortable conversations and truths. But there’s nothing more uncomfortable than starving and having no resources in your reach.
#3 Work towards building YOUR own community, a real community this time
What do you do with this knowledge now that you know what’s coming? Do you get on the internet and complain and urge fellow Black people to get it together? No. Do you persist that something needs to change in your community and talk about “building together?” No. You’ve already done this for hundreds of years and look where you are. Learn from mistakes or be insane and continue doing the same thing. You need to accept that the Wakanda in your head will never be built and the vast majority of people that look like you will never wake up. Some of them have already woken up and the way they behave is the way they choose to be. In 2023, some Black women have already been smart enough to separate themselves from a community that has failed them in every way and seems persistent to continue to. There is no reason to continually pour your energy and time into a group that does not serve you. Understand that you are an individual and serve yourself. People that look like you understand they are done as a collective and will try their hardest to pull you down with them. Or they can attempt to step on you to place themselves above you, but that won’t work so you don’t have to worry about them. Become indistractable.
You don’t have to waste time and energy arguing with other people, trying to convince others to see your way, or trying to shame people that have no pride or shame. In your journey of putting yourself first, don’t get stuck in this phase.
There’s many important steps to take on this journey and one of them is sisterhood. Coming together with likeminded Black women not to rant about the black community and gossip but to support each other on your journey to saving yourself as a Black woman. There should be a concerted effort to seeking out Black women who have similar goals to you and helping each other in any way you can.
As common sense and more successful cultures have shown us, no one is superhuman and able to do everything by themselves. Something I’ve noticed about the soft life movement and frequent social media comments is, Black women have no aspirations or intentions of doing very difficult things by themselves. There is no nobility in struggling. If you don’t pass on wealth, land, and self sufficient knowledge to your daughters, you are setting them up to be a slave.
A woman of no color on TikTok recently went viral with a video proclaiming she was looking for another woman to marry so they could share benefits with each other, help each other with their children, and split bills. Despite the fact that Black women will suffer the most in this upcoming depression, I haven’t seen any similar solutions or attempts to come together from Black women.
A lack of support will usher in a new wave of untreated mental and physical illness that comes with stress and a lack of access to healthy food and healthcare.
Why are Black women going into the permanent underclass?
To put it plainly, every demographic outside of Black women benefits from and has a vested interest in seeing another group beneath them. It helps them feel better about their failures, it helps them exploit, and to get away with harm and abuse. Even as migrants take over the majority of the working class, you can still be used and exploited. Black women were brought to America to breed more slaves and what better way to make sure that can happen than Black girls and women being stuck in a major city surrounded by sexual predators, being inundated with hypersexual propaganda, illegal abortion, and no money to get themselves out of the situation. Every cry for help will be met with people screaming how it’s your fault and you need to stop crying victim all the time. No one will come to save you or your daughters. Your sons will have a swift and open entrance to prison. If you are not proactive in staying out of the underclass, you WILL end up there. Once you safely avoid the underclass, the next step is to learn how to maintain wealth. Pass it to the next generation while navigating society being apart of the demographic now tied to the bottom.
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