(Karen Abrams holds an MBA from UC San Francisco. She is a Marketing and Small Business Consultant in the US and Caribbean. Karen is also a partner in a party rental
business in Decatur, GA.)
The anti-prosperity model?
Recently, I read the transcript of a speech given by former speaker of the house and famous Republican strategist, Newt Gingrich. To be clear, I am not a Republican, not a Newt supporter and it is well known that Newt Gingrich has been historically reviled by many Democratic communities in the US. After reading Newt Gingrich’s text however, I was excited and galvanized.
Gingrich spoke honestly and directly, to problems and solutions for minority and disenfranchised communities; an act so many non-Black politicians are reticent to engage in, and his assessment while not a revelation, was pretty amazing. Gingrich’s comments on culture and prosperity are worthy of further discussion and to that end, I believe there is value in sharing verbatim the texts of several of his thought provoking paragraphs.
“ if your ethnic group is poor, the number one thing you want them to do is to go into business because that’s where they’ll create wealth. And when they create wealth they’ll hire their relatives, and they’ll hire their neighbours. And a generation of entrepreneurs can mop up poverty at a rate no bureaucracy can imagine.