"The white man is too intelligent to let someone else come and gain control of the economy of
his community. But you will let anyone come in and take control of the economy of your
community, control the housing, control the education, control the jobs, control the businesses,
under the pre-text that you want to integrate. No, you outta your mind. The political, the
economic philosophy of Black Nationalism only means that we have to become involved in a
program of re-education to educate our people into the importance of knowing that when you
spend your dollar out of the community in which you live, the community in which you
spend your money becomes richer and richer; the community out which you take your money
becomes poorer and poorer. And because these Negroes, who have been mislead, misguided,
are breaking their necks to take their money and spend it with The Man, The Man is
becoming richer and richer, and you’re becoming poorer and poorer. And then what happens?
The community in which you live becomes a slum. It becomes a ghetto. The conditions
become run down. And then you have the audacity to complain about poor housing in a
run-down community. Why you run it down yourself when you take your dollar out. And
you and I are in the double-track, because not only do we lose by taking our money someplace
else and spending it, when we try and spend it in our own community we’re trapped because
we haven’t had sense enough to set up stores and control the businesses of our own
community. The man who’s controlling the stores in our community is a man who doesn’t
look like we do." Malcolm X
