by Dr. Ridgely Abdul Mu’min Muhammad

Recently, while driving in my truck I was listening to National Public Radio. They had as a guest
an English Economist from Oxford University by the name of Niall Ferguson. He recently released a
book called "Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World". In this interview Mr. Ferguson
argued that although there were some negative aspects of the British Empire such as: slavery, the
destruction of India’s textile industry and the death of a few million people during her
colonization of Africa, all in all when you look at the increase in per capita income for these
regions, these people were better off for it.

Now if I had a gun I might have shot my own radio. I turned it off for a brief moment but decided
to turn it right back own. When the "devil" speaks, you need to listen. I say
"devil" here, not because of race or nationality, but because of the evil intent to
justify wrong, then try to make the victim accept being the victim and even thank his oppressor.
This is the old game that so-called white people drilled into the head of their once slaves:
"Yes, we had to whip y’all a little bit in slavery, but look what we did for you. We brought
you out of the jungles, put sack cloth on your back, taught you how to speak the King’s English
and how to go to ‘heaven’ after we worked you to death."

Listeners called in to rebuff Mr. Ferguson’s praise for the benefits of British colonialism by
pointing out the human and cultural loses caused by the British military’s destruction of ancient
societies. However, Mr. Ferguson would pull up his Gross National Product (GNP) balance sheet to
point out that under colonialism the GNP of these subjugated countries went up in comparison to
their previous levels. Who said so? Who did the counting?

Unfortunately, the listeners who called were not economists, therefore Mr. Ferguson could
"snow" them with "poppycock". I am an economist. Mr. Ferguson acts like he has
never heard of "cost/benefit analysis" which puts a monetary value on life and other
non-GNP related items such as "social costs". Of course I am sure that he knows of these
accounting techniques, but he also knows that most common people or academicians outside of
economists do not know of such techniques or arguments.

Briefly, to do any cross-cultural or time lapse analysis of two economic situations, you must
develop baseline data and comparative economic values. For instance, if you want to compare an
African country before colonization and after, you must be able to convert goods and services of
this society before and after, and put a comparable monetary figure on such goods and services that
may not have gone through a "market economy." For instance, if I am married, the time put
in to my wife fixing my meals is not counted in GNP. However, if we get divorced and I have to go
out and buy my meals, then they are counted. If she now has to get a job to support another
household, because of that divorce and does not have enough time to cook for herself, now her meals
away from home are counted as GNP also. Therefore, divorce is a way to double the portion of GNP
from that one household without an increase in the welfare of the divorcees. This is how the
destruction of a communal system based on barter and collective effort can have a low GNP compared
to a "market economy" where all things must be bought and paid for in cash.

I hope that I have not bored you with this short economic lesson. However, these are the tricks
upon which policies are made and justified. I remember back in the Reagan administration when the
unemployment figures were rising. Reagan’s labor secretary started a new policy of counting the
military personnel as "employed". Well of course this decreased the unemployment figures
immediately without changing the reality of the domestic economic situation for anyone. This is
called "creative accounting", in other words "cooking the books", or as my moma
would call it, "being slick".

In my previous article called "Buying Groceries" I pointed out how the economic
infrastructure of the Black community was destroyed during our quest for "social
integration". It will require that we put a tax on ourselves, if we want to rebuild ourselves.
The Three Year Economic Savings Program is our vehicle for collecting the necessary revenue to jump
start a dead system.

However, magicians like Mr. Ferguson will still conclude that all in all "integration"
has made life better for Black people. We need some of our Black college economists to do a real
"cost/benefit" analysis of "integration" before we can be so sure. However, I
know from once being in such a Black university, that no one will fund such a research project and
any professor who dares try and do this on his own may wind up in the garbage heap looking for
scraps. This is real.

Of course loosing a job is better than the fate of Walter Rodney who lost his life because he
dared do a "cost/benefit analysis" of European colonialism. It would be interesting to
compare Mr. Rodney’s book "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa" with Mr. Ferguson’s new
book. Too bad that Mr. Rodney is not here in person to carry on the debate himself. Assassinations
of competing minds is one of those other little colonial side effects that Mr. Ferguson would not
have a way to quantify is his GNP balance sheet.

I am here at Muhammad Farms trying to help re-establish and improve upon an agricultural industry
that Black folks once had. Who will finance such an endeavor, the government? Please, they are the
ones that destroyed it. Plus, they are off to conquer new lands.

Mr. Ferguson’s arrogant defense of British imperialism made me sick to my stomach. Being shot,
hung, taken from my native land, lied upon, impoverished, dehumanized, brainwashed, desensitized to
my own suffering, and turned into an enemy of self and a lap dog for "massa" is bad enough
without somebody writing a book to make the world believe that it was for my own good. It seems like
Mr. Ferguson’s new book signals the official passing of the baton of "Empire" to America
from her mother in arrogance, Britain. Get ready world you are about to be colonized for your own
good, once again. Maybe this time the "sleeping giant" will wake up before he is eaten by
the "beast" of GNP and is "excremented" as "acceptable casualties."