John Hope Bryant

Huffington Post ~ On Leadership: Sunburned Black Folks

John Hope Bryant

Bestselling business leadership author and philanthropic entrepreneur

 

This just makes me smile, because it completely neutralizes the backwards theory of and around this crazy thing called race and racism.

While in the Bahamas for an event recently, I noticed that I was actually sunburned. Let me note here, that I am proudly African American. My deepest roots come from mother Africa, so no way I thought, would I ever be sunburned. Black folks are built for the sun. That's true, if I were 100 percent African.

The reality is (thanks to African-Ancestry I know this), just like my friend and mentor Quincy Jones, I am 71 percent Cameroon, but I found that I am also 26 percent European, and the rest is Asian, Indian and 'other.' That means that what I really am, to quote Quincy, is "Global Gumbo." I'm a rich mixture of the broad texture of our world, and in all likelihood, so are you.

Or take our president, the Honorable Barack Obama. In the Black community we refer to him proudly as "Black," when in reality, he is Black African (his father from Kenya), White European (his mother), and was raised in part culturally Hawaiian and Indonesian, and then moved to the South Side of Chicago. So, what and who is President Obama, actually, if not a global reflection of all of us? A man for our times, really. Global Gumbo, thank you Quincy J.

We are all in this together.

Read the complete article on the Huffington Post here.

 

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An Inspiring and Thoughtful Comment on Recent Huffington Post Article

The commenter reflects on the recently published Huffington Post article, Solving Poverty: Poverty is the new Racism

Normallyafan

16 hours ago ( 7:02 PM)

"I've read a lot of articles that touched on race and class differences in America lately. I am one of the unfortunate few sociology majors that plans on pursuing a graduate education in my field so it's naturally a pretty large focus in my reading diet. I have to say that this is one of the only articles I have seen written lately that actually addressed the issue in a manner that didn't seem driven by either guilt or antagonism. Another article I had just read (by a professor, no less) here on Huff actually made me quite depressed today because of it's blatantly ethnocentric approach which intentionally excluded whites.

I personally feel that because we have gotten used to either obsequious liberal whites or brazenly racist conservatives there has been too little room for dialogue that is genuinely moderate on the topic of equality in America. As someone who identifies as Asian and Black I am frequently embarrassed by writers who honestly believe that if a socioeconomic theory doesn't completely generalize/shame/insult every single white person alive it can't possibly be accurate. I really feel that many self proclaimed "community advocates" and "civil rights leaders" and even worse, actual ones, have made a habit of using "us versus them" dialogue with deaf ears and this was a stunning reminder that it's not all bad."




John Hope Bryant is a thought leader, founder, chairman and CEO of Operation HOPE, Bryant Group Companies, Inc. Magazine/CEO READ bestselling business author of LOVE LEADERSHIP: The New Way to Lead in a Fear-Based World (Jossey-Bass) the only African-American bestselling business author in the U.S., and is chairman of the Subcommittee for the Under-Served and Community Empowerment for the U.S. President’s Advisory Council on Financial Capability, for President Barack Obama. Mr. Bryant is the co-founder of the Gallup-HOPE Index, the only national research poll on youth financial dignity and youth economic energy in the U.S. He is also a co-founder of Global Dignity with HRH Crown Prince Haakon of Norway and Professor Pekka Himanen of Finland. Global Dignity is affiliated with the Forum of Young Global Leaders and the World Economic Forum. Mr. Bryant serves on the board of directors of Ares Commercial Real Estate Corporation, an NYSE Euronext publicly traded company, and a division of $54 billion Ares Capital.

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From Bloomberg Businessweek: Where There Is Financial Literacy, There Is Hope

 

Companies & Industries

 

This Sunday will mark the 20th anniversary of the Los Angeles riots. As with all such dates, it will be a moment to reflect on the state of race relations and opportunity. On one level, there isn’t much cause for celebration. Rodney King, the man whose beating by police prompted the riots when the officers were acquitted, has since been arrested a dozen more times, spent his $3.8 million settlement, and appeared on Celebrity Rehab. The 11.8 percent unemployment rate in Los Angeles County last month is higher than it was in 1992, while the earning power of many residents has dropped. Meanwhile, dropout rates are so dire that the Los Angeles Unified School District would like to let kids graduate with 25 percent fewer credits and let them pass college-prep classes with a D grade.

But that doesn’t capture the hope now felt in Los Angeles—the hope that comes from reduced violence, a greater sense of community, and access to more tools to change your life. The most visible symbol of that hope this week was the sight of 10 buses touring through the neighborhoods where more than $1 billion of property was damaged and 54 people were killed. The Operation HOPE bus tour on April 24 was less about the economic issues weighing down L.A. (and the rest of the country) than the power of what’s happening at the community level.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of Commerce Rebecca Blank was there. As an academic and a policy maker, she knows all too well the challenges facing low-income families. She also understands the power that such groups as Operation HOPE have brought to these communities. “I wouldn’t confuse the macro picture with the micro picture,” Blank said. “We’ve been through the biggest housing bust since the Depression. What you have to look at is the power that individuals can have when they become financially literate.”

Read the complete story here.

 

John Hope Bryant Quote of the Day

"If you want to absolutely destroy the spirit of a racist?  it is very easy.  I would love to meet say, the grandmaster of the Klu Klux Klan, and give them a DNA test.  It will first blow his mind, right before it destroys the very foundation of his ill-fated argument. 99% of all of us are of some mixed race. The chance that someone white, is mixed with something black, brown or different, is extremely high.  So to hate me, is to hate yourself.  And for me to hate you, is to hate myself too.  We are all in this together.  We are all global citizens."

John Hope Bryant, on the power of one.