Unity through Family Business
Unity through Family Business
The Activity of Life—this is what “business” is. Look at the first four letters, b-u-s-i: The “i” is interchangeable with “y,” forming the word “busy.” When you are doing nothing, you are not alive. A busy person has to be busy doing something that Nature requires.
Nature requires every living thing to do something for itself. It may be a worm, but that worm isn’t looking to another worm, begging “Hey, you’ve got anything for me?” Look how silly you look, a big grown man or woman at Tennessee State, working on a degree, and then going out begging somebody, “You’ve got a job for me?” Suppose he told you, “No! I don’t have any job for you!” What are you going to do then? How are you going to make a job for yourself?
How might we get this idea percolating in the minds of the masses: backpeddling back to family business, an enterprise we once were engaged in on the continent of Africa before European colonization and chattel slavery and within our post-“emancipation” Black Towns. More recently, The Honorable Elijah Muhammad “showed us the value of a proper education and established a school system that reflected the same”—an education “that eliminates division among us,” “creates unity,” “makes us desire to be with our own,” work “in the way of independence,” and “produce our people’s needs.” Mr. Muhammad “demonstrated the proper use of money by establishing for his followers, farmland, banks, business, airplanes and airport facilities, international trade and commerce.”
Business, according to The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, is life. Are we a living or a dead people? How much self-generated business activity is going on in the Black community? Business—the activity of making, buying, or selling goods or providing services in exchange for money—is not only a barometer of the condition of a community but also the glue that binds family members together: a family business forces us to resolve conflicts, work together, solidify familial and filial relationships, and maintain them over time, generation after generation. The family business is a(n economic) reason for unity; and the root of unity. Unity isn’t just some nebulous theoretical spiritual concept—a family business IS unity in action.
Who better to trust than the people you married, raised, grew up with, and live with on a daily, intimate basis? What better way to develop such trust— the basis of unity—than to work together in the family business. Applying the principles of The Messenger’s Teachings certainly is a character-building endeavor—and has served to promote the health, wealth, and longevity of many a family business in the Nation of Islam!
First an individual family member has an idea or passion, followed by a robust plan, that carefully and methodically addresses the fundamental needs of her/his community while successfully sustaining the family: Be the best. Start small, stay small—stay in business. Close ranks. Think longterm—we’re in it for the long haul—our family business will live as long as Allah (God) grants us, the family, continued life. Other family members connect to the idea of the family business, see the value of the family business, and know there’s a place in the family business for their talents and interests. Next he or she develops his/her skills to help aid and grow the business, and joins on to that business—heart, mind, soul. No matter the challenges, family members are in it to win it, ultimately providing a place for all their talents, interests, and skills—all while fulfilling the very real needs of the people. Immediate family members work with extended family members; family members become as one worker-bee unit, always keeping up front the needs of our people balanced with the need to maintain a thriving business. Soon that one family connecting to another family connecting to still another family…is how we form unity. The family business is a strategy to foster unity and generate community networks. AND we’re working to PRODUCE something useful and uplifting, operating proactively—no longer just reacting defensively to the consequences of a colonized mindset.
And we do it just like that Black Brit family—the Kanneh-Masons—made music the “business” of the family!
This is a seed that needs to be made known and spread far and wide 24-7, on a consistent basis and in a sustained way. This is not a one-and-done idea. This family business concept is ideal for Muhammad’s poets, Farrakhan’s Twitter Army, social media, homeschooling parents, independent educational institutions—an idea whose time has come, especially since Satan’s world “is fallen, is fallen.” And by the way, Satan will not be happy with this campaign to “do for self” (as The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad directs us to do), because Satan and his synagogue are frightened that once this concept is made known, internalized, and practiced, it will only serve to undermine his sharecropping- and slave-based economy. So remember, business is also warfare!