Why BRICS Should Recognize Diaspora Communities in America – A Bold Vision for Economic Sovereignty

I believe that the time is right, frankly, for bold moves politically. You have to try to perceive the momentum of the trends that are taking place in the world right now and be decisive about what you do. I think people can have a role in shaping the political and economic landscape of the twenty first century. It's not gonna look like the last century. It's gonna be very different.

And I think that, you can have, an important role in determining how it does look. People can have a role in that. I'm talking about paradigmatic changes, you know. This is absolutely not the time to be complacent or to be defeatist or to be pessimistic or to be timid, not at all. We are living through a period of tectonic transitions in global power dynamics.

That's not a joke. You know, this isn't just the same old, you know, we're at a crossroads rhetoric that politicians always, trot out. No. There are very real massive changes taking place in the international order. This transition period, this transitional period is very real and it opens up a lot of possibilities that were previously unthinkable.

So we need imagination, we need creativity, we need boldness, and obviously we need organization, and discipline, and persistence. But I truly believe that we are moving into an unshaped future that we have the power to shape for the first time in a very very long time. The West is eating itself. America has functionally been reduced to a regional power, not a global superpower. You know, they're hollowing out the state.

Europe is being economically colonized, it's being dismantled. All of the powers that imposed, the world order upon us, the world order that we've always known, they're all suffering either imperial osteoporosis, or anemia, or hemophilia, or dementia. None of the rules and none of the paradigms that they impose need to be retained. None of them need to be maintained. None of them need to be preserved.

More important than a power vacuum developing, there's a vacuum of organizing principles for the world order, and we can actually have a role in filling that vacuum in my opinion. I'm saying we can actually organize the world differently, truly. All of these western imperialist concepts can be jettisoned. All of these concepts that they used to divide and rule, to trap, to restrict, to dictate, you know, to set the parameters, to define, and so on and so on, to tell us what reality had to look like, how reality had to operate and so forth. We don't need to have to be bound to any of that anymore.

We can we can get rid of all of that. I don't know if people really grasp how how momentous this is, this moment that we're living through, how significant it is. Like, okay, you see Trump, for example, doing things and proposing things that seem completely out of left field, you know, buy Greenland, buy turn Canada into the fifty first state, leave NATO, get the federal government, defund USAID and the NED, on and on. But what I'm telling you is that he's not the only one who can do this. There is no inside the box thinking when the box is being taken apart.

You can propose and initiate and pursue previously unthinkable things too, and you should. Prime example is Burkina Faso, the whole Sahel region actually, but Burkina Faso is consistently taking the lead. Unprecedented steps are being taken in Burkina Faso. Ibrahim Shah Roy is proposing ideas and policies that would have been, you know, these would have been things that you only dreamed about on your couch ten years ago. And things are moving very rapidly, faster than I've ever seen in my lifetime.

And here's the thing, that vacuum is gonna get filled sooner rather than later. It's gonna that's also gonna happen rapidly. So again, it's the time for bold ideas and bold movements. I think the article six campaign is is is a good example of that. It's such a movement.

That would have been impossible before to imagine expelling The United States from the United Nations just a decade ago, but it's completely feasible today. You know, we already have a 100,000 signatures on that petition, and now we're moving forward with that came campaign to raise it to the diplomatic political and diplomatic level. But also, for instance, you know, I mentioned in a video recently, the idea of you using the logic of Trump's gold card visa program, which commoditizes American citizenship, you know, he's selling residency and citizenship for $5,000,000. This isn't this isn't the same as an investment based passport. It's literally just a purchase.

He's turned citizenship into an an asset, into a product. So you can use that same logic to push for Americans to have the right to sell their own citizenship for either a fixed price or a negotiated price because why not? You know? I'm not joking. Do it.

Start a petition for that. Start a movement for that. Organize. Demand that right. You should.

There's no reason whatsoever why you shouldn't push for that. There's no telling where it can go and what kind of impact and what kind of outcome you can eventually achieve from pursuing something like that. Don't be timid. It's the wrong time to be timid. You know, I also mentioned quite some time ago that African Americans, if they were or if they constituted a country, well, that country would most likely apply to join BRICS.

There'd be a developing economy. Well, I think you should take that seriously too, not just African Americans, but also called minority groups, minority communities in The United States, all members of the global majority living in America, bear with me here. This is an idea that could fundamentally shift the economic and political landscape for so called minority communities in The United States or in the West generally. The prospect of these communities gaining recognition within BRICS as sort of economic extensions of their ancestral nations. It's not just a theoretical discussion, we're talking about real empowerment, real economic sovereignty, and real political leverage.

But again, you have to be bold enough to imagine it, and to and to actually work practically to bring it into reality. I mean, let's just stick with African Americans, for example, black Americans for the moment. If we assess the African American community as if it were a sovereign country using the BRICS admission criteria, I think that the results would be quite compelling. I mean, of the requirements of Briggs, part of the criteria for joining Briggs, for for Briggs membership, is that you have to be a large and growing economy. Okay.

Let's look at that. The total African American GDP, if we consider that to be a separate economy to The United States, is estimated to be between 1.8 to $2,000,000,000,000, making it roughly equivalent to the economy of Brazil, a founding member of Bricks or South Korea, for example. Now when we look at the black American community and think of it as a distinct nation, as if it is a country, we will also see that it looks very much like a colonized country. So for instance, while as an economy it's quite substantial, economic growth rates lag behind other BRICS nations due to systemic barriers like wage disparities, lack of wealth accumulation, limited economic sovereignty and so forth, just like a colonized nation. Think about that.

You can literally think of the African American community, the black American community as if we're talking about a colonized African country that rather than being invaded from without by colonizers, it was amputated from Africa and brought over to where the colonizers are, you know. It's a colonized African country inside of America, just put that in your mind. Now, another criteria for BRICS BRICS membership is that you should have a diversified economy. Well, African Americans contribute to every sector in the American economy, you know, from media to technology, healthcare, finance, obviously entertainment and sports and so on. But again, just like a colonized country, there's a lack of control over major industries that they participate in.

A lack of corporate ownership, Most economic participation is as consumers and as employees rather than as business owners or as investors. And obviously, a great deal of that is again due to systemic impediments just like a country under colonization. BRICS also looks at whether or not you have a significant trade volume. Well, obviously, African Americans as, you know, being under the American government, they don't have any control over international trade policies. But they do have high consumption power, about $1,600,000,000,000 annually, probably more.

They play a major role in America's overall trade relationships globally, that's a fact. Don't think of the of the African American community as just a collection of consumers within The United States, but think of it as a sovereign economic force, as a nation with its own global trade relationships. Like I said, if we took African Americans as a separate economy, it would be worth over $1,600,000,000,000 in consumer spending, 1.8. That's larger than most countries. But the question is, are you just a market to be exploited?

Or will you assert your own interests in global trade? See, this is exactly one of the issues that colonized countries have always had to struggle with, controlling their own trade relationships. Look, the only reason that countries like China or India or Japan or South Korea sell as much as they do in The United States is because of you. Your spending power fuels entire industries, yet you have no direct relationship with the nations that you trade with. Instead, your role is reduced to being passive consumers, while corporate middlemen dictate the terms of trade on your behalf.

On your behalf, but not in your interests. Why are you allowing yourselves to be a colony when you should be a nation? I'm saying take direct control of your global trade. Ask yourself this, if African Americans had a sovereign economy, would you let foreign nations extract your wealth without negotiating fair terms? You know, would you allow others to speak for you in trade deals?

Or would you send your own trade ambassadors to China, your own trade ambassadors to India or to Africa or to Europe to negotiate on your own behalf? You know, China is your biggest supplier. That's your biggest trade partner, a foreign trade partner. African American spending drives massive imports from China, clothing, electronics, beauty products, appliances, on and on and on. Without your consumption, many of these industries would collapse.

That's just a fact. So why are you not negotiating with China directly? Why don't you have African American trade delegations meeting with Chinese business leaders? I mean, maybe you do, I don't know. I haven't been there for a long time, but you need direct relationships, business partnerships, bypass the American corporate middlemen who mark up the prices and control the supply chains and so on.

You don't need to go through them. If African Americans had their own independent economic councils, they could establish direct trade relationships, they could cut the cost, they could increase ownership, they could ensure fair treatment and so forth. You see what I'm saying? Establish direct ties. The second largest foreign trading partner of the African American community is India, you know, the hair and beauty industry especially.

African Americans spend between roughly $1,200,000,000 annually on hair products, hair and beauty products, which significant a significant portion of that comes from India. But why aren't you negotiating with Indian suppliers on equal as equal trading partners? You know, do you have African American trade ambassadors in India securing direct sourcing agreements? Why allow multinational corporations to be the gatekeepers when you're the ones who are sustaining this industry? You see what I'm saying?

If you control the flow of capital, you control the industry that relies on that capital. You should be setting the terms not just being a customer. Because look, you know, I know we always act like being a consumer is exclusively a weak position, but it doesn't have to be passive. It doesn't have to be like that. There's no business without consumers.

Consumers have power, you know. Even the European Union, do you know that the that you keep the the African American community keeps the luxury industry alive? African Americans spend billions of dollars on European brands. Gucci, Louis Vuitton, you know, Balenciaga, what have you. What if instead of just buying, you demanded equity in these companies?

What if you had a stake in the very industries that you support with your consumption? I mean, you can negotiate, you have leverage. You have the power of your spending. Use it. And okay.

If you think of African Americans as a country unto themselves then obviously your biggest trading partner of all is The United States itself. African Americans, like all Americans, spend the bulk of their income on housing, on health care, on education, entertainment, and all of that is controlled by American corporations. All of your money is going to American corporations, most of it. But right now, you don't negotiate your role in the economy. You just accept whatever is given to you.

But why should African Americans or any other minority, so called group, allow their wealth to just be extracted without any reinvestment? You know, this is a dimension of corporate democratization. You're not just workers or consumers in this system, you are the foundation of wealth for entire industries. So you should be negotiating like a sovereign entity. Become a nation within a nation, and that's why also called minority groups in America.

Economic sovereignty doesn't mean that you're isolating your community economically, it just means control. It means that before a single dollar leaves your community, it circles within your community, it circles within your networks first. It means that you dictate the terms of your trade relationships, not corporations, they just exploit your spending. This is what every nation does unless it's colonized. So now, the question is, are you going to continue playing the role of a colony or are you gonna take your place as a sovereign economic power within The United States?

Because until you do, you will remain what you have always been in America, just a resource to be extracted, not a force to be reckoned with. Okay. So BRICS also looks at a potential member's investments and infrastructure. So in America, infrastructure, housing, education, health care, and so forth. This is all either corporate or state control.

And again, systemic issues have historically deprived African American communities of any sort of equitable investment in these areas. There is an emerging trend, I think, in The US of investment in real estate and tech startups, financial institutions, and so on, but it remains relatively small. But this shouldn't disqualify a nation from being part of BRICS. Rather, it should be a motivation for joining and for BRICS seeing the potential and the promise of such a partnership because it's a it's sort of an untapped area. You know what I mean?

Then the what is it? Fifth criteria for BRICS is assessing human development. Well, you know, African Americans are highly educated, over 90% literacy rate. They have a strong representation in most professions, in a number of professions, the arts, sciences, and politics. So I don't think there's any issue there.

But then you have the colonization elements in America that undermine human development, such as the disparities in health care, obviously, incarceration rates, systemically engineered generational wealth gaps, and so on. All of that will sort of pull down the overall human development indicators. Then you have what BRICS calls global governance. Well, obviously, there's little direct influence on global institutions like the United Nations, the IMF, or the World Bank by African Americans, but they have soft power through cultural influence, through activism, through political engagement, political representation and so on. So there's something to be said in that regard.

And then the the seventh, the last criteria for BRICS membership has to do with regional influence. Well, African Americans have strong political influence within The United States, and they're in arguably a cultural global superpower. They just don't act as a sovereign geopolitical entity. But through cultural exports, you know, hip hop, sport, film, so on, activism, and again political influence within both parties. They do shape domestic policies and indirectly influence international affairs.

I think it's I think that argument can be made. So if African Americans were to be assessed as a separate nation, they would likely at least partially qualify for joining BRICS. But there are some key limitations in terms of trade control, investment, autonomy, geopolitical influence, and so on. I mean, the economic scale is significant, but the lack of sovereign state structure and control over resources would be major barriers to full inclusion. But I'm not really talking about full inclusion, you know.

Just even by looking at BRICS membership criteria, you can see areas to focus on within any so called minority community, you know. Look at the ways of addressing those limitations and so on. I mean, the point here is to liberate your thinking from the paradigms, from the concepts, the self serving rules that the colonizing nations imposed on the rest of the world to create the world order of the twentieth century. And start pouring in new ideas, new ways of thinking, new concepts, you know, and see what can develop. I mean, my opinion, it makes sense to me to try to reimagine the status of so called minority communities in The US, whether that's African Americans or so called Latino Americans, Asian Americans, what have you, all of whom have historical and ancestral roots in the global South.

In my opinion, they shouldn't be seen as just ethnic demographics within America. They are in effect diaspora nations that that could potentially function as economic and political entities within BRICS, within some sort of a BRICS framework, as as extensions of the nations from which they originate. We're talking about an unofficial sort of country within a country, One that maintains active economic ties to their ancestral homelands. I think that the political and strategic value of pursuing something like this is just incalculable. I mean think about Indians from India.

It doesn't matter how long an Indian has lived in America or even if they were born in America. According to India, they are NRIs, non resident Indians. They regard them as part of their nation, as part of their economy. The ties are strong as steel. Now like for for African Americans, obviously many do not know which specific country, which land their forefathers came from in Africa.

They don't know where their forefathers were when their feet stepped off the soil of Africa onto a slave ship. But again Burkina Faso Burkina Faso is putting forward a solution to that, to that issue by offering citizenship to any western descendant of African heritage who was taken into bondage. Meaning, potentially, the African American community could choose to identify as Burkinabe, as part of the Burkinabe diaspora. So let's say we do away with the thinking of borders and whatnot and just think about people. And any global South nation could include in their population and in their economy all of the people in America who come from that nation in the global South.

You understand what I'm saying? No matter how long they came from there, no matter how long ago it was that they came from there. Or again, if you if you choose if African Americans, for example, choose to take up Burkina Faso's offer, then for example, Burkina Faso becomes a population of not 22,000,000, but 63,000,000 living there and living in America. Non resident Burkinabes, you know. And the same applies to every immigrant group, every so called minority community in America.

I mean, you know how they talk about there's 2,000,000 Palestinians in Gaza, 3,000,000 in the West Bank and so on, but no. The Palestinian population on earth is around 15,000,000 people at least. There's over a billion Africans on earth. You understand? So called citizenship is nothing but a compartmentalization for the purposes of making domination and oppression more manageable.

So stop thinking within these kinds of frameworks. In my opinion, you are an extension of the land that you came from. A member of the global majority living in America. So build cohesion. Be one community.

One community spanning both countries. There's the in nation population and then there's the diaspora. And then you can work on a framework for for BRICS to recognize the country's diaspora as an affiliate in its own right. As its own economic entity. I mean obviously this isn't a this is not a simple process.

BRICS is a block of sovereign nations and so forth. So, you know, how do you fit diaspora communities into that structure? Well, I mean, you could just redefine, you know, what it means to be a part of BRICS. And not not necessarily as a country, but as a diaspora. As a diaspora economic zone, you know, or recognized bricks extension or or what have you.

You know, obviously there's problems, obviously there's challenges. I mean the US government would perceive this as a challenge to its own sovereignty. So, you know, you would have to emphasize and explain, I suppose, that economic self determination is not political separatism. Historical precedents do exist. I mean, that you have the native American tribal sovereignty for example.

Yes, in fact, native Americans should seriously consider BRICS recognition, recognition within BRICS and membership for themselves as a sovereign people. Why not pursue that? I mean, of course, there's also fragmentation within so called minority communities in in in America, within every so called minority community. Not everyone agrees. It's not monolithic.

So, you know, not every individual within these communities would recognize the value of this kind of a movement. So mobilization and education and so forth is critical. Of course, a well defined legal and economic structure, you know, that's gonna be necessary to make sure that it's viable, to make sure that it's in compliance with both American law and international law and so forth. But I don't see any reason why that can't be hammered out, you know, in my opinion. That's just a paperwork issue.

To make this kind of a thing a reality, minority communities in The US are gonna have to work on their own unity, and they're gonna have to develop, institutional frameworks that mirrors a national economic entity. So for instance, you wanna establish some sort of a unified organizational structure, you know, you need a you need to form, like, a diaspora economic council, maybe, to serve as a governing body in some in in, you know, in some fashion. Regional chapters, maybe advisory boards with economic, legal, and diplomatic experts if you can find them, you know, establish some sort of a mission statement obviously that aligns with the BRICS principles of South South cooperation because that's what you have to think of yourself as. That's how you have to think of yourself as a part of the global South who are incidentally in the global North. I mean, and and you have to prove your economic viability to Briggs.

That means, you know, create, for example, a diaspora business and trade registry to unite so called minority owned businesses. Develop, I don't know, diaspora investment funds, diaspora investment funds, to pool financial resources, try to partner with BRICS affiliated banks to negotiate investment and trade opportunities, you know. Mobilize politically, mobilize diplomatically, try to engage directly with BRICS embassies, embassies of BRICS countries, policymakers and so on. Host diaspora summits with BRICS ambassadors and economic leaders. You know, send official delegations to BRICS forums to advocate for recognition.

Build alliances with diaspora friendly politicians within The US. You can even, you know, draft your legal agreements outlining how BRICS nations can potentially engage with US based diaspora groups, how that would work. Assess international legal frameworks that support diaspora, economic recognition. You know, just think about it. Brainstorm.

A movement like this can't succeed without grassroots support, so you also need to launch BRICS diaspora information centers or events. Organize town hall meetings, you know, public forums, involve local leaders, business owners, activists, so on. Engage with BRICS members, with BRICS member nations directly if you can. Once you've established your own internal structure, then you need to seek engagement, official engagement with BRICS leadership. You know, draft a formal proposal at a certain point to BRICS leaders outlining your proposal and its benefits.

The the benefits of recognizing a sort of diaspora economic zone or diaspora economic extension of a BRICS country. You know, try to host some sort of a BRICS diaspora economic summit to solidify those partnerships, to solidify those relationships. This is this is more than just about economic opportunities, you know. This is about rewriting the rules of global engagement. For too long, so called minority communities in The US have been marginalized within the the the Western economic order.

Aligning with BRICS or anyway, aligning with the global South provides a a pathway to bypass this dependency, reclaim some sort of financial sovereignty, connect with global networks that share your interest and share your struggles and share your heritage, you know. In my opinion, the time has come to think beyond the confines of national borders and the whole twentieth century way of thinking of of looking at things because you're not just minorities, so called minorities in America, you're economic and cultural extensions of the global South. That's what you are. Capable of leveraging your collective power for real economic transformation. If BRICS truly aims to challenge western economic hegemony, then it must recognize the strategic importance of engaging with the diaspora, global South diaspora.

The potential is there and I think that the time is right actually now, as I said, for pursuing these kinds of things. Again, just move towards this. You never know where you'll end up. Just move towards it. But in the process you will build bridges, you'll build connections, you'll build networks, you'll build you'll open lines of communication.

And over the course of pursuing something like this, I think that you'll see that you'll become less and less marginalized in America, less and less treated or perceived as so called minorities. You'll be perceived as what you are, members of the global majority. As I said, it doesn't matter necessarily where this ends up, but I think that just putting this into the conversation, putting this into the discourse, filling the vacuum of organizing principles of the world order that has formed now, as there's a vacuum now. So you need to fill that vacuum, pour as much as you can of new ideas, new concepts, new ways of organizing, new ways of defining, new ways of identifying, new ways of understanding relationships between, for example, the global South and the global North, particularly within so called minority communities, particularly when we're talking about people who are factually extensions of the communities that they came from, the countries that they came from, the nations that they came from, and that they just happen to be in a different location. Okay?

Citizenship doesn't cut the tie. If America gives you a passport, that passport doesn't represent a wall between you and where you came from. So I think that this needs to be pursued and and again, where it ends up is less important than what you can accomplish during the course of pursuing that eventual destination.