Why Cultural Capital Cannot Grow on Survival’s Edge
Sep 16, 2026By Salim Muwakkil
Just some stuff:
ETC. - Several groups (NOI, UNIA, MST, NGE, etc.) have sought to infuse a self-sustaining form of cultural capital into Black America's social milieu, but they've been hampered by hostile propoganda and/or self-sabotaguing sectarianism. They took-on this "infusion" mission because their target populations had been so deeply damaged by slavery's legacy. Thus, their intial goal was remedial; though revloution was their ultimate goal. Sometimes, however, those goals clashed.
These groups employed authoritarian methods to infuse what I call cultural capital --that is, behavioral traits that encourage social success. But it seems clear that this kind of 'capital' is something that can't be forcefully infused; it must be behaviorally accumulated.
We direly need this capital, but it can best be accumulated off survival's edge, which is the precarious perch on which slavery's legacy has relegated us for too long. Only reparations can reach that edge.
--Even those groups seeking to infuse cultural capital through religious dogma have underestimated our cultural limp. Behavioral changes may be temporarily exhorted into existence, but they can’t be sustained without cultural reinforcement.
Cultural capital can’t be accumulated on the edge of survival, where attention is chronically focused on obtaining scarce resources. And too many of us reside in resource scarcity.
Looking in many directions and Reparations rears its unruly head.
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