I love Islam and cream soda

This is Nicholas Dreystadt, and in 1934, the Cadillac car company was on the brink of collapse, especially due to the Great Depression. Nick, a production manager for GM, crashed a corporate meeting called by the president, and made a radical proposal that changing the company's racist / restrictive sales policies to start selling Cadillac to Black people would save the brand.  He wasn't sure why, but Dreystadt noticed that southern Blacks were easily and willing to spend cash for cars. Desperate, the board gave him months to prove his theory. In three years, the company went from being broke to becoming profitable. What Nicholas had not taken specific note of was that the reason Black people had money was because they didn't lose it during the depression like white people did - who lost most of their money when banks went under.  Racist policies restricted Black people from having accounts, so they generally saved their money and oftentimes hid it (often times literally in...

**"I originally wrote this in 2004... If you paid attention in civics class you remember that Trump is not really new and in regards to presidential elections, he has set us up for deja vu. 1912 we elected a president very similar to him. Woodrow Wilson is historically known for his support of white supremacy and for his efforts to remove many of the advances and freedoms of black people, especially in government and in the military. his post- World War bungling of bringing soldiers back home actually caused the race riots of 1919 where disgruntled and disenfranchised white former soldiers rediscovered their inherent racism and began attacking and killing black workers out of jealousy and economic desperation. His foreign policy missteps post World War 1 created the climates that allowed for the control of  international territories by allied victors such as Japan, who colonized parts of China,  Asia, and even the Middle East, which later led to Brazilian jujitsu a...

One year ago today, my life was measured in eight gunshots. Five of those bullets found their mark: one tearing through my eye socket and exiting my neck, the others shattering my arms, shoulder, and elbow. The impact detached my retina; the damage to my carotid artery triggered a stroke that stripped the feeling from my entire left side. A year later, the physical toll remains. I live with searing nerve pain and partial vision. I struggle to tie my shoes or type with the speed I once had. On the nights I do sleep, I often wake to the echo of those shots and the metallic taste of gunpowder on my tongue. I remember that night with haunting clarity. I felt a dark energy approaching and I moved first, throwing an elbow that made him scream—his teeth marks are still etched into my skin. The next sound I heard was the bullet entering my face. The case remains open as attempted murder. The police have their theories—ranging from a gang initiation to a disgruntled ex-b...

Prison, Paradigms, and a Prodigal Son I began my career as an incarcerated individual in 1989, after I committed a car-jacking and was arrested and convicted for aggravated robbery. I was summarily sentenced to 16 years in prison. I was 19 years old. I ended up serving 7 years before I was released early for good behavior in 1996 – first to a halfway house, then on monitored supervision. I was granted parole in 1997, and finally discharged by sentence in 2001. While I was in prison, I became determined to turn away from the very obvious path of career criminal behavior and gang membership. When I was 23, partly because of self-study and searching for spiritual meaning, I converted to orthodox Islam. Upon my release, I landed a job conducting phone surveys for a company that was expanding an office temporarily to Denver in order to conduct polling for President Clinton. I was quickly promoted to floor supervisor and then to Operations manager. Here I was, in a matter of months, in charg...