OK, I see where you are coming from now, and I understand better your outlook. But I think you need to think in reality, rather than with such an idealistic mindset.

The BE100 are the BE100 because they have excellent investment decisions, and worked hard to grow their enterprises. You have to show these businesspeople real returns for them to be interrested in your venture. As you may or may not know, that BE list changes every year- proof of the adage 'it's tough at the top'.

Sure they might invest in new community institutions, but those guys are gonna have to see a better plan than what you just suggested. If healthcare is so profitable, then why has 'the State has closed practically all municipal healthcare facilities'?

Let me make this clear- I am not saying that healthcare isn't profitable- lets have scores more black doctors. And black pharmacists, and black hospital administrators. Not just to serve the black population though, to serve everyone.

In terms of the succesful black people funding primary education- I am all for it. That is, as Curtis termed it, 'a hand up, not a hand out'.

However, I highly doubt that any new bank is going to invest initially into schools, or healthcare facilites. The object of a bank is to make money. For itself primarily, and secondly for you, the investor. that's how they attract more clients. Primary schools don't provide the immediate monetary dividends that you'd like to see on your monthly statement. It is much more likely that the banks will form, and fund organizations that provide funding for higher education- universities. Just like Bill Cosby. This is because then they can mine that talent pool for their future staff, and more importantly because of the great tax breaks.

I see what you are saying, but you are not looking at the world we are living in with a wide enough lense. Successful Black capital, just like succesful Asian capital, and successful Arab capital, will initally go to where it gets the best balance of security and return, whether the proprietor of the bank or business in which they invest is Moroccan, Argentinian, Senegalese, or Syrian. Period.

What you want is philanthropy. That is different from investment. The returns, although just as risky, tend to be societal, rather than monetary. I am not sure what this point means: 'pool their resources and acquire much more wealth in an institution where they could have some control over investments'

Are you envisioning some kind of black-owned mutual fund specifically for community projects? If this is what you mean, then I am sure that yes, they would have control over the investments, but I don't know about your '[aquisition] of much more wealth' than thru more traditional profit-oriented formats. And if that comes to pass, are you going to post derisive comments on here about the racist Korean community fund, or the Southern Caucasian farmers collective, or whatever comes next?

Just to respond to your remark about my T&T idea- you have the audacity to suggest that we need to upgrade the primary education system in the US, and then in the next paragraph say that we need vocational schools here in T&T for the children who are not academically inclined? Kween, surely this lack of academic inclination is something that should be decided after children ALL receive a sound secondary education?

'Not academically inclined'? Please. Once they finish high-school, and by that I mean school from age 13 to 18, then they can decide whether they want to continue to study academia, or a specific trade. This idea that 'for those [not academically inclined] a primary school leaving certificate is enough' is complete nonsense. That actually sounds like YOU want to keep us back. I refuse to accept that you hold the potential of any child, black or not, in such low regard.

Cosby singles out his own people? What? You have missed the point. He is not 'singling' us out Kween- he is saying the same thing Spike Lee is: Wake Up!