'PowerNomics' - Dr. Claud Anderson
I almost want to leave that as a stand alone statement and hear your thoughts. It is quite the statement and it made me think about the financial state of Black people in North America. In the US 27.4% of all Black people live in poverty (the highest of all the races.) If we were to start buying Black would that help us lower these numbers?
Micheal Baisden (for those who don't know, is a radio host in the states who brings up a lot of issues that are prevalent in the Black community) spoke about this issue on his radio show. He asked why we don't buy Black and the consensus of the responses from the listeners was that 1) when we sell products/services they are too expensive and 2) we lack in customer service skills.
Let's take a look at the hair industry, for example. African Americans (even though we have the highest poverty rates) spent $507 BILLION (out of our total estimated buying power of $836 billion) on hair and hair products in 2009. And lets face it....most of that is not going into the hands of black owners. Walk into most black hair stores in the USA and they are Asian owned. Same thing with nails....always done (rarely by Black owned businesses).
I know we try to live in a 'can't we all just get along' age, but I wonder if that attitude is keeping us complacent.
Do you buy Black? Should we be making a greater effort to buy Black? Is buying Black the solution to helping us as a people? Or is this just a racist ideal?
I am interested in hearing your thoughts.
hello trey!
ReplyDeletei hope you’re doing well! thanks for such a wonderful post. in fact i was just discussing this issue with my mother today!
i definitely agree with the concept of "buy blacking" across north america....claud anderson's lectures (via youtube) talk about the negatives of integration during the 1960’s/1970's where blacks spent outside of their economy in order to buy a wider and newer variety of goods and also moved to larger cities to find work during recessionary times creating forgone alternatives such as fostering a clientele-base and continuing family-owned businesses.
i think the greater problem here is blacks not being able to trust and support each other's business ideas and sadly expecting each of us to fail ie: “crabs in the barrel” concept
however if we encourage relationships (informal/formal) with one another more often, i am sure that with more owners we will be able to secure a strong black clientele again while hiring fellow blacks and creating secured employment to reduce poverty levels in our communities. it's all very cyclical!!!!
---Josie:)