There’s no shortage of Black-owned businesses.
From restaurants to digital marketing companies to auto detailing outfits to smoothie shops, dental practices, legal services, and everything in between.
If you’ve never heard of any of these businesses, your city likely has a “Black Pages” or some other resource to point you in the right direction.
Want to find a Black-owned restaurant in Chicago? There’s a list. In Denver, there’s something called “The Little Black Book” that lists categories of Black-owned businesses.
Supportblackowned.com tries to provide national lists in various categories.
Google away, and you’ll find your city’s directories.
Or try posting, “Does anyone know a Black-owned [insert business]?” on your social media page. I bet you’ll get lots of responses.
It’s good for all of us — Black, white and others — to support diverse businesses. So everyone shares in the fruits of this land of opportunity called America.
Side note. Nobody’s suggesting we support businesses that don’t provide good service or serve bad food. That’s a fallacy made up by diversity opponents. I don’t know any Black or white people who support any business just because it’s owned by a particular person. If a restaurant sucks, it sucks.
It’s more important now than ever before to support Black-owned businesses since government diversity programs are under attack and likely will be dismantled by courts or potentially the next administration.
It’s also critical because Black-owned businesses struggle far more than their white peers to grow or even stay in business. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has for years reported that while a third of all new businesses close within the first two years, a disproportionate number of Black-owned businesses have an even shorter life span.
My own dentist is a gay Mormon. My car-detail person is Venezuelan. My periodontist, my kids’ barber and my electrician are Jewish. As is one of the owners of my favorite coffee shop. My photographer, videographer, accountant and general contractor are all Black. My tailor is a Muslim from Turkey. My general physician and my latest caterer are white.
Unfortunately, not everyone is intentional about supporting a diverse set of businesses.
Until we achieve that ideal, where we all support each other, Black folks have it within their own community to patronize and uplift Black-owned businesses.
We already have a well-tested paradigm for this.
When Jews came to America as Holocaust refugees with nothing some 75 years ago, and found it difficult to thrive among a majority who wouldn’t support them and, in most cases, excluded them, Jews started their own businesses.
Every business imaginable. Jewish-owned furniture stores. Jewish-owned restaurants. Tailors. Cleaners. Plumbers. Textile manufacturers. Grocery stores. And as Jews finally gained admission to colleges after years of exclusion, they pursued every professional endeavor imaginable.
Engineers, accountants, lawyers, doctors, psychologists, chemists.
Other Jews supported those businesses and professionals.
Every dollar a Jew earned was spent and re-spent on Jewish-owned businesses so that it ended up being recirculated 30 times before it left the community.
For some Asian communities, which likewise struggled early on to integrate into the larger America, members recirculated every dollar they earned 20 times before it left their community.
A Black Star Project study on the racial wealth gap calculated that even today, a dollar circulates a mere six hours in the Black community, still up to 20 times in the Jewish community and upwards of 30 times in the Asian community.
Other investigations revealed similar figures, namely that a dollar still circulates in the Jewish community 19 times, in the Asian community 28 times and the Latino community, six. The Selig Center for Economic Growth Study further confirmed these figures.
I recall my own childhood dollar recirculation. While we didn’t have as much money to spread around as others, our pediatrician was Jewish. Our driving instructor was Jewish. As was one of our piano teachers. Our baseball league was run by a Jewish family. The bagel shop we frequented several times a month was Jewish-owned.
The net impact of the community-wide recirculating dollar for the last seven decades is that Jewish and Asian communities mostly thrived and built wealth.
Of course, not all Jews or Asians are rich by any stretch, but we’d be foolish not to see that those communities have largely succeeded despite enduring hatred that still exists. They were able to pass down businesses, money and property. Generations of children had the resources to get an education.
We also need to acknowledge that while Jewish and Asian communities faced struggles here, it would be intellectually dishonest to compare their American experience with what Black people faced and still face in America.
Still, as of 2023, Black people in America generate anywhere from $1.3 to 1.8 trillion in income annually. But only 2% of that money is re-circulated in their own communities.
We know from the Jewish and Asian communities that recirculating uplifted them. But we also know it works for Black people, too.
Black Wall Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma, proved that recirculating the dollar can provide tremendous economic stability.
Black Wall Street was in Greenwood, a thriving Black neighborhood where the dollar was recirculated anywhere from 30 to 100 times before it left the community. Greenwood did so well that two families even owned private planes.
Tragically, the community was destroyed twice — first by racists, aided by the police who burned the city to the ground — and then again after it was rebuilt, by President Eisenhower’s highway system that cut through the community.
Today, though, money earned by Black people simply is not being reinvested in their own communities.
But imagine if it was.
We’ve learned since Dr. King’s assassination that the road to ending overt and systemic racism is a long one. It’s a fight that may outlast all of us.
In the meantime, communities recirculating their dollars would bring about financial security, more jobs, and wealth building. It would reduce crime rates, lessen despair and depression, and form a far better economic landscape for future generations of beautiful Black boys and girls.
Nobody can wave a magic wand to rid the world of racism. But we can decide where to spend our money.
This post originally appeared on Medium and is edited and republished with author's permission. Read more of Jeffrey Kass' work on Medium.
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