Some people say “common sense is not common,” which may be the main reason Black people are not as far up the economic ladder as we should be. Having been in this country since it started, having provided the free labor that led to the creation of much of the wealth now enjoyed by those in charge, and having built a history of self-help and entrepreneurial initiative since our enslavement, Black people have the strongest case and the greatest need to exercise a little common sense when it comes to working collectively to improve our position in the U.S.

If we use our common sense, we will have more common cents. Using our common sense will cause us to do what other groups are doing, and as our forebears did in this country: pool our resources and support one another.

Common sense tells us to look around and see the dire straits our children are facing in this country and start compiling some common cents to help them meet and overcome their current and future economic challenges.

Common sense teaches us that we must not do anything that will subject us to the misery of incarceration and the profiteering of this nation’s prison system; we must give our youth alternatives, especially economic alternatives, to their negative behaviors.

Common sense should have taught us that discrimination still exists in financial institutions, and using our common cents we can overcome much of that discrimination by collectively leveraging our resources and supporting our own financial institutions. (When you ask why we need Black owned banks and credit unions, also ask the same about Korean banks, Cuban banks, Polish banks, Chinese banks, and all the others that exist in this country.)

Common sense dictates that we utilize our common cents to fund our own initiatives, first, and then look to others to support them – support them, not control them. Having common cents would also increase our ability to defend ourselves against local political issues that are not in our best interests; our common cents can be used to fund ballot initiatives, finance the campaigns of candidates who will work on our behalf, and pay for research, analyses, and recommendations that can be used to make informed voting decisions.

Common sense instructs us to pursue our self-interest in a society that is rapidly becoming more polarized. Common sense tells us that we do not control the major political and economic games; but in order to assure a win every now and then we must use our common cents. Economics runs this country; common sense tells us that.

If we use our common sense we will also use our common cents to create and sustain an economic foundation from which to operate and on which to build even more common cents’ initiatives. We must use our common sense the way our ancestors did, as they quickly caught on to the system they faced and immediately went to work building their economic resources to purchase their freedom and that of their relatives and friends. Freedom still ain’t free, y’all.

Looking back on our progress for the past 50 years, common sense shows us how far we have come relative to the strategies we chose to pursue and the leadership we decided to follow. Common sense says several of our leaders have done marvelously well, but as a whole Black people are still stuck at the bottom of the economic ladder, a ladder with rungs that begin at the halfway point. We must figure out how to get to the halfway point by adding our own rungs to the ladder.

Utilizing our common sense would move us away from individualistic thinking and toward common cents strategies. We must change our minds, raise our level of consciousness, and put positive action behind our rhetoric.

We must be willing to use our individual God-given gifts, to contribute to the uplift of a people who have suffered more horrendous treatment, both physical and psychological, than any people in this country. Common sense tells us that. How else are we going to prosper? How else will we achieve economic empowerment? How else will we be able to positively impact the futures of our children?

If common sense is not common then I guess I can understand the paucity, or lack of common cents initiatives among Black people. But I don’t believe Black people are short on common sense. How did we survive in this country? How did we progress in the face of adversity and even death? Why are we still here? How have we retained our sanity? How could there have been a Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma – and all the other Black economic enclaves across this country?

Our great-grandparents could not have done all they did without possessing a tremendous amount of common sense that, in turn, directed them to accumulate a great deal of common cents with which to take care of their business? So, what’s up with us?

No Comments »

Dudley Randall’s poem, “It seems to me, said Booker T; I disagree, said W.E.B.” points out an issue that has plagued Black folks for generations. During Booker T’s time, some Blacks said he was working “for the man” as he tried to build an economic foundation for his people via education, industrial training, self-help, and business principles. W.E.B. DuBois said, Washington’s program came along “at the correct psychological moment,” but he ended up being Booker T’s antagonist because Black people began to choose sides. Rather than take the best of both of those giants, we succumbed to the “divide and conquer” syndrome.

In 1915, Marcus Garvey decides to come to this country to meet with Booker T., who died before Garvey’s arrival. But, the naysayers and detractors soon started dividing the people again, pitting DuBois against Garvey instead of taking the best of what both offered and working toward our collective uplift.

Since then we have seen similar scenarios played out, such as Malcolm and Martin, Stokely and Martin, Al and Jesse, Tupac/Biggie/Knight/Dogg and all that madness, Eddie Long and Al Sharpton, Smiley/West and Dyson/Harris-Perry, and the list goes on. It’s not that we should agree on everything; that would create a bunch of robots. We should, however, have enough sense and knowledge of the past and the present to deal with our personal disagreements in private while moving collectively and publicly toward one goal. Could our penchant for one-ups-man-ship be attributed to another syndrome called, the “HNIC,” as described in Norman Kelley’s excellent book of the same name?

All the silliness, rancor, redundancy, and, yes, jealousy among our people are both unnecessary and divisive. I recall when George Bush attended the 2003 Urban League convention but dissed the NAACP’s meeting (see Blackonomics article: “Sibling Rivalry”). Marc Morial and Kweisi Mfume were at the helms of those two organizations, and the feathers started to fly about what George Bush did; but more importantly our folks began to take sides because Bush decided he would deal with Morial rather than the fiery Mfume.

As long as we, both individually and organizationally, are fighting each other and choosing sides, as if we are on two different teams, our economic empowerment will always be an illusory, quixotic, and romanticized state of mind rather than a substantive realization.

Where I live, Cincinnati, Ohio, our NAACP branch will be 100 years old in 2015. Under its current leadership for the past seven years, we have advanced from a fledgling 400 or so membership base and a tenuous financial position, to a 2400 membership base and a long-term and stable financial position. We have also built strong, mutually beneficial, broad-based relationships – unprecedented in the history of this branch.

Around the first part of 2013, ninety-eight years after the founding of Cincinnati branch of the NAACP, a local chapter of the National Action Network (NAN) was established. Some say it was simply an effort to “compete” and make irrelevant the NAACP and its President, who overwhelmingly defeated his opposition candidate in the last election (November 2012). Idiocy has prevailed since then, mainly because of a few malcontents and sore losers who “don’t like” the NAACP President and are desperately trying to bring him down personally. At the same time, the images of our two organizations are being dragged through the mud on, of all places, a “Black” radio station. Now how stupid is that?

The new President of the NAN Chapter has not had the common courtesy to contact the leader of the ninety-eight year-old NAACP branch in an initial effort to explore ways to cooperate and move forward on common agenda items. Rather, he has operated under the guise of “neutrality,” knowing all along that the main intentions of many of his founding members are divisiveness, rancor, adversity, and ultimate destruction of the NAACP branch; that is, unless they can take it over. Their feeble attempts and bully tactics will not work; but it is sad to see a few jealous, envious, and spoiled Black folks attempt to stymy and negate the tremendous progress made in this town over the last seven years via the NAACP.

My use of Al Sharpton and Ben Jealous in the title of this article is just a generic representation of how some of our people have and continue to make Randall’s W.E.B./Booker T. poem relevant today. Al and Ben may disagree, but they are not trying to tear each other down.

Our penchant for choosing sides and trying to destroy the opposite side is detrimental to our progress. Whether we like it or not, we are all on the same team; and like on any sports team, the best players are starters and the less accomplished ones are benchwarmers. Yes, some on the bench may secretly hope for the demise of a starter so they can get into the game, but at least they are not sitting there outwardly booing their own team in order to get their chance to play. My great-grandmother used to call that “cutting off your nose to spite your face.”

No Comments »

Although the dictionary calls it archaic, the “management of a household” is one of the definitions listed for the word “economy.” Another definition is “a saving or attempt to reduce expenditures.” Yet another is “a system of interacting elements, especially when seen as being harmonious.” And still another definition for economy has to do with “the production and consumption of goods and services of a community regarded as a whole.” As I look at those descriptions of an economy, only the last one partially applies to Black Americans collectively, and that’s the “consumption” part.

Every five years the U.S. Census does a survey to determine how many businesses there are in this country, who owns them, how many persons they employ, and what their annual revenues are. The figures for 2007, while lauded for the increase in the number of Black owned businesses, revealed decreasing revenues for Black businesses, relatively few employees, and a vast majority of them in the service industry.

The 2007 census revealed total receipts for Black owned businesses to be less than $136 billion which, when juxtaposed against an aggregate “Black buying power” during that period of approximately $850 billion, illuminated a lack of business growth and a glut of consumer spending. The average gross receipts for Black firms as a whole fell 3%, from $74,000 per firm in 2002 to $72,000 per firm in 2007. Furthermore, a whopping 87% of Black businesses had annual receipts of less than $50,000 in that time period. Other statistics disclosed low savings among African Americans and a grossly disparate median income and net worth when compared to other ethnic groups.

The University of Georgia’s Selig Center for Economic Growth estimates that the nation’s “Black buying power” is rising from $1.038 trillion in 2012 to a projected $1.307 trillion in 2017. The 2012 U.S. Census data will likely reveal a bump in business receipts, but the total will probably be less than $175 billion. Median income, net worth, and savings disparities will likely stay the same and the mythical Black economy will trudge along like a brand new, twelve-cylinder, state-of-the-art, top-of-the-line automobile running on only 6 of those 12 cylinders. We will definitely be looking good, but we sure won’t be doing good (pardon my grammar).

That’s essentially how we are as consumers. We look real good, but when it comes to how we are doing, that’s another story. Maybe one of the reasons for that can be found in some of our consumption statistics. A few years back, the Selig Center reported that Blacks spend more on telephone services, children’s apparel, electricity and natural gas, and guess what, footwear. Today, I’m sure hair (someone else’s) is in the top five.

How do we measure up in business? In his book, Black Bourgeoisie, E. Franklin Frazier stated, “[Black] business enterprises come within the definition of small businesses; in fact, they fall within the lowest category of small businesses. When the first study was made of Negro business in 1898, it was found that the average capital investment for the 1,906 businesses giving information amounted to only $4,600.00. When the latest study of Negro business was made in 1944, it was revealed that the average volume of business of the 3,866 Negro businesses in twelve cities was only $3,260.00.”

Was Frazier correct in his assessment of what he deemed the mythical nature of Black business? Was he correct when he suggested the Black middle class was also a myth? He made a lot of folks angry when he wrote, “Negro business … has no significance in the American economy, [and] has become a social myth embodying the aspirations of this [Black Bourgeoisie] class.” As we look at today’s statistics we must reconsider Franklin’s position, because the numbers reflect the same conditions he discussed in 1957.

Frazier was decrying our definition of “middle class” as one that embodies high incomes and material possessions, e.g., the mink coats, diamonds, and Cadillacs to which he referred, instead of business ownership and economic growth. While we consider the trappings of the good life as “wealth,” sold to us by everyone else of course, we are mired in a dysfunctional – and maybe even mythical — Black economy.

Much of our economic pain in the 21st century is the direct result of our failure to develop a real Black economy, our failure to take care of our collective “household,” our failure to save more of our money, our failure to support our own businesses, and our failure to produce goods and services commensurate with our percentage of population and income. Additionally, we have failed to work together for the uplift of the masses, sharing our resources with one another and helping one another as we make our way individually.

The so-called “middle-class” Blacks have distanced themselves, not necessarily physically but mentally, and as Frazier wrote, they have been obsessed “with the struggle for status.” And many of the less fortunate among our people spend too much time being jealous and envious of our brothers and sisters who have achieved at higher levels. The result is an oxymoronic “Black economy.”

No Comments »

A recent report by Jason Jenkins, Investment U Research, shows that private prisons are earning even more money via warehousing prisoners and by establishing Real Estate Investment Trusts (REIT) with the land upon which their prisons are built. Corrections Corporation of America and The GEO Group, the two largest private prison firms, own 75% of the for-profit prisons in the U.S. Both companies are registered on the New Your Stock Exchange as CXW and GEO, respectively. According the Mr. Jenkins’ report, GEO “gets 60% of its revenue from company-owned or leased real estate.”

What an idea, huh? I often wonder why we are so slow on the uptake when it comes to dealing appropriately with issues we often rail against. Folks like Tony Brown, whom we seldom hear from these days, and Dr. Claud Anderson, are two examples of Elders who have for 40 years or more been giving us solution-oriented information on this subject and many others; yet we have failed to heed their advice and participate in their initiatives.

Others like Reginald Lewis, Tom Burrell, Bob Johnson, George Fraser, Michael Roberts, Julianne Malveaux, Brooke Stephens, and the list goes on, have shared practical ways for us to empower ourselves economically but their words, for the most part, have fallen on deaf ears.

What does this have to do with prison profits? Back in the latter part of Ronald Reagan’s administration and the early Daddy Bush term, the political mantra was “lock ‘em up and throw away the key” as was pointed out in a TIME Magazine article written by Jill Smolowe. Then along comes Bill Clinton who tags right along by proposing that $20 billion be spent on new prisons in this country. So this is an issue that took legs over 25 years ago.

Even further back in history, as Amos Wilson shared in his book, Black on Black Violence, “Within five years after the Civil War, the Black percentage of the prison population went from close to zero to 33%. Then, as now, the Black prison population performed an economic and political function for the benefit of Whites.” (Featured in the City Sun, July 18-24, 1990, and written by Clinton Cox, Racism: The Hole in America’s Heart.)

Fast forward to Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow, in which her research shows that not much has changed. Once again, the alarm has sounded for many Black people, and we are fired up again about the so-called “Prison Industrial Complex” and all the money it is generating for its owners. I wonder how long it will be before we push the snooze button and go back to sleep on this issue.
We seem to get aroused and engaged in an issue only when it’s fashionable (I call it our crisis du jour), which is a very short period of time. Thus, our recent response to the prison issue is a microcosm of our laxity and, I might add, complacency when it comes to larger issues pointed out by those who have gone on before us, and those who are yet on the battlefield fighting for our economic freedom. We are riled up yet again by the prison money machine, but unless we resolve to do something about it, what does it matter?

With that said, let me try this again. In 1994 I wrote an article about this subject that pointed out the move by private corporations to take advantage of the several Presidents’ attempts to jail our way out of crime. Remember the Three Strikes Rule? The War on Drugs? Individual states found themselves in a “cell crunch,” operating prisons beyond their capacity. The answer: Build more prisons and provide the developers with “guaranteed occupancy.” The result: Prisons for profit – a billion dollars’ worth!

So what should we do? First, we should institute local and national Boycott Prisons campaigns, an initiative I called for back in 2001 after having a discussion with Nathan Hare in Buffalo, New York. It was his idea – not mine, but I thought it was a fantastic idea and ran with it. T-shirts were printed, bumper stickers were made, placards and posters were developed to spread the word and to educate our people about the 13th Amendment, the criminal justice system, and alternative behaviors like entrepreneurship. The theme was, “Stay out of the cells and get into sales.” There is a chapter on the subject in my last book. What it simply calls for is an end to doing stupid illegal things for which we can and will be sent to jail.

Second, since Black prisoners disproportionately occupy the cells, Black businesses should avail themselves of the tremendous opportunities for “sales” inside the prisons. Instead of always being the profit, we should start earning some of the profit from the prison industry. Can you imagine how much stuff prisons purchase each year?

I’ll end here because I know you get the point. In that TIME article, Robert Gangi, Executive Director of the Correctional Association of New York, warned, “Building more prisons to address crime is like building more graveyards to address a fatal disease.” You know it’s all a game; on what side are you going to play?

1 Comment »