Black America A $1.3 Trillion Well Lubricated Conduit

While the over­all pop­u­la­tion says it will spend about 10% more on hol­i­day gifts this year, than last year, African Americans say they plan to spend 17% more.
• All shop­pers: Will spend 12% more on gift cards; 10% more on elec­tron­ic mer­chan­dise and 10% more on toys.
• African Americans: Will spend 17% more on elec­tron­ics, 17% more on food, and 15% more on apparel.
The Nielsen research high­light­ing the pro­ject­ed growth of minor­i­ty spend­ing can help retail­ers and mar­keters focus on who to tar­get. (Neilsen.
In sim­ple lan­guage, there will be a lot more black faces in Television commercials.
Black spend­ing pow­er is fore­cast to reach as much as 1.1 Trillion by 2017 and some even more aggres­sive sam­pling sug­gest­ing it will top 1.5 Trillion as ear­ly as 2015.
That’s 44 mil­lion peo­ple spend­ing a pro­ject­ed 1.5 Trillion dol­lars on con­sumer goods and ser­vices. Outpacing every oth­er demo­graph­ic group. Latinos being the clos­est in spending.

1. 

   Money cir­cu­lates zero to one time with­in the black com­mu­ni­ty, com­pared to the more than six times it cir­cu­lates in the Latino com­mu­ni­ty, nine times in the Asian com­mu­ni­ty, and an unlim­it­ed amount of times with­in the white com­mu­ni­ty, accord­ing to the University of Georgia’s Selig Center for Economic Growth.

   Birdie Ross-Haith grew up patron­iz­ing black-owned busi­ness­es. A native Victorian, Ross-Haith said her par­ents empha­sized to her and her sib­lings the impor­tance of sup­port­ing the black com­mu­ni­ty by pur­chas­ing prod­ucts and ser­vices from peo­ple who looked like them. As an adult with a busi­ness of her own, how­ev­er, Ross-Haith said that mind-set has seem­ing­ly fall­en by the way­side. “That’s what’s wrong with the black cul­ture now. They don’t try to help each oth­er,” said Ross-Haith, co-own­er of B&B Handbags. “(Black shop­pers) would come and look but nev­er buy. Ross-Haith’s state­ments come on the heels of recent­ly released data that reports black buying

   

   pow­er has increased from $957.3 bil­lion in 2010 to an expect­ed $1.1 tril­lion by 2015. Although this data from the State of the African-American Consumer Report reflects a pos­i­tive growth in blacks’ dis­pos­able income, the grow­ing fail­ure of blacks to do sig­nif­i­cant busi­ness with oth­er blacks casts a dark shad­ow over the news.”(Victoriaadvocate​.com.

   The sad real­i­ty is there is no end in sight blacks earn more and spend more. As is evi­denced by sur­vey after sur­vey, met­ric after met­ric, The black com­mu­ni­ty has made itself a well-lubri­cat­ed con­duit for mon­ey. No Nation can be pow­er­ful with­out eco­nom­ic pow­er. No peo­ple can be pow­er­ful with­out eco­nom­ic pow­er, Money.
   This Christmas as blacks march once again for jus­tice, they will put down their plac­ards and walk into Department stores plunk­ing down hun­dreds of mil­lions, if not bil­lions, on con­sumer goods and ser­vices many can ill afford.
   The unfor­tu­nate result is that very lit­tle, if any mea­sur­able per­cent­age of that expen­di­ture will find it’s way into black-owned businesses.

   The web­site (Blackmeinamerica reports

Black buy­ing pow­er con­tin­ues to increase, ris­ing from its cur­rent $1 tril­lion lev­els to a fore­cast­ed $1.3 tril­lion by 2017.

• Each year, African Americans spend more than $47 bil­lion on Lincoln auto­mo­biles, $3.7 bil­lion on alco­hol, $2.5 bil­lion on Toyotas, $2 bil­lion on ath­let­ic shoes, and $600 mil­lion each year on McDonald’s and oth­er fast foods, accord­ing to Target Market News Inc., a Chicago-based mar­ket­ing research group.

• Blacks also spend wild­ly to keep up their appear­ances. The black hair care and cos­met­ics indus­try counts as a $9 bil­lion a year busi­ness, but while African Americans are spend­ing the most, they are prof­it­ing the least, said offi­cials from the Black-Owned Beauty Supply Association (BOBSA) in Palo Alto, Calif. Beauty prod­uct lines designed for African Americans were once 100 per­cent owned and oper­at­ed by blacks, today oth­er eth­nic groups con­trol more than 70 per­cent of the market.
• The cur­rent home­own­er­ship rate reveals that 73.5 per­cent of whites own homes while approx­i­mate­ly 43.9 per­cent of African Americans are home­own­ers, accord­ing to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies State of the Nation report for 2013.

• Sixty per­cent of African Americans have less than $50,000 saved in com­pa­ny retire­ment plans and only 23 per­cent have more than $100,000. https://​bmia​.word​press​.com/​2​0​1​0​/​1​1​/​0​5​/​h​o​w​-​d​o​-​b​l​a​c​k​-​p​e​o​p​l​e​-​i​n​-​a​m​e​r​i​c​a​-​s​p​e​n​d​-​5​0​7​-​b​i​l​l​i​o​n​-​d​o​l​l​a​r​s​-​a​n​n​u​a​l​ly/.
• The loy­al­ty blacks have to their church also has proven cost­ly, said offi­cials at Faith Communities Today, a non­prof­it based in Hartford, Conn. A 2013 study revealed that black church­es have col­lect­ed more than $420 bil­lion in tithes and dona­tions nation­wide since 1980, an aver­age of $252 mil­lion a week.

• 

  black​amer​i​ca​.com The lat­ter part of the  report is par­tic­u­lar­ly instruc­tive. An esti­mat­ed $252 mil­lion dol­lars week­ly paid in tithes and offerings.
  Yet how many Pastors teach/​preach self-empow­er­ment? How many even care where Parishioners get the mon­ey they demand in tithes and offerings?
  Even with­in a sin­gle con­gre­ga­tion how many black con­gre­gants own busi­ness­es? Do their sis­ters and broth­ers in Christ know of these busi­ness­es? Do they shop at stores owned by fel­low con­gre­gants? The answer is a resound­ing no.
  As some­one who has owned a small busi­ness for the past 13 years, I can attest to those real­i­ties. I have heard the full gamut, “I ain’t mak­ing them rich”.
  The longer you are in busi­ness the small­er the share of the black com­mu­ni­ty you get. There is a psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­con­nect which I will leave to the pro­fes­sion­als. Having been in busi­ness all these years I laugh at them, the only time some come in is when they do not have enough mon­ey. In which case they expect you to sell to them at a loss. Even when their pock­ets are filled with mon­ey they want to make sure you actu­al­ly lose mon­ey sell­ing to them. Not so when they buy from oth­er merchants.
  In oth­er sit­u­a­tions, they come sell­ing stolen items, or solic­it­ing mon­ey when their kids sell stuff from school. Purchasing items is a give­away as they nev­er return to deliv­er the item/​s pur­chased. Finally, they come ask­ing store own­ers to fund bas­ket­ball, foot­ball, and oth­er com­mu­ni­ty pro­grams, even though they nev­er spent a sin­gle pen­ny with you.
  Is it any won­der that those from the black com­mu­ni­ty who strike it rich some­times give noth­ing to the community?
  There is noth­ing to give back, the black com­mu­ni­ty gave noth­ing to them.
  Those are the facts whether we want to face them or not. In far too many instances the only time blacks walk into a black busi­ness is with out­stretched arms look­ing for a handout.
  There is a dis­tinct and gen­er­al desire to see each oth­er fail. If black America is to move for­ward that men­tal­i­ty will have to change.

  for­ward that men­tal­i­ty will have to change.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al websites.
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