Black Dollar Flee, But To Where?

We say there are no black busi­ness­es for us to sup­port; that state­ment is not true. As a nation of peo­ple with­in this larg­er nation, we have made a con­cert­ed effort to spend our mon­ey with every­one out­side of our own com­mu­ni­ty.
Imagine the pow­er we would have, if we spent over one tril­lion dol­lars we spend each year with our own, or even a part of it?
Spending our mon­ey out­side our own com­mu­ni­ty makes it dif­fi­cult to near impos­si­ble for Black busi­ness­es to sur­vive much less thrive.
Those of us who sup­port black busi­ness­es out­side the tra­di­tion­al Barbershops and Hair salons, hold those small busi­ness own­ers to expo­nen­tial­ly high­er stan­dards than we do every­one else.
No mat­ter how long those black busi­ness­es have been serv­ing our needs pro­fes­sion­al­ly and faith­ful­ly, one mishap elic­its out­rage and a com­ment of, “that is why I don’t sup­port Black peo­ple’s busi­ness.“
As if we are look­ing for a rea­son to spend our mon­ey else­where.


The fact of the mat­ter is that the white dol­lar cir­cu­lates in the white com­mu­ni­ty innu­mer­able amounts of times, and I am not speak­ing hyper­bol­i­cal­ly.
Hispanics, the group clos­est to African-Americas at the bot­tom, see their dol­lar cir­cu­late about 5 times before it leaves. It is get­ting bet­ter as they coa­lesce and build new busi­ness­es.
Asians keep a dol­lar in their com­mu­ni­ty 120 times longer than African Americans, accord­ing to (mon​ey​man​.io.) In fact, lots of busi­ness­es and con­sumers keep their dol­lars cir­cu­lat­ing in their cul­tur­al com­mu­ni­ties.
The aver­age lifes­pan of a dol­lar in the Asian com­mu­ni­ty is 28 days; in the Jewish com­mu­ni­ty, it’s 19 days, and in the African-American com­mu­ni­ty, it’s six hours. (source vic​to​ri​aad​vo​cate​.com)

Had it not been for bar­ber­shops and hair salons, the dol­lar would have been out of the black com­mu­ni­ty in sec­onds.
In the AA com­mu­ni­ty, it is incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult for black busi­ness­es to grow, and sur­vive for some of the rea­sons I artic­u­lat­ed and oth­ers.
When we do not sup­port our own, it becomes impos­si­ble for our busi­ness­es to com­pete, pro­vide qual­i­ty goods and ser­vices, or hire and retain employ­ees.
Ironically, we are quick to argue that prices are too high, qual­i­ty is sub­stan­dard, and we are not giv­en dis­counts, with­out real­iz­ing that our own actions have cre­at­ed the issues we com­plain about. Yet, the very same issues exist in oth­er busi­ness­es not owned or oper­at­ed by us, yet we have no prob­lem spend­ing our hard-earned mon­ey with those com­pa­nies. In many cas­es, those com­mu­ni­ties are open­ly hos­tile and dis­re­spect­ful to us, but we spend anyway.

The AA com­mu­ni­ty spends some­where between 1.2 7 1.5 tril­lion dol­lars each year.
In fact, last year, the AA com­mu­ni­ty spent a whop­ping 1.4 tril­lion dollars.

	Share of US Population (2019)	Buying Power (US$) (2019)
Black	13.4%	$1.4 tril­lion
Asian	6.3%	$1.2 tril­lion
Latinx13	18.6%	$1.7 tril­lion
American Indian	1.3%	$126.8 bil­lion

IT is dif­fi­cult to tell where that mon­ey goes. Certainly, it is not cir­cu­lat­ing in the AA com­mu­ni­ty, and it is damn sure not cir­cu­lat­ing in AA businesses.

At the risk of sound­ing dis­re­spect­ful, it seems that far too many with­in the AA com­mu­ni­ty do not under­stand that Black peo­ple are capa­ble of hav­ing busi­ness­es out­side Barbershops and Hair salons.
The sight of a Barbershop or a Hair salon elic­its a weird excite­ment, yet a black-owned tech or oth­er busi­ness strug­gles to gain a sec­ond look from mem­bers of the AA com­mu­ni­ty.
It seems almost as if there are psy­cho­log­i­cal forces at work, caus­ing our peo­ple not to believe, not to dream, not to dare imag­ine any busi­ness out­side the tra­di­tion­al.….… well, you know, bar­ber­shops & hair shops.
Could the events of Black Wall Street still be at play?
You decide!
Black spend­ing pow­er is greater than that of many large nation’s gross domes­tic prod­ucts.
If Black peo­ple are afraid to sup­port and grow Black busi­ness­es out of fear that the KKK and the American Government will band togeth­er to destroy them once again, then we are liv­ing exact­ly how they would like to see us live, in fear.
If we accept that the gov­ern­ment will aid racist whites to destroy busi­ness­es and take hun­dreds of lives, then we are already defeated.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 
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