Wealth, Riches, and African American Spending Power
Black Money makes the black community go around. With African Americans spending $1.2 trillion annually there is no reason for us to be the poorest community in this land. It’s not the fact that we don’t have money, it’s how we spend money that has helped create our current state of being.
What Happened?
Of late, a large portion of the black community and the rest of the nation have learned about wealthy Black communities going back to the early 1900s, like Black Wall Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We know how these communities lost their wealth, through no fault of their own, but what was their secret to accomplish gaining that wealth?
Did you know that the Greenwood Community of Tulsa, OK, also known as Black Wall Street, was one of many Black communities to create a wealthy and sustainable black eco-system? This led to the Red Summer of 1919 where every wealthy black community was destroyed. These communities were destroyed because they all knew the secret to creating wealth in the black community.
Most black communities figured out how to create wealth and keep wealth within their community was to spend money solely within their community. There was a common enemy, White Supremacy, Jim Crow, Separate But Equal, making it easy to self segregate. But this allowed the ingenuity of the African mind to work to create its own sustainability. During the Black Wall Street era, black money circulated within the community to 26 different businesses well before it left Greenwood. In fact, Black Wall Street had its own major businesses that the White community depended on.
Greenwood and other Black communities like it had most of the following businesses that were owned by the Black community and operated for the benefit of that Black community :
- Grocery Stores
- Schools
- Hospitals
- Banks
- Bakeries
- Farms
- Gas Stations
- Barbershops and Beauty Salons
- Clothing Stores
- Shoe Stores
- Car Repair Shops
- Hotels
- Restaurants
- Accountants/Bookkeepers
How Africans and its Diaspora are used Today
Economies throughout the world rely on Black people to spend their hard-earned money in exchange for products and services outside of their own community. However, most black people do not consider who they are funding when they spend money. An easy example that most people can relate to seeing is where we spend money for hair care products. The retail, wholesale, and distribution of hair care products that are designed for the Black community with Type 3 and 4 hair is controlled and owned by multiple Asian cultures. While we are trying to regain a footing in that space, we as a people are largely locked out of profiting from products that only benefit us.
Our communities tend to focus on what they are getting rather than being intentional to whom they are giving to, and it’s time to change the game. The majority of businesses that target Black communities, especially those that do nothing to improve your neighborhood value, realize we are a consuming people and work towards keeping Black families, Black businesses, Black communities at a disadvantage. The only way this situation can be resolved is by protecting our assets, controlling and being intentional about our spending, and supporting our own businesses.
What We Have To Do
It’s time for us to be intentional about the future and to eliminate the “to hell with it mindset.” We must start thinking about what black money could do for the future if used in group economic settings. It’s time for us to stop looking for others to change our situation, if we work together we can change the situation for ourselves. Over the spring and summer of 2020, Black America witnessed how much we are discriminated against. How most will take our money, but MANY will not standby us to change the situation. If we control how we spend our money, we will begin to show the power that we have as a people.
We Will Make the Change
Why is this important? Because until Black populations as a whole start to believe that what they do with their money has power, we will never be able to make real change, in the US, South America, in Europe, or in mother Africa.
We are resetting the expectations, and focusing on building the foundations of money for the Black community.
There are several aspects to making a community successful. If a community lacks these things they will eventually die and be repurposed. So, what can you do? Now is the time to start seeking out black owned businesses and work within the black community to restore wealth to it.
