OUR BLACK YEAR
One Family's Quest
to Buy Black in America's
Racially Divided Economy
By Maggie Anderson with Ted Gregory
An African American family chronicles their year-long commitment to patronizing only black-owned businesses, exposing economic inequality and inspiring a movement
Maggie and John Anderson were successful African American professionals raising two daughters in a tony suburb of Chicago. But they felt uneasy over their good fortune. Most African Americans live in economically starved neighborhoods. Black wealth is about one tenth of white wealth, and black businesses lag behind businesses of all other racial groups in every measure of success. One problem is that black consumers—unlike consumers of other ethnicities— choose not to support black-owned businesses. At the same time, most of the businesses in their communities are owned by outsiders.
On January 1, 2009 the Andersons embarked on a year-long public pledge to "buy black." They thought that by taking a stand, the black community would be mobilized to exert its economic might. They thought that by exposing the issues, Americans of all races would see that economically empowering black neighborhoods benefits society as a whole. Instead, blacks refused to support their own, and others condemned their experiment. Drawing on economic research and social history as well as her personal story, Maggie Anderson shows why the black economy continues to suffer and issues a call to action to all of us to do our part to reverse this trend.
Published on Mar 27, 2012 by 215media
Recently Maggie Anderson spoke at the African American Art Museum of Philadelphia about her book, "Our Black Year: One Family's Quest to Buy Black in America's Racially Divided Economy". A discussion panel followed her speech discussing the book and the current state of black businesses in America.
As CEO and cofounder of The Empowerment Experiment Foundation, Maggie Anderson has become the leader of a self-help economics movement that supports quality black businesses and urges consumers, especially other middle and upper class African Americans, to proactively and publicly support them. She has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and CBS Morning News, among many other national television and radio shows. She received her BA from Emory University and her JD and MBA from the University of Chicago. She lives in Oak Park, Illinois, with her husband, John, and their two daughters. Ted Gregory is a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter for the Chicago Tribune.
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IS THE WHITE MAN'S ICE
STILL COLDER???
GO HERE TO VIEW VIDEO INTERVIEW
Today, the nearly $1 trillion of buying power in black wallets flows right out of African American neighborhoods. Economists call this phenomenon "leakage" and it creates unemployment, underfunded school systems, poverty, and a lack of communal pride.
• African Americans make up only 13 percent of the U.S. population but represent anywhere from 25 to 40 percent of the consumer base for grocery stores, fast food restaurants, athletic apparel, and toy stores.
• One economist found that in the Asian community a dollar circulates among local shop owners, banks, and business professionals for up to 28 days before it is spent with outsiders. In the Jewish community, a dollar circulates for 19 days. In the African- American community a dollar is gone within 6 hours.
• Out of every dollar an African American spends in this country, less than two cents go to black-owned businesses.
• White-owned firms have average annual sales of $439,579. Black-owned firms: $74,018.
* Sources: Brooke Stephens, Talking Dollars and Making Sense; Michael H. Shuman, "Community Entrepreneurship"; "Race and Entrepreneurial Success Black-, Asian-, and White-Owned Businesses in the United States" a 2005 Massachusetts Institute of Technology Study; the 2006 U.S. Census Bureau.
>via: http://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/publicaffairsbooks-cgi-bin/display?book=978...
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AFTER WORDS WITH
MAGGIE ANDERSON
March 4, 2012
>via: http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/303641-1#