A question was raised a while back in a black network group that I belong to on LinkedIn. The question was "Why is it that every race seems to stick together regarding business [except] black folks?" There were a lot of great answers and a good discussion has been going on about it since then. That has been an age old question...
My sister and I sold Mary Kay together for a while. We would meet up once a week and plan to go out and network and try to meet people. As we would talk about our target market and strategies, sadly, we would always plan to steer clear of predominantly black areas when attempting to network because they tend to offer very little support to their own people. But Why? It's still been in question...
I happened upon a picture today titled "The Black Men of Black Wall Street". It sparked my interest because I've been looking for more black history to write on through the remainder of February. Anyway, I started researching and I had an epiphany.
"During the oil boom of the 1910s, the area of northeast Oklahoma around Tulsa flourished, including the Greenwood neighborhood, which came to be known as "the Negro Wall Street" (now commonly referred to as "the Black Wall Street")The area was home to several prominent black businessmen, many of them multimillionaires. Greenwood boasted a variety of thriving businesses that were very successful up until the Tulsa Race Riot. Not only did African Americans want to contribute to the success of their own shops, but also the racial segregation laws prevented them from shopping anywhere other than Greenwood. Following the riots, the area was rebuilt and thrived until the 1960s when desegregation allowed blacks to shop in areas that were restricted before."It seems to me that desegregation was both a blessing and a curse to the black community. I am not saying, by any means, that I am not happy that we do not have to endure what our ancestors did so many years ago and that, for the most part, there is equality in the modern day society. I am saying, however, that as a black community we have been so eager to shop and do business with people outside of our race to prove a point that we are allowing our black business to fail for lack of support. Then, we turn around and blame the very people that we are patronizing for keeping black businesses down. We, as consumers, are the make or break factor in any business. It goes beyond just saying that "We need to stick together" we need to actually start doing it. In so many ways, so many of us are still bonded and enslaved with our eyes closed. We have become the "Uncle Tom's" that no one ever wants to be. We consistently support and back other races and leave our own out to dry. While there may be something inside that wants to see black business succeed, if there not enough of our own people openly supporting us you cannot blame others for following suit.
As always, I would love to hear your thoughts, comments, arguments...
I think I have read the same book with title 'In the Black', Black men of Wall Street and it has the same set of lines. I wonder if Segregation had a built in bias that when once trespassed forced the attention of the blacks into a different boulevard. Apparently what brought the blacks together in Tulsa was the common understanding of their past and the issue of segregation, and when the whole Tulsa was desegregated, there was no point for living the black anymore. In mindset of the era, the bounds that held Blacks community together was built on false sense of identity - it was shallow and when the quid was broken, it no longer held special meaning, foundered after the 1960 desegregation. 'Things fall Apart' when the center cannot hold' W.B.Yeats. We need a new rising...
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