Couple's 'buy black' experiment becomes a movement
Go ahead, glance it over and then come back to me.
==============
About three years ago I was looking into buying a small retail business. The numbers looked good, and most importantly, it would have matched, or bettered, my regular take home dollars, with lots of glaringly obvious growth potential.
I mulled it over for a couple of weeks, and backed away for several reasons.
First off, it would have been a 24/7 job. When I wasn't at the shop, I would be worrying about the shop.
Another concern was staff. Other family members who have owned businesses could never leave them. Reliable, trust worthy staff that won't steal all your shit is hard to find. It's near impossible,actually.
And then there was the subject of vacations and travel. I really enjoy that stuff. Close the shop for a week, and your clientele finds someplace else to go. And you have to close it, because, as I've said, operating staff is hard enough to find.
Looking around town, it occurred to me why all these other privately run shops were able to keep it going. And a look around your neighborhood should show the same thing: Families.
The proprietor is free to take a day off because he has his wife, sons or daughters to watch the doors.
Is it now any wonder why nearly every business in town is run by Arabs, Koreans, or Indians (no, not the drunken reservation kind)?
These ethnic cultures place great emphasis on strong family bonds, where marriage is expected, divorce is non-existent and illegitimacy is not acceptable.
If you want to find a Black-run store to buy shampoo and medicines, you'll first have to solve the problems presented by the 76% rate of illegitimacy.
And then try to convince somebody he's not better off with the 9-5 hours, twelve holidays and four weeks vacation every year, while you have opted to take the 9-5 path yourself.
(Not to mention disability insurance, which has saved my ass from ruin the last several months.)
What I see in the lack of Black-run shops is an improvement in the lives of Blacks generally. Today, the hard working, initiative minded Black has educational and career opportunities that were largely unheard of in generations past. Seriously, why own a dress shop for a middle class lifestyle, when you can become an operations manager for a Nordstrom instead?
Having a retail business might be all fine and good for some people,and clearly is for many, but I know which way I go on this one.
5 comments:
It's short-sighted not because of the emphasis is on "black owned" businesses but because it ignores and - in fact - jeopardizes work done on mass products by the black people who are punching the clock at the factory where the stuff these folks aren't buying is being made. How come they aren't thinking about those people who work every day and do the right thing for their kids and pay their taxes? What are they, chopped liver?
Not to mention if this were being done by a white person there would be all hell to pay.
I understand that there is a shortage of black-owned businesses, and there's no doubt that the systematic and institutionalized racism that has been here in the States for generations contributed mightily to that. I don't think anyone can argue that there was no such a thing as Jim Crow laws(enacted by Democrats, btw).
But GO do it. Instead of this kind of specious nonsense, GO MAKE ONE.
Yes the past happened. Yes it was wrong. Yes there are still white bigot assholes in the world. But it's like black-on-black violence in the neighborhood. There comes a time when blaming somebody else for shit is just the ramblings of a pointless, self-justifying poser.
You know... "be the change you want to see in the world." Why should that just apply to some people and not others?
I don't care what a person may think of his politics - I have my own problems with it - but at least Obama didn't whine and blame and point fingers why it CAN'T happen, and just went and DID it. I give him tons of credit for that.
So DO IT!
RW: good points all around, 'cept for the 'shortage of black owned businesses'.
how many is the right number?
if blacks can get want they want sold to them, is there really a need for them.
black 'hoods are full of mom and pops. korean-owned mom and pops, but is that bad?
if whites have to buy donuts from a cambodian, is the white race ill served?
They suggest that the end of Jim Crow was the downfall of many black businesses, but the ugly fact of the matter is that there was no Jim Crow north of the Mason Dixon, and areas like Chicago are about as segregated as they ever were.
The problem is simple; before the Great Society, black illegitimacy was about 25%. Now, as Gino notes, it's 75%. Good luck running a business without a family!
What I meant was - the "right" number of black owned businesses would be the amount of businesses black people want to have and start and make work in a free economy. But I think it is a reasonable assumption to say that in years past start-up loans from banks were not given to black guys who had a bright idea, simply on the basis of their race. Some of the examples of businesses cited by the people in the article were companies that didn't just happen overnight but had decades of history before now. I'm quite sure 1960 would have been a difficult time for a lot of black guys to get a business loan in a lot of places.
My problem with the thrust of the people covered by this article is that their argument - and their reaction - would have made sense 40 years ago. I would even say - 1969, who could blame them?
But it's 2009. They need to get with the program. To me, "post-racial" means the black religion of victimhood is finally seen as a thing of the past. And if you DO IT you will get your reward.
If my favorite cheese sticks were made by a black company, for instance, they would have a fanatic customer.
I tend to read it the same way that RW does. A lot of the barriers that blacks face these days are of their own making. And we've seen this sort of thing before -- blacks from the West Indies have often been more successful, at least initially, in climbing the socioeconomic ladder. Here in the Twin Cities, we have a lot of Liberian immigrants who are now doing the entrepreneurship thing. It is interesting to watch.
Post a Comment