by Johari Hamilton and Paula Anderson
Today, shoppers will be standing in long lines to purchase items for the Christmas holiday. Computers, smartphones and other gadgets will be marked down for consumers to the get best deal. The Big Box retailers will benefit primarily from what is known as "Black Friday."
African-American business owners may not fare as well when it comes to Black Friday sales due to statistics included in an article on the state of black businesses.
Brian K. Marshall, director of Entrepreneurship at Business and Community Lenders at Texas describes the state of black wealth in the article. Marshall drills down on the huge disparity between minority-owned and white-owned businesses across the U.S.
According to Marshall, “Sixty-seven percent of firms without employees had annual sales of less than $25,000."
He goes on to point out the need for economic empowerment. White business owners have an unfair advantage over black business owners when it comes to fundamental wealth. Marshall said, "The 99th percentile black family is worth a mere $1,574,000, while the 99th percentile white family is worth over 12 million dollars.”
Marshall cites these statistics. "The Small Business Administration indicates that just over 19 million businesses, or 70.9 percent of all U.S. businesses, are white owned. Blacks own about 2.6 million businesses or 9.5 percent of all U.S. businesses, and Latinos own 3.3 million businesses or 12.2 percent of all American businesses. But the sales and employment numbers tell a more depressing story. The 19 million white owned businesses have 88 percent of the overall sales, and control 86.5 percent of U.S. employment, while black businesses have a mere 1.3 percent of total American sales, and 1.7 percent of the nation’s employees."
Throughout the article, Marshall gives solutions to help decrease the racial wealth gap that currently exists and move black businesses forward.
“Robust black entrepreneurship will require an environment where the racial wealth disparity already has been confronted and altered directly.”
“Having wealth must beget wealth,” concludes Marshall.
To read the full article, click here.