Blacks in this country have the highest rate of unemployment in the nation.  There has been much ballyhoo regarding the recent uptick in employment.  This can be extremely misleading if you don’t look behind the scenes.  According to the 2012 US Census Bureau American community survey our poverty rate has risen to 28.1% which was an increase from the 25.5% in 2005.

Business Building is the Missing Link

Black-Poverty-2012-Statistics-chartThis can be directly attributed to the lack of employment opportunities in our community.  This dire situation is primarily of our own doing, blacks when compared to whites, Latinos and Asians, have the lowest rate of business ownership to our detriment.

 

Facebook-Dearth-of-Black-BusinessBlacks seem to have an aversion to risk taking and a drive for economic independence, two hallmarks any entrepreneur must have to succeed.  In his book “The Miseducation Of The Negro,”  Carter G. Woodson laments on how black children are not being taught to create and build their own businesses, but to seek careers working for and maintaining other peoples businesses instead.

What other reason could explain why we generally don’t look at business ownership as an option for obtaining the American dream.
Although business ownership is one of the best paths to creating legacy wealth meaning wealth that is past down generation to generation.  this lack of entrepreneurial spirit has to have been taken from us somehow.

 

Black business ownership is vitally important

 

This is why teaching our history to our children is so vitally important.  Blacks have a rich and storied past of business ownership but through the years we have become mislead, lulled into believing that entrepreneurship somehow is less desirable than having a career.

The video above shows how through group economics these Vietnamese boat people took a simple gesture of kindness and turned it into a $100,000,000 business that changed their futures for ever.

 

This is an area that we should be dominating all day long.  How much money is being spent on luxuries like this everyday in our communities.  And how much of that money comes back to our communities.  While we are wasting time watching senseless shows like “love and Hip-Hope or “The Haves and the have nots” and practicing conspicuous consumerism,  people like these are eating our lunch.  We better wake up and wake up soon!