KWAME

Last month, the unemployment rate for black folks hit 6%. This is well clear of the record low 4% that got a lot of coverage back in April on how the gap was closing between black and white folks. I have seen a headline floating around that 90% (267,000) of the 300,000 unemployment claims that were filed in the United States this past Spring were filed by a black person. What comes up for you when you read that? I have questions about the math there after staring at the BLS report for an hour. Please help me if you’ve done some analysis on this.

I will say that the unemployment rate is one more data point validating that black folks have to shift the game we’re playing on the field. At every turn over the past three years, we have heard statistics talking about how black people are at the highest risk for succumbing to one thing or another. How do we shift that? One thing that I clearly think we need to do is find ways to increase the intensity in which we help one another, and expand the breadth of where we help one another. In this instance, I am squarely focused on what happens on the economic front.

The tropes about black people not supporting each other’s businesses has to be laid to rest. That has not always been the case for us. We were here before we were surrounded by options to purchase from people who were not black. There’s nothing keeping us from rediscovering that at scale – being each other’s customers, investors, marketers, and more. There have been movements around this concept for a long time. I’d love to see buy-black movements evolve into the normal way of life.

Some time ago, I wrote a piece on how there needs to be a trading of keys across the African Diaspora. We need to see and understand the challenges we are facing in different parts of the world. My sense is that we will be able to identify the overlaps, and those overlaps will prompt the commitment to helping each other on a global scale.

John Rice, the founder of MLT, published a piece earlier this week on how it is time to focus on the economic piece of the black experience in this country. He highlighted the need to get more black businesses to scale. MLT attracts some of the best black talent in the country and provides them to playbook to make it in white corporate America. It would be amazing for MLT to develop and implement a playbook on working for a black-owned business that may not be as flashy as a Goldman Sachs or Target or McKinsey, but is building a strong business and could use the kind of talent MLT cultivates.

I did a search the other day for the number of black-owned businesses that employ over 1,000 people. I was not able to find any lists of such companies and I am very curious to find out what that number is. I would love to see organizations like Management Leadership for Tomorrow, OneTen, and other that supporting black people in the workforce, focus their efforts on holding up the hands of black-owned businesses that are scaling.

I am looking at myself on this front as well. I support a number of black businesses, help a lot of black entrepreneurs build their businesses, but do not work for a black-owned business. There’s clearly more work for me to do on this front.