Black people do not support black business

The Asians and white people support one another in their businesses. In these communities, money will circulate more or longer amongst themselves before it is used outside their circle.

I have seen Asians turning in droves to buy vegetables, fruits and other basics from a shop or corner store that belongs to one of them. Similarly, white people will prefer to expend their cash on a white owned business establishment than on a black man or women's business. This is one of the reasons why the Asian and white communities are thriving in business than blacks. This is a positive way of supporting each other in business; there is nothing racist about this trend.

The Jews are renowned for their entrepreneurship world-wide. A Jew will look first for anything she or he wants to purchase in a fellow Jewish shop before venturing to a non-Jew, white or black man's shop. Every day, in large cosmopolitan cities, blacks are seen flocking in their thousands to well-established white businesses for small groceries such as milk, bread, vegetables and fruits. We do not see white or Asian people taking business to black communities in a similar way.

Black people should realise that when they buy from or support black business, they are not helping a white chief executive officer buy a sixth vacation holiday home somewhere in an exclusive holiday resort sanctuary . Actually, they would be helping a little girl get some shoes for school, a little boy get his pencil and pen, a black parent to put food on his children's table or a student to pay for his or her school fees.

Many a black people will cry out that institutional racism is stifling their progress in business. I do not dispute the fact that institutional racism negatively affects black people world over, however, supporting your own kind is a stand against this type of racism.

Blacks should endeavour to circulate their money amongst themselves within their communities. Take care of your own and they will take care of you.

When money is circulated around within the black community, more black people will get employed by black employers. Certainly, not that everything done this way will directly benefit the black community, but it is almost entirely assured that the overall effects will be positive. Also, in that process, blacks will be supporting themselves, as all they spend will come back to them in time.

When blacks purchase at local and black owned businesses rather than nationally white owned businesses, more money is kept within the black community. That means those purchases are twice as efficient in terms of keeping the black and local economy alive.

 A study showed that for every dollar spent at a local business, 73 cents stays in the community versus 43 cents at non-local companies.

By supporting our own, it entails that the black business men and women will be able to donate more money and goods to local charities than white owned international companies. Black companies will then be able to contribute to the local job market and they can also provide better customer service by hiring black people with expertise specific to their local product or service.
Many black business economies are languishing not because too little cash comes in, but as a result of what happens to that money. Money is like blood. It needs to keep moving around to keep the black-business economy going. When money is expend elsewhere—at big supermarkets, non-black owned utilities and other services such as on-line retailers, it flows out.

By shopping at the corner store owned by a black man or woman, black people keep their communities from becoming ghost towns and consumers of products owned by the white men or Asian.
If black communities keep turning to white and Asian owned stores for a particular product -say, bread, this signals an opportunity for a black entrepreneur to bake and sell bread. The point is not that black communities should suddenly seek to be self-sufficient in all ways, but rather to shift the balance.

Blacks are largely a service-providing race which is still just a generation away from being a race of producers. While no community functions in isolation, supporting black business helps recreate the diversity of small black businesses that are flexible and can adjust to changing needs and market conditions. For black communities, in a world dominated with white and Asian businesses, it is not about how much money black people have got, but how much they can keep circulating within their community, without letting it leak out.

Black communities should build for themselves instead of helping other races to build. Black businesses will not succeed without the help of the black people. As long as the black communities continue to haemorrhage their money out of their communities as fast as they earn it, they shall remain under the control of other races. A man cannot ride your back unless it is bent. Black communities should stand upright, shoulder to shoulder, in support of each other; otherwise the black race will always remain the hewers of wood and drawers of water.

Tendai Kwari [Follow on Twitter @tendaikwari ]