EDITORIAL LOOK
By William Washington, Springfield's Voice
We have heard it said many times that Black businesses cannot survive on the sole support of other Black people, that there must be additional influx of business from other groups as well in order for an African American business to make it.
Maybe that's why some Black business owners try to distance themselves from Black consumers and attempt to hide the fact that they are Black. I have heard some business owners say that "Whites will not patronize me if they perceive me as a Black-owned business".
If we take out businesses that always have and probably always will cater to and be supported by their own group, that is, mortuaries, barber and beauty shops, dentists and doctors for the most part, we still have a host of businesses in our communities with which to work.
If you think back to the post Civil War period, Jim Crow and even the 1950's, you will remember that Black businesses flourished and they did it on the sole support of Black consumers.
Sure, our businesses need and should have white consumer dollars and anyone else's dollars in return for quality products or services but we must never overlook, negate or diminish the value of the Black consumer dollar. Believe me, others think quite highly of our spending power.
There are several reasons for the way we think about this subject and for our low propensity to do business with one another. However, the main issues revolve around how we treat one another; how we follow through (or do not follow through; how we take one another for granted) and how we tend to mix business with personal relationships.
These problems run so deeply in many of us that we do not even want to be associated with another Black person or business. We refuse to shop at Black-owned stores or call on Black professionals to do work for us. Likewise, Black business owners fall back on the same excuse that Black people alone cannot support their business, and then try to ease closer to the white market.
Simply stated, it's not that Black consumers cannot support Black businesses-it's that they don't, at least not to the degree they should.
If African-Americans simply plowed 25 percent of their disposable income into Black owned businesses, we would see an economic turnaround, like none other in history. If Black business owners would focus on "taking care of business" instead of taking shortcuts with Black consumers, they would gain more of the benefits of our $400 billion market.