Black Politics Without Economics - Some Voting no Financing

by Kenny Anderson

With Black elected officials on every level of American government the past 40 years economic progress for Blacks largely stalled out in the 2000's, and it went sharply into reverse during the Great Recession of 2007-2009, when all Americans experienced big drops in wealth, income, and jobs.

The election of Barak Obama as the first Black president in 2008 at the height of the subprime mortgage crisis, Black home ownership had dropped back to 46 percent. As defaults and foreclosures continue to take a heavy toll in Black communities, it has fallen further to 43 percent today.

As in all previous periods of recession, Blacks were set back further than whites during the Great Recession, with Black unemployment soaring to a peak of 16.7 percent and reaching nearly 50 percent for Black youths. Reflecting the historic disparities with whites, Blacks also have had to struggle harder to get back to break-even since the recovery began in June 2009.

By some measures, in fact, the latest so-called Obama economic recovery has been perhaps the harshest ever on Blacks. Median income for Black households has dropped 10.9 percent since the recovery began, compared with a 3.6 percent fall for white households, according to Sentier Research, an economic consulting firm.

White Americans now have 22 times more wealth than Black Americans, a figure that has nearly doubled during the recession. According to the Census, in 2010, media household net worth for whites totaled $110,729. For Blacks, the figure was $4,995.

According to Kevin Gray author of ‘The Decline of Black Politics: From Malcolm X to Barak Obama’ notes that “Obama hasn’t done much of substance or impact to ease, let alone end, the depression in the Black community; he’s been on the side of the banks and Wall Street.”

Black Purchasing Power and the Failure to Create Black Businesses

Blacks in America have undeniable buying power that will reach a whopping 1.4 trillion by 2019. But even with incredible purchasing power African Americans aren’t spending it with Black-owned companies.

A recent report by Nielson and Essence, only a small part of Black America’s buying power is spent at Black-owned businesses. In fact, “Blacks spend less money in Black-owned businesses than other racial and ethnic groups spend in businesses owned by members of their groups, including Hispanics and Asians,” studies have shown.

This buying gap has wide-ranging ramifications. If more Black dollars were spent on Black businesses it would create much-needed jobs in the African-American community. 

According to a study by the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, “between half a million and a million jobs could be created if higher-income black households spent only $1 of every $10 at Black-owned stores and other enterprises.”

Amos Wilson excerpt from Blueprint for Black Power:

"Black politics and activism without Black ownership of and control over primary forms and bases of power such as property, wealth, organization, etc., is the recipe for Black political and non-political powerlessness. The rather obtuse pursuit of political office and the ballot box as primary sources of power by the Black Community and its politicians without its concomitant ownership of and control over important economic resources has actually hindered the development of real Black Power in America.”

“More ominously, there appears to be a paradoxical and positive correlation between the number of Blacks elected and appointed to high office and retrogressions in the civil and human rights extended to Black Americans during the past twenty years. Increases in homelessness, poverty, unemployment, criminality and violence in the Black community; disorganization of the traditional Black family, inadequacies in education, increases in health problems of all types, and host of other social and political ills have all attended increases in the number of Black elected and appointed officials."

“That is, the more elected and appointed Black politicians, the more socio-economic problems the Black community has suffered. While we are not implying a causal relationship between the increase of the number of Black appointed and elected officials and the increased misery indices of the Black community, we are implying or asserting that their increase obscures those things which are responsible for and do little to ameliorate or uproot the increasing prevalence of social and economic problems in the Black community. The activities of Black politicians, given the current inadequacy of social organization and economic resources, harmfully distract the Black community’s attention from recognizing and eradicating the true causes of its problems and the remediation of its sense of powerlessness."