"Until we Blacks develop a passion for economic strategy and entrepreneurship, we’re going to be the only group left in America waiting for a bailout. Every immigrant group that has come here has majored in business development. We ought to zoom in on Dr. King’s message to strengthen Black businesses and that is let’s not forsake the building of our own." - Rev. DeForest Soaries
There’s no comfortable way to say this, so I won’t soften it: point blank we are an over-consuming and under-business developing people and it’s costing us economic power.
As a Black person living in Pontiac when you walk or drive through majority Black neighborhoods and you view the existing businesses it is clear and obvious that the majority are owned by non-Blacks (Arabs, Asians, etc.).
This non-Black business domination of Black communities is not just a phenomenon in Pontiac it’s the case throughout America, yes there's a scarcity of Black business development nationwide. A 2023 Pew Research study cites that Blacks only own about 3% of U.S. businesses; Blacks are 14% of the country's population.
Most Black businesses are sole proprietorships; about seven in ten (71%) of Black owned firms had between one and 9 employees. Black businesses accounted for just 1% of gross revenue from all classifiable companies.
According to recent studies in 2025 Blacks in America have a buying power of over 2 trillion dollars, this tremendous spending is spent overwhelmingly with non-Black businesses. Indeed, Black dollars don't benefit Black people! In a speech titled “The Birth of a New Age”, Dr. King stated:
“We cannot use the excuse anymore that we don’t have the money. The national income of the Negro now is more than 16 billion dollars, more than the national income of Canada. We have the money, we can do it. We have it for everything else that we want. We have the biggest and the finest cars in the world and we can spend it for all those frivolities, now let us use our money for something lasting, not merely for extravagances. I am not the preacher that would condemn social life and recreational activities those are important aspects of life but I would urge you not to put any of these things before this pressing and urgent problem of Civil Rights. We must spend our money not merely for the adolescent and transitory things, but this eternal, lasting something that we call freedom.”
Blacks have developed a consumer slave mentality that non-Blacks need our money more than we do. The 3% Black businesses number is not just a statistic. In practical terms, it means we are largely financing other people’s economic development while not funding our own; it’s a reflection of structural imbalance, it means:
• Fewer Black employers hiring within the community
• Less wealth being generated and passed down
• Minimal control over local economic conditions
• Reduced ability to fund schools, infrastructure, and social programs independently
Why Do Blacks Have Few Businesses?
In the post-civil Rights era (1965 to the present), Black America had won so-called legal access but lost economic direction. We gained entry into spaces that were once closed, but in many cases we entered as consumers rather than builders; employees rather than owners; borrowers rather than lenders.
To reiterate again, Black-owned businesses make up roughly 3% of all businesses in the United States a number that should disturb anyone serious about freedom, dignity, and long-term survival.
This paltry number is not accidental and it’s not simply a matter of individual failure. It is the predictable outcome of racist structural exclusion, cultural misdirection, and economic dependency that has been normalized over generations.
From Survival Economics to Consumption Culture
Historically, Black communities-built businesses out of necessity and self-determination. During segregation, we created parallel economies barbershops, insurance companies, farms, banks, schools because we had no other choice. Places like Black Wall Street were not just symbolic they were functional ecosystems of Black economic self-reliance.
But after the Civil Rights Movement, pursuing integration came with unintended economic consequences. As legal barriers fell, Black dollars began flowing outward into white suburban cities at unprecedented rates, as Malcolm X remarked:
"Any time you take your dollar out of your community and spend it in a community where you don't live, the community where you live gets poorer and poorer and the community where you spend your money gets richer and richer."
We were finally allowed to spend anywhere, and we did often without a corresponding strategy to own anything in our own communities and foreign merchants filled the void. The result? We transitioned from producers under pressure to consumers under the false self-worth belief that the more I buy, the more I am.
The Illusion of Progress Without Economic Ownership
Let’s be honest about what progress has looked like for many of us: more access to white name brands, more visibility in entertainment and sports, more representation in corporate spaces. But representation is not the same as ownership; visibility is not the same as Black economic control.
What should be clear is that a community cannot spend its way to power if it does not own the institutions where that money circulates. Black Americans command over two trillion dollars in annual purchasing power, yet that money rarely recycles within Black communities.
Black dollars exit the community almost immediately through non-Black businesses coupled with it flowing out into corporations that neither depend on nor reinvest in Black development at scale. This is not just an economic issue it’s a structural vulnerability.
Political Representation Without Economic Power
Here’s a hard contradiction we rarely confront directly; we have more Black elected officials today than at any point in American history: more mayors, city council members, state legislators, congress persons, even a former president in Barack Obama.
And yet, we have fewer Black-owned businesses proportionally than we did in earlier periods when political representation was far more limited. That should force a serious pause reflection.
There was a time when Black communities had less access to formal political power but maintained stronger internal economic systems. Today, we often celebrate political milestones while ignoring economic decline. That imbalance matters.
Because political power without economic backing is fragile. Elected officials can advocate, propose, and symbolize progress but without a strong economic base behind them, their ability to materially transform Black communities is constrained.
Policies can be passed, but if we don’t own businesses, banks, supply chains, and land, we remain dependent on external actors to implement and sustain those policies.
In plain terms Black elected officials are political symbols without substance; visibility without leverage; representation without Black financial empowerment; they receive votes but Blacks have gained little economic development.
Lets take a look here in Pontiac at Black elected officials and business development in Black neighborhoods. Pontiac has had a strong mayor for 46 years since 1980. Over this four decades period there's been 6 Black mayors and majority Black City councils, but Black neighborhood business development was not a priority, the neglect is obvious now!
This is not an argument against Black political leadership it’s an argument against depending on and overestimating what political leadership can achieve in the absence of economic power. A community that does not control its economic engines cannot fully direct its political destiny.
The Exploitation Parallel: From Black America to Black Africa
We need to confront a deeper, global pattern one that connects the Black economic condition here in America to a broader Pan African historical reality.
Black Americans generate over a trillion dollars in purchasing power annually. But because we lack sufficient business ownership, production capacity, and distribution control, that wealth is systematically extracted by non-Black businesses.
In many ways our lack of business situation mirrors what has happened and continues to happen in numerous Africa nations. Across the continent, countries rich in gold, oil, cobalt, diamonds, and other natural resources remain economically underdeveloped not because they lack value, but because they lack control over the systems that extract, process, and profit from that value.
External imperialist entities like the U.S. and European nations come in extract African resources, export profits, and leave behind limited infrastructure and widespread poverty. The lands of Africa are rich; the people are rich in potential, but the system of neo-colonialism is structured for extraction, not development.
Now look at Blacks in America, our “resource” is not minerals it's spending power; it’s cultural influence; it’s labor; it’s creativity. Yet, just like those mineral rich nations in Africa we do not control the pipelines through which our value is monetized.
So what happens? Our dollars are extracted ‘domestic business colonialism’; our neighborhoods are economically underdeveloped; our needs remain underfunded; this is not a coincidence it is a pattern.
Think about this Black folks, our spending enriches Arabs, Asians, and East Indians by the billions; their profiteering of funds from us is used for their business expansion; our money buys their very nice suburban homes and new cars; it pays for their children’s private schools (K-12) and college tuitions; it enables them to send massive amounts of money back to their native countries to take care of their people, as Dr. Amos Wilson stated:
"How many jobs do we create just buying from Koreans, buying from other ethnic groups out here? How many people are we creating employment for in terms of our spending and consumption habits as a people? We are creating all kinds of businesses, jobs, and wealth for others and we must come to understand this! We are creating businesses and jobs for others while we don't develop businesses for ourselves and go around begging for jobs."
In contrast, Black communities are drained of needed dollars; our communities are in decline; schools and recreation centers closed; high unemployment; too often survival economics (drug selling, crime) is prevalent. Just like in exploited African nations, the absence of Black business ownership turns collective wealth generation into wealth extraction.
Black Barriers To Business Are Real
We cannot discuss Black business honestly without acknowledging racist systemic barriers such as:
• Limited access to startup capital
• Discriminatory lending practices
• Lower rates of inherited wealth
• Unequal access to business networks and mentorship
These are real external racist constraints, but here’s where I push us: internally we cannot allow these constraints to stop us from pursuing Black business development and economic self-reliance.
Other non-white immigrant groups for example arrive with fewer resources and still manage to build dense business ecosystems within a generation. They circulate dollars internally, prioritize ownership, and create economic insulation. We have to ask: what are they doing that we are not consistently doing?
Cultural Misalignment: The Status Trap
Part of our economic underdevelopment is internal lies in culture of paying for what we want and begging for what we need. Too often, we have been socially conditioned to be immediate gratification consumer slave ‘shopaholics’ chasing white symbols of success rather than systems of power.
Indeed, for decades we’ve seen hundreds of thousands of Black men lose their lives and freedom chasing symbolic wealth; too many lives lost to the illusion that consumption equals status.
High-end clothes, luxury cars, jewelry are not inherently wrong though they should not be a priority especially when they become substitutes for economic empowerment, they become richness deception and debt traps. Meanwhile, business ownership requiring disciplined financial management remains underdeveloped.
The Dependency Problem
When the Black community does not own its businesses, it becomes completely dependent on others for:
• Employment
• Goods and services
• Financial systems
• Food distribution
• Housing development
• Grant funding
Dependency is not just economic, it’s psychological; it shapes how we see ourselves and what we believe is possible. And dependency creates a dangerous condition: if others control your access to resources, they indirectly control your stability.
Toward Economic Self-Reliance
As Black folks, if we are serious about economic change, then we need a shift not just in policy, but in mindset and behavior.
1. Re-center Ownership
We have to make business ownership a cultural priority again not just for the elite, but as a normalized path of Cooperative Economics (Ujamaa).
2. Circulate the Dollar Intentionally
Supporting Black businesses cannot be occasional or symbolic. It must become strategic and habitual.
3. Build Ecosystems, Not Isolated Hustles
One business is not enough, we need networks—suppliers, distributors, service providers working together.
4. Social Entrepreneurship
Supporting local Black businesses so they can be profitable and reinvest some of their profits into community services, infrastructure, and other local businesses.
5. Cultural Preservation
Supporting Black businesses that reflect and preserve Black culture, history, and identity.
6. Cooperative Food Buying Club
Black blocks can come together buy food at wholesale costs the price savings from retail prices can be invested or be used as start-up capital for a community business.
7. Community Flea Markets
Flea markets can be set-up in places like Church basements where neighborhood residents can sell goods competing against non-Black businesses; vendor fees would be cheaper and the flea market would also act as a business incubator.
8. Teach Economic Literacy Early
Our children must first and foremost learn the necessity of economic power and community business control; they should learn entrepreneurship as basic life-skills not a specialized knowledge. They should understand credit, ownership, investing, delayed gratification, and the pitfalls of consumerism.
9. Redefine Success
Success must shift from what we wear and drive to what we own and build.
Closing Reflection
As Black folks we must accept that no government programs, no corporations, no political party, no Black elected officials, no rich Black celebrities and professional athletes are going to build economic independence for us at the scale we need. Financial assistance can help but it cannot replace economic self-determination.
If we as a people stay on the continued current path of economic suicide, high consumption, low ownership we will remain economically exploited visible but financially weak much like resource-rich African countries that don’t control their own wealth.
Developing and increasing Black-owned businesses is not just an economic imperative, it’s a struggle against racial economic injustice. If we reclaim the discipline of building, owning, and circulating wealth within our communities, that 3% business ownership can grow and with it our economic power.
The question is not just: “Why do Blacks have few businesses?”
The deeper question is: What are we willing to change to build more?
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