December 08, 2016 

By Stacy M. Brown 

NNPA Newswire Contributor 

It’s a trend that many are hoping won’t just turn into a passing fad.

 

Late last month, Essence magazine noted that after years of slow-burning idealism, #BuyBlack has seen a community-wide takeoff.

 

And, as the holiday season moves into full swing, the #BuyBlack campaign has led many to imagine what would happen if African-Americans — the largest consumer group of color in the United States with an estimated $1.2 trillion in spending power — routinely demonstrated allegiance to the 2.6 million Black-owned businesses that exist in America.

 

“I think the #BuyBlack initiative is a good move for the Black community and not just because of dollars and cents,” said Walt L. Jones III, principal of the SEQ Advisory Group, a Bethesda, Maryland-based management consulting and advisory firm dedicated to helping businesses achieve the highest level of performance and efficiency. “There’s the deeper perspective of reinvesting in our own community and building up the local businesses, some that are owned by our friends, neighbors, and relatives.”

 

Jones continued: “Similar to the #ECStrong initiative, a community can only heal, recover, and persevere if its residents are willing to make an investment in its infrastructure.”

 

The idea of Black capitalism goes back many decades, according to an NPR report which cited the advocacy of civil rights activists Booker T. Washington and Marcus Garvey for African-Americans to create and do business with each other to build wealth within their own communities.

 

The #BuyBlack movement has helped Black-owned banks to realize substantial gains. In one month, this summer, Washington, D.C.-based Industrial Bank opened more than 1,500 new accounts with deposit balances of about $2.7 million — or more than the number of accounts that are usually opened in a six-month period.

 

At Baltimore-based Harbor Bank, new accounts totaled about $10 million in deposits, said Joseph Haskins Jr., the bank’s president and chairman.

 

“Because of the [#BuyBlack] movement, we’ve received many telephone calls from individuals and organizations who’ve shown a lot of interest,” Haskins said. “Once folks learned or discovered that we are Black-controlled, things took off.”

 

The idea of supporting the community is vital for all involved, said Shahara Wright, an attorney and business development strategist with The CEO Effect, LLC, a Stafford, Texas-based organization that provides small and mid-sized companies with legal and business strategies including entity formation, mergers and acquisitions, investor packages and contracts.

 

“I think it only works when it is local. Many people point to Jewish and Asian communities, which seem to have cohesive purchasing power to support their own,” Wright said. “The #BuyBlack seeks to create that same idea…it ultimately has to be a community that you support consistently.”

 

Sonja Thompkins, a brick & mortar business strategist and founder of SincerelySonja.com, said #BuyBlack is a trend for consumers of color to consciously spend their money within their own communities and particularly with Black-owned businesses, a welcome movement.

 

“I believe it gives people a sense of pride to see businesses like ours that offer an array of quality products in our own communities,” Thompkins said. “And, because most people are going to spend the money anyway, the recent occurrences of injustice make people want to do something. Everyone’s not protesting in the street. They have chosen to make a statement economically.”

 

Results from the most recent Nielsen study revealed that the Black buying power has continued to increase, rising from its current $1 trillion level to a forecasted $1.3 trillion by 2017.

 

Black buying power has seen an 86 percent increase since 2000 and accounts for 8.7 percent of the nation’s total. The growth in black buying power stems in part from an increase in the number of Black-owned businesses as well as from an uptick in education among the African-American population, which leads to higher incomes, the report noted.

 

Also, despite historically high unemployment rates, African-Americans have shown resiliency in their ability to persevere as consumers.

 

“The #BuyBlack is important because so much of us do not buy Black, and subsequently we watch Black businesses get shut down because of this,” said Gerra Harmon, founder of Affirmative-clapbaction.com, a web retailer that Harmon said is all about the creation of something individuals can identify with and wear proudly. “In the past, African-Americans would overlook Black businesses and we do not want to do so anymore.

 

Harmon continued: “[The #BuyBlack movement] is about empowering our people and I think it is a great movement, because we are not only letting our communities know, but letting the world know we are worth more than what we have been given in the past.”

 

Being a Black-owned business in the beauty industry presents a unique set of challenges that has encouraged retailers, said Richelieu Dennis, the founder and CEO of Sundial Brands, the largest Black-owned beauty company in the country which manufactures Shea Moisture, Shea Girl, Nubian Heritage and Madam C.J. Walker beauty culture.

 

“So, I am especially encouraged to see the raised level of consciousness that many Black beauty bloggers are driving to bring attention to an issue that has long been a challenge for Black-owned beauty brands,” Dennis said.

 

“Over the last 25 years, I’ve received questions and judgments about our products and our business that I’m pretty sure few, if any, White-owned businesses have ever had to answer like ‘Since you’re Black, your products are just for Black people, right?’”

 

The reality is that Black beauty is at the forefront of the beauty revolution – from the mass shift to demanding natural ingredients to the natural, textured hair that we now see on runways, in advertisements and on the covers of international magazines and beyond, Dennis said.

 

Dennis continued: “So, we have to be positioned to serve all consumers as other groups evolve into embracing new, more inclusive beauty standards.  It is critical that we capture the market we have created and that we don’t leave it for someone else to capitalize on which has historically been the case.”

Category: Business

 

December 01, 2016 

City News Service

 

The Los Angeles City Council approved an ordinance this week, that bars employers in Los Angeles from asking job applicants to disclose their criminal records during the initial stages of the recruitment process.

 

The measure, which was approved on a 12-1 vote, will institute a policy known as "fair chance" or "ban the box," requiring employers to remove check boxes or questions from job forms that ask about an applicant's criminal record.

 

Councilman Mitch Englander cast the dissenting vote.

 

The council must vote on the matter again since the initial vote was not unanimous, but it is expected to pass since subsequent votes require a mere majority.

 

If given final approval, employers with 10 or more workers and city contractors will be prohibited from asking about criminal history until a conditional job offer has been made.

 

An employer who ultimately decides against hiring a person after learning about his or her criminal record would need to provide a justification for why the job offer is being rescinded.

 

City officials point to statistics from the National Institute of Justice that show the likelihood of a job offer goes down 50 percent if an applicant has a criminal record.

 

The measure is part of a national movement aimed at giving formerly incarcerated people a better chance at obtaining employment. Representatives of groups like A New Way of Life, LA Voice, Homeboy Industries and All of Us or None have spoken in favor of Los Angeles adopting the ban at City Council committee meetings.

 

Category: Business

November 24, 2016 

LAWT News Service 

The Board of Directors of the Vermont Slauson Economic Devel­opment Corporation (VSEDC) — a leader in local development and provider of Economic, Community and small business development — is pleased to announce the selection of Joseph “Joe” T. Rouzan III as the new Executive Director.

 

Mr. Rouzan assumes the leadership of VSEDC left vacant by the loss of the founder and Executive Director Marva Smith Battle-Bey in April of this year.  “After a thorough and deliberate selection process, the Board of Directors is delighted that Joe will lead VSEDC as we navigate through the evolving and expanding needs for economic and small business development solutions in South Los Angeles,” said, Bill Holland, Board Vice President.

 

Mr. Rouzan most recently held the position of Director for the City of Los Angeles Business Source program overseeing 9 Business Source Centers throughout Los Angeles and operating a 4.5M annual budget.  Joe concludes 29 years of City Service which includes 13 with the Economic and Workforce Development Department and 16 with the Los Angeles Police Department.

 

Prior to his most recent city service, Joe served as the Vice President and Chief of Staff for the Brotherhood Crusade, General Manager of both the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza and Hawthorne Malls and owned and operated JTA Security Management and Investigations.  Joe holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Public Administration, conferred by California State University, Dominguez Hills. He resides in Los Angeles with his wife of 36 years, Karran and has 5 adult children.

 

“I want to thank the VSEDC Board for allowing me to serve as the organization’s Executive Director.  This is a bitter sweet point in my life, as well as my professional career.  There will never be another Marva Smith Battle-Bey, but I do plan to lead this organization in a fashion that will make her proud by creating economic and career opportunities throughout Los Angeles, particularly South LA,” stated Mr. Rouzan.

 

For additional information please call VSEDC at  213.753.2335 or email Lura Ball @ This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

Category: Business

November 17, 2016 

By JESSE J. HOLLAND 

Associated Press 

The nation’s largest civil rights organization says it will closely monitor President-elect Donald Trump and his incoming administration’s policies and actions to ensure that hard-fought civil rights gains are not lost without a protracted fight.

 

“We will not accept proposals to roll back civil rights ... not on our watch,” Wade Henderson, president of Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said Monday.

 

Seven of the nation’s largest civil rights organizations – the NAACP, the National Urban League, the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and the National Action Network – also criticized the appointment of conservative media executive Stephen Bannon as Trump’s senior counselor.

 

The selection of Bannon, a favorite of the alt-right and white nationalist movement, concerned many of the groups, which said they would be prepared to organize and mobilize if necessary. “This is not a good sign if we’re talking about the unity of our nation,” said Melanie Campbell, president of the National Coalition on Black Civic Partici­pation and convener of the Black Women’s Roundtable.

 

With black and Hispanic voters, Trump apparently did as well as Republican Mitt Romney when Romney lost to President Barack Obama in 2012, according to exit polls. Trump appeared to have won more than half of white voters, who made up 70 percent of the electorate.

 

Trump has cooled on his campaign rhetoric, seemingly backing off his vow to build a solid wall along the southern U.S. border on Sunday. House Speaker Paul Ryan also has rejected any “deportation force” targeting people in the country illegally. But that doesn’t mean that other Trump policies, like his admiration of “stop and frisk,” or his desire to attempt to ban Muslim immigrants from the United States, aren’t still on the agenda, the groups said.

 

“I think we’re mistaking a change in tone with a change in content,” said Rev. Al Sharpton, head of the National Action Network.

 

The groups said they would wait to see Trump’s actual policies dealing with the inner cities, which the president-elect said he would focus on. There are some areas in which they can work with the Trump administration, but “these seem to be the exceptions rather than the rule,” Henderson said.

 

Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., and Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said they would continue to work on voting rights issues under the Trump administration, given they fielded thousands of voting rights complaints – 30,000 on Election Day alone, according to Clarke – during last week’s elections. Fourteen states had new voting or registration restrictions in place for the 2016 presidential election, raising concerns that minority voters in particular would have a harder time accessing the ballot box.

 

“We are not going to stand by as votes continue to be suppressed,” Ifill said.

 

With Republicans in control of the White House and Congress, the groups refused to say what their plans were for opposing any of Trump’s policies. “We will use all of the tools available to us,” said Cornell William Brooks, president of the NAACP.

 

The groups also refused to say whether they would seek a meeting with Trump before or after his inauguration. “Today is not a day to discuss meetings. Today is a day to say as loudly as possibly where we stand,” said Marc Morial, head of the National Urban League.

 

 

 

Category: Business

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