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During the past 20 years, the author has watch China move from being a developing country into an industrial superpower
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Black borrowers face “a perception out there that African Americans have an inferior skill set and expectations,” argues R. Donahue “Don” Peebles, chairman and CEO of Peebles Corp., an African American real estate developer. “How do you start a business if banks won’t lend?” asks the Reverend Jesse Jackson. Smaller nonprofit players such as Seedco Financial, which extends money and technical assistance to low-income entrepreneurs, may help some deal with the funding gap. As President James Bason points out: “The biggest challenge is the first 90 days, when there’s a large outflow of capital.”
Nurturing new businesses is only one part of the puzzle in increasing the fortunes of black workers. Deeper issues remain in a country where African Americans are six times as likely to be incarcerated as whites and only 60 percent as likely to have a college degree. The debate continues on what role government should play in improving the economic prospects of black workers. Novelist Ed Jones credits the scholarship he received at Holy Cross with enabling him to realize “how high the sky could be.” What bothers him now is what he perceives to be the current public and political apathy about African Americans who are falling behind. “I don’t see who’s being a champion for them,” he says. For Jones’s former classmate, Supreme Court Justice Thomas, government policies are no substitute for an education and hard work. Achievement, says Thomas, “is an individual act.”
Few appreciate that sentiment better than entrepreneurs such as John Hope Bryant, whose Operation Hope promotes financial literacy. “Economic empowerment is the next wave of civil rights,” says Bryant. “Everyone’s got to understand the language of money.”
The bottom line: African Americans, now facing a 15.8 percent jobless rate and declining household wealth, lag in small business ownership.
This article was adapted from Fraternity, by Diane Brady (Spiegel & Grau).
Brady is senior editor at Bloomberg Businessweek in New York.
