"The project of rallying black communities to support black businesses rests on the idea that if these business owners make money, black people as a whole will share in the economic benefits. But especially in the case of small businesses with small profit margins, it’s very unlikely profits are meaningfully reinvested toward “community” ends. And what if a black business owner lives in a predominantly white community? Problems like these are rarely discussed, let alone adequately addressed.
Further, this line of thinking serves to flatten the very real class differentiation that exists among the black population. The overwhelming majority of black people (as with people of any race) are working-class and will never be entrepreneurs or small business owners. In fact, the class divide among blacks is even larger than that of whites. When a black autoworker loses their job, there is no reservoir of collective black wealth they can tap into for help, no matter how well the black-owned business on their street is doing.
The idea of “black buying power” is another layer to this kind of activism. Again, this concept imagines the black population as a monolithic bloc with unified interests. Political engagement is reduced to the ability to choose one business enterprise over another. The endgame poses no real threat to socioeconomic inequality. Indeed, it’s so harmless that Richard Nixon himself embraced the idea of “black capitalism” instead of economic redistribution."
https://jacobin.com/2025/03/black-workers-public-dei-capitalism
#USA #DOGE #Trump #Musk #Capitalism #DEI
Further, this line of thinking serves to flatten the very real class differentiation that exists among the black population. The overwhelming majority of black people (as with people of any race) are working-class and will never be entrepreneurs or small business owners. In fact, the class divide among blacks is even larger than that of whites. When a black autoworker loses their job, there is no reservoir of collective black wealth they can tap into for help, no matter how well the black-owned business on their street is doing.
The idea of “black buying power” is another layer to this kind of activism. Again, this concept imagines the black population as a monolithic bloc with unified interests. Political engagement is reduced to the ability to choose one business enterprise over another. The endgame poses no real threat to socioeconomic inequality. Indeed, it’s so harmless that Richard Nixon himself embraced the idea of “black capitalism” instead of economic redistribution."
https://jacobin.com/2025/03/black-workers-public-dei-capitalism
#USA #DOGE #Trump #Musk #Capitalism #DEI
Black Workers Need Public Employment, Not Black Capitalism
Public unionized employment is the backbone of the black middle class. Racial justice advocates should direct resources to fighting Elon Musk’s attacks on good union jobs — not toward protecting DEI initiatives focused on black entrepreneurship.jacobin.com
