Economic Self-Determination for the Diaspora

By Gregory Simpkins

For all of my adult life here in the United States, I have constantly heard how the African Diaspora in America (especially those of us who are native-born) continue to sabotage ourselves economically. As you read this, you likely recall hearing how we don’t spend our dollars among ourselves.

According to the Circulation of Our Dollar Initiative, a transformative effort examining the economic health of historically disempowered Black communities, the dollar circulates within the black community for only six hours, as opposed to 28 days in the Asian community, 19 days in the Jewish community and 17 days in the White community.

I once wondered why such a financially self-defeating activity would not be realized and changed, but as I got older, I came to see that our ingrained lack of self-respect causes us to believe that our own community’s output is less valuable than that of others. Of course, if you want Asian food, it must be from Asians and so forth.

Also, soul food is what we eat at home, so many Black people feel it is a waste to pay for eating elsewhere the same food we already consume at home. Further, comedians such as DC Curry have ridiculed Black eateries even as he pledges to eat there in solidarity (Don D C Curry Eating Out In The Hood).

Some would hear this as merely a self-deprecating joke, while others would take it to heart as a settled reality and act accordingly.

As a staunch supporter of the Diaspora, I patronize our stores and restaurants to the fullest extent possible. It helps that I enjoy African, Caribbean and soul food.

However, I must admit that not all Black establishments are meticulous in their preparation of products for public consumption. Still, my view has always been that such places were exceptions not to be patronized a second time.

The empowerment strategies of Black people in America traditionally diverged between the political power mantra of W.E.B. DuBois and the black economic growth program promoted by Booker T. Washington.

When it comes to my people, I am an optimist – not blind to problems – but also not pessimistic enough to give up on us. When I was blessed to be assigned to work on the Prosper Africa concept when I started work at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in 2018, I included information about the benefit of the Diaspora for US-Africa trade in the initial agency paper of the subject:

“The United States has the second largest African Diaspora behind Brazil. That Diaspora – both native-born and new residents – currently numbers 46 million. According to Nielsen, a global performance management company, this population will grow to 74.5 million by 2060 and its buying power will reach US$1.5 trillion by 2021 – according to Black Enterprise magazine. The African-born or first-generation members of this group already may have economic roots on the continent of Africa and can be the leading edge of a growing American economic engagement with companies within the countries of Africa,” I wrote, confidently expecting that it would make a significant impression.

When it did not, I was puzzled because these facts were not speculative. Yet my white colleagues, especially those in charge in government, did not believe as I did that what I presented would make enough of an economic difference to focus on Diaspora output.

Oh, throughout my time at USAID, I often heard welcoming remarks about the value of the Diaspora, but when I discussed the matter with Diaspora business colleagues, they told of long experience with empty government rhetoric frustrated by rules and regulations that prevented promised progress. Upon further research, I realized why that was.

Buy Black Efforts Have Fizzled

In the early twentieth century, there was a movement within Black America that fostered black economic development, including a number of cooperatives involving shoe stores, department stores, grocery stores and various retail establishments. Prominent among these cooperatives was the Colored Merchants’ Association (CMA), founded by grocer A. B. Brown in Montgomery, Alabama, on 10 August 1928.

The cooperative comprised a voluntary chain of twelve members who operated their grocery stores as “C.M.A.” stores. Soon the organization spread to other states; the members relied on cooperative buying and intensive selling.

This was during the days of segregation when our people had to depend on one another to survive economically. We couldn’t go to White theaters so we had our own.

I fondly recall such theaters, stores and restaurants. Of course, when segregation ended, White establishments beckoned with more ornate surroundings and films more lavishly funded than those our people had been making.

The door being opened to the White world left what some unfortunately considered more paltry Black offerings behind.

Too often, we just don’t trust or honor one another to allow us to fully cooperate among ourselves.

At some point, Black publications and distributors sought White dollars to purchase our products or to advertise. It became ingrained in the minds of people in our communities that White products and money were just “better”.

There was the joke I heard some time ago about a Black coal dealer trying to sell his wares to a Black buyer who wanted to think about it. When the seller saw the man days later, he had purchased coal from a White vendor.

His reason: the White man’s coal burns hotter. I heard similar reasoning all during my formative years, but I dismissed it.

Therefore, I was not surprised when Buy Black campaigns failed to gain much support over the years. Jared A. Ball is an American academic, author and political activist is a professor of communication studies and Africana / Black Studies at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland. He has examined this phenomenon and uncovered the self-defeating nature of our economic interactions.

The empowerment strategies of Black people in America traditionally diverged between the political power mantra of W.E.B. DuBois and the black economic growth program promoted by Booker T. Washington. In the latter’s 1895 Atlanta Compromise speech, he presented a plan to build Black economic power as a base.

“Cast down your bucket where you are. Cast it down among the eight million of Negroes whose habits you know, whose fidelity and love you have tested in days when to have proved treacherous meant the ruin of your fireside.

Economic Power

Cast down your bucket among these people who have without strikes and labor wars tilled your fields, cleared your forests, builded (sic) your railroads and cities, brought forth treasures from the bowels of the earth, just to make possible this magnificent representation of the progress of the South,” Washington said.

I cannot affirm that these two Black giants in our history ever made a serious effort to meld their views. As a former slave, Washington would understand that money controlled society and that without it, one was less able to defend one’s interests.

DuBois grew up in a tolerant community as a free man of color and became an intellectual activist. It should have been possible to build and use economic power to back political power, but their strategies unfortunately were seen as diametrically opposed.

When complexion and class became involved in the debate, it was not possible to bridge the gap between these two views.

In my experience, African and Caribbean emigrants to America realize the importance of economic power without abandoning efforts to seek political influence. The White colonial policy of divide and conquer / rule has been successful over the centuries – not just in Africa and the Caribbean, but also here in America.

Too often, we just don’t trust or honor one another to allow us to fully cooperate among ourselves.

Yet another obstacle to Black economic cooperation has been the false argument that Buy Black or Buy Freedom campaign as promoted by talk show host / activist Tony Brown in the 1980s was racially exclusive and called for shunning purchases from White people. In an January 8 1986 op-ed in the Washington Post, journalist William Raspberry quoted Brown to debunk this erroneous view:

“When I buy a car from a black car dealer, he’s selling me a car manufactured by Ford or GM or Chrysler or Toyota. If I’m buying a manufactured good, I’m certainly not boycotting white people. Here’s the thing: 80 percent of the people work in their own neighborhoods, and 80 percent work for a small business. It’s only common sense that the more black businesses create and support, the more blacks will be employed,” Brown said.

“Black America has a trade deficit with the rest of America of some US$160 billion. And for every US$100 billion you export, you export a million jobs. Our spending patterns are losing us about as many jobs as America as a whole is losing to Japan.”

What I proposed in that initial Prosper Africa paper would have been more meaningful to those beyond our communities if we could collaborate with one another. I did not fully take into account that our path had been littered with betrayals and abandonments of one another over a long time period.

White government officials and businesspeople – not looking at this as optimistically as I had – discounted the desire and ability of Black people to cooperate with one another no matter how much buying power we had at our disposal. Up to now, they were correct.

Still, I fully believe in the quote from the Honorable Marcus Garvey in the early 20th century about the desperate need for the Diaspora to forge its own economic self-determination: “A race that is solely dependent upon another for its economic existence sooner or later dies,” Garvey stated.

He was right when he said it, and he is still right a century later.

Gregory Simpkins, a longtime specialist in African policy development, is the Principal of 21st Century Solutions. He consults with organizations on African policy issues generally, especially in relating to the U.S. Government. He further acts as a consultant to the African Merchants Association, where he advises the Association in its efforts to stimulate an increase in trade between several hundred African Diaspora small and medium enterprises and their African partners.