Should Black People Buy From Their Own Businesses?

“You can’t judge a book by it’s cover”. Every day our parents tell us as children that we cannot judge things based on the first glances that we see. However, people in our society today have filled their heads with stereotypes in order to judge people and their abilities. And when hiring employees, stereotypes and first glances is all an employer sees and therefore care about. In her book, Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich proves that a person’s race and gender have a massive influence on the type of low-wage work a person can find, due to the stereotypes that are associated with gender and race in our society today.

The racial wage gap involves the unequal distribution of races in certain occupations which results in unequal wages. It must consider more sources and attributes that could affect the gap compared to the wage gap between white men and women. The complex income difference between black men and women and white men and women is problematic in that it does not segregate solely by race – it is segregated mainly by gender. The complexity of the racial wage gap requires further understanding in order to be able to solve this puzzle.

Another way that people are racially profiled is when they are shopping in stores. My mom would always tell me to never touch anything in the store and if I did to stay close by her. I didn’t get it until recently, when she explained that sometimes the saleperson thinks that because you are black and young you are trying to steal something from the store. I have heard of situations where a black person was followed and stopped and questioned by the store manager ,or someone who works in the store because they thought the person was going to steal something but I never thought it would affect me. According to one columnist, “The usual scenario involves suspicious glances, inattentive clerks or rude service,” is how the Associated Press described ‘shopping while black’ (Singletary, “Shopping While Black”). In most cases, a person is falsely

Driving a car, walking down the street, or even sightseeing now is no longer safe for some people. In many cities across the United States, if you are African-American or of "color", you will typically have a hard time doing this without being harassed. The excuse for this harassment is again, the U.S. is supposedly fighting "The War on Drugs" and is right away pointed towards minorities. When a police officer sees a young black man in a new expensive car he suspects that the man is

There were also cultural specificities that African-American entrepreneurs engaged in the funeral process had to respect. As a result, African-Americans became over represented in the field of undertaking (Table 1.1) in the years following the Great Migration. Again, it is important to recognize that most opportunities for African-American entrepreneurs were similar to this one in that they were market specific service economy oriented. “In short, changes in the ethnic compositions of (N)orthern cities in the early twentieth century made it difficult for African Americans to establish an economic interface in entrepreneurial occupations during the crucial period of their initial migration to these cities. The lack of such an interface may have set African Americans on a course of economic disadvantage for the rest of the twentieth century.”4 An important piece in shaping this model of economic disadvantage is the pervasiveness of white supremacist theory in the dominant society of the time.5 The common belief of the inherent inferiority of blacks limited their entrance into the entrepreneurial economy, even in the North. One economist when speaking of the disadvantage of trying to create an African-American owned business in a white supremacist environment goes further to say that, “This disadvantage, moreover, continues to inhibit the entry of African Americans into entrepreneurial occupations.”6

There are many ways in which whites hold superiority over blacks. How do whites hold superiority over blacks financially?

On average, African American individuals are more likely to have criminal records or be involved in criminal activity more than other races in our society. This is the mind frame of the average American in the United States. Every African American individual in this country who has traveled, walked to the store at night or simply going shopping, either knowingly or unknowingly has been a victim of some type of racial profiling. People need to realize that racial profiling happens very often to innocent people that are targeted based on race and sometimes religion. Racial profiling can be defined as when an individual is stopped or detained because they are perceived to be more likely to be involved in some sort of criminal activity (Ward, 2002, 726). Racial profiling has been a huge issue in our society for many years especially for African Americans. African Americans are more prone to traffic stops, searches and arrests by law enforcement, are more likely to be victims of deadly force, and are more often the victims of unfair rulings when being tried in a criminal court case versus other races that have committed the same crime.

While African Americans have historically been the marks of racial profiling, they are not the only community affected by this practice. It affects individuals

In the Trayvon Martin case there was a young black male walking home from the corner store with his hood on after buying snacks from the corner store. While walking he was approached by a man named George Zimmerman that was a neighborhood watch. Zimmerman immediately thought he was up to no good because of his appearance. Zimmerman followed Martin and then it got physical and Martin was shot and killed. This case is mind blowing to me, this is what could possibly happen to anybody. Now in the Macys case in 2014 many black customers were singled out and even detained after purchasing expensive merchandise. As if they were trying to shop lift this allocation got so bad that Macys went to court and decided to settle the claim and pay 650million dollars (Vertanin 2014:201). Macys being a huge department store only makes you think if they were/are doing it who else is? “Understanding racial profiling will assist policy makers and criminal justice officials in developing proper methods to alleviate this derogatory practice’ (Higgins 2008:200). This statement is as if you don’t understand racial profiling than you need to go under practice yet how do you get taught to not racial profile? I don’t think there is a way to be taught it is stereotyping somebody and then putting them in a category where you will react if they are by you. And that’s what is

The Experience of Minorities During the 1920s, many minorities took up low-status jobs that no one else desired. However, once the Great Depression hit and unemployment struck a majority of Americans, competition started for these low-paying jobs. Many even went as far to think that no colored person should have a job until all whites were employed. The experience of minorities in the 1920’s was the driving force that led to the growth of American economy, and America’s diverse nature and political division.

When it came to civil rights in the 1940’s, whites and blacks basically had separate rights. If a white man and a black man applied for the same job, the white man would get it more often than the black man usually just because he was white. Legally employers could refuse

Black Wall Street was one of the most prominent displays of African American economical accomplishment and standing of the modern world in spite of the fact that American culture as a whole wasn't, and still isn't, supportive or conducive to the rise of minorities. The unprovoked hostility isn't new, but it is dangerous because it accommodates the behavior that is responsible for systematic discrimination and is the reason why were are permanently relegated to second class and seemingly destined to fail. The fact that this injustice is rationalized, accepted and ignored is the precise reason that African American ownership and community sustainability is vital in correcting the misrepresentation of us to the rest of the the world and continuing

You probably have not read the report "Increasingly Affluent, Educated and Diverse: African-American Consumers — the Untold Story" that was presented at the 45th Congressional Black Caucus. Here's the highlight of the report: black households are growing in economic importance and are starting to impact and influence the media.

In the united states the racial wealth gap and looking at the overall median financial wealth of white, African American, and Latino households. The typical African American family has six cents in wealth, for every dollar in wealth that the typical white house hold has, overall the possessive investment as Liptiz describes as a measure to matian a possession of social power aka there invested interested in maintaining power over minorities and have taken action to protect that investment. Most of the time society thinks in terms of white vs black people, but in reality its often white people versus all minorities. Before Africans were imported for slavery, the colonists tried using Native Americans and force them into their slavery system. When using Native Americans didn’t work out due to the logistics, the colony’s turned to Africa and the slave trade. While at the same time keeping both Native Americans and African separated from one another, not only in terms of threats and payoffs, but also in terms of early system of white supremacy in the American colonies. After slavery was abolished America turned to Asian immigrants for their cheap labor and low wage cost in the growing industlized America. Even though Asian’s

The United States has lived through generations of racism and racial profiling. Racism is the belief that different races have distinctive cultural characteristics determined by hereditary factors, and that this grants same races with a significant superiority over others. After the days of the Black civil rights movement with MLK Jr., and the years of protesting to have equality in our country. The American people were left with a false notion that they had passed the days of being discriminated on based on their skin colors and they were able to walk down the street, enter a building, and get an equal opportunity as anyone else. Whether people think that we live in a racist free society, minorities today are chained to the thoughts of