We Spend $2 Trillion. What If 1% Went Back In?
$2 trillion is already moving. The question is where it lands.
The conversation about supporting Black businesses comes up every year. But we keep stopping at the same place.
The Number That Started the Conversation
During the Target fast of 2025, Pastor Jamal Bryant of a church in Atlanta estimated that spending among the Black community is $2 trillion per year — a sum that equals the GDP of some countries.
During this time, the call was to “support” Black-owned businesses, which is fine. Yet another way we need to support Black businesses is one that is rarely discussed.
What I’ve Seen From the Inside
As a DJ, I became an entrepreneur in 1992, while still in college, and became a licensed CPA in 2008. Since childhood, I shadowed my father, an accountant-entrepreneur, and recognized a common thread among Black businesses: undercapitalization.
Undercapitalization occurs when a business has enough money to get started, but not enough cushion to withstand the natural turbulence of business cycles — often leading to cash flow challenges that many of the community’s earliest businesses face.
These are the primary challenges of the businesses that “fail in the first five years.” Common knowledge holds that these businesses fail because the idea wasn’t good or for other reasons, but in many cases, cash flow problems are the culprit.
The Math Is Simple
What if we annually redeployed one-tenth of 1% (.001) of $2 trillion dollars or 2 billion dollars of the community’s estimated spending to business investment?
Resources we already spend could help reduce (not eliminate) business failures in the first five years, allowing them to survive and thrive. These thriving enterprises can increase hiring from the community and reduce the percentage — currently 96% — of Black businesses with no employees.
The deployment would assist the 50% of Black businesses that provide services, offering greater growth potential for those looking beyond tech and real estate. This capital would allow the development of factories, distribution companies, and medium to large-scale retailers.
These funds could help prop up our businesses so they can contribute to the broader economy and bring profits back to the community, rather than constantly sending funds out. Black unemployment rates can be affected, even reduced by a couple of percentage points. Increased profits can help create more livable wages and environments for Black employees who are culturally aligned.
Where to Start
While I wholeheartedly believe in this concept, this is an aspirational outlook that will require a massive effort to implement. There are mental barriers to achieving this goal because people haven’t thought about money or investment in these terms.
Like any social change, starting and staying consistent are the movement’s engine. A good way to start the conversation is to ask a business owner whether they are taking on investors — or, if you’re not comfortable with investing, simply ask how you could help them grow.
The $2 trillion is already moving. The question is where it lands.
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