Why Black Businesses Have to Be Three Times as Good--For Their Own People

The internalized skepticism that shrinks an already small market-and what it will take to change.

After 30 years of building businesses and 15 years running a CPA firm, I can tell you that one of the hardest obstacles that I have faced is US!

I love black people! We are creative, smart, resilient, and innovative. But we have a hard time dealing with each other when it comes to money and business.

Black folks have historically been underserved and underrepresented in the US capitalist system, but we have managed to excel through education, hard work, and perseverance.

Unfortunately, the term “Black Business” is loaded with silent adjectives—unprofessional, unreliable, inferior—that sometimes create apprehension, mostly from our own people. This skepticism shrinks an already limited market. To be successful, Black businesses have to cater to everybody because we’re only 12% of the population, and that small market gets even smaller when our own people doubt us without ever becoming patrons.

There is an overwhelming lack of trust in one another when it comes to getting things done, along with disrespect for each other’s experience. Some of us are obsessed with our titles and the appearance of being “professional” without striving to be elite. These same “professionals” are afraid to look ignorant and feel like they need to challenge someone who is a Black expert.

Most of all, we extoll the need to be twice as good to make it, but don’t acknowledge that we force our own people to be twice, maybe thrice as good to serve us.

We have a sickness, passed down from slavery and Jim Crow, where we expect inferiority from our own people. In the 26th year of the 21st century, some of us still follow the adage that “white is right” and are willing to pay them more than our own people.

I ask: Why are we in this state, and how can this change?