With all the talk on how African American's are more affected by the poor economy and black owned business' being shortchanged by the new stimulus package (link 1 – link 2 – link 3 – link 4) I find the Ebony Experiment quite interesting to say the least.
The Ebony Experiment started by the Anderson family on January 1, 2009. It's main focus is research and education concerning economic empowerment in underserved Black communities. The Foundation's research is based on the Andersons' pledge and experiences finding and supporting Black businesses, professionals and products created by Black manufacturers, and the impacts of a year-long national economic development campaign to promote and stimulate enhanced entrepreneurship and self-help economics in the Black community.
“What would happen if Black families across America made real commitments to support Black businesses and professionals? How many jobs would be created? How many homes would be saved from foreclosure? How many new role models would our children have? How much would we improve the quality of life of the average American Black family? How much can we do on our own, together, united … without a government program? What if we could prove – again – that this community can defy history and improve the future by just believing we can and believing in one another? And what if the world was watching us do it?”
In the back of my mind, I've always wanted to do as the Anderson family are doing and REALLY support black business' and stop giving all my money to the one's who make it hard for us to have anything of our own to begin with. We constantly complain, but what do we actually do to make our situation better? The only problem I see with this, and I'm sure many would agree, is that it's very complicated to accomplish this task with the shortage of black owned business' that supply the necessities and conveniences that larger establishments do.
In any case, I admire what the Anderson's are doing. It sounds like a lot of fun, especially since I love challenges 🙂 If I could only do it for 1 month, I would. That way I could possibly come across a few new black owned business to frequent on a regular basis. The ones that actually DO GOOD BUSINESS as in how Devin Robinson put it.
[mashshare]
