By La Risa Lynch
Here’s a math question for you: How many Black-owned Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants are in the Chicago area. The answer will surprise you.
Oak Park resident Maggie Anderson, who along with her husband, John, took on a bold challenge to shop Black-owned businesses for a year has penned a book on their bold experiment. The book called “Our Black Year” details the family’s struggle to find basic necessities to keep a household running just by shopping at Black-owned retailers and stores.
Their experiment drew headlines as well as criticism – some labeling the family as racist for shopping Black. But for Anderson the goal was to spark a debate about self-help economics and Black conscious consumerism that harkens back to Marcus Garvey.
The reason for this discussion is simple. Black America has an unrealized capital gain in their collective buying power that tops a $1 trillion. Of that money that Black people spend only about six percent stays in the Black community or touches Black-owned retailers. The remaining hard-earned cash that Black Americans make line the pockets of other ethnic groups who open businesses in Black communities rarely giving anything back.
Anderson calls that lopsided fiscal austerity a “racial divided economy.” Do you agree? So in 2013 make an effort to at least shop Black four times a month. Sounds like a New Year’s resolution to me. Listen to an excerpt of Anderson’s speech given at the Oak Park Library on Nov. 18th. Read the full article here.