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June 22, 2020

     Rescue Black Business from the Pandemic

The ever-expanding COVID-19 has just unearthed yet another racial disparity.  Shockingly, 40% of the nation’s Black-owned businesses may permanently close due to lack of customers, lack of federal funding and lack of private reserves.  Many black-owned companies closed when they were determined not to be “essential” from a government perspective.  They are not closing due to lack of talent, ability to serve customers well, or from any form of neglect.  Many Black-owned firms are closing because they do not have the financial strength to weather the worst economic and health calamity the U.S. has faced since the Great Depression.

CBS News reported today that “There were more than 1 million black-owned businesses in the U.S. at the beginning of February, according to research from the University of California at Santa Cruz, which drew from Census survey estimates. By mid-April, 440,000 black business owners had shuttered their company for good — a 41% plunge. By comparison, 17% of white-owned businesses closed during the same period, the UC Santa Cruz research shows.”

While we are still digesting the racial disparity in COVID-19 deaths and reeling from the televised execution of George Floyd, we now must face the fact that one of the true bright spots for African Americans is being erased.  From 2018 to 2019, the number of firms owned by African-American women grew faster than the overall growth rate for women and for Black men, an annual increase of 50%.

Black women start out with less income and less wealth that can be applied to creating a new business.  The long-standing gender pay gap widens for the majority of racial and ethnic groups as women move up the corporate ladder, though not to the same degree. The largest controlled pay gap is for Black and African American women, with Black female executives earning $0.62 for every dollar a white male executive earns.

When it comes to wealth, the racial inequity is even worse.  According to the Brookings Institution, a “close examination of wealth in the U.S. finds evidence of staggering racial disparities. At $171,000, the net worth of a typical white family is nearly ten times greater than that of a Black family ($17,150) in 2016. Gaps in wealth between Black and white households reveal the effects of accumulated inequality and discrimination, as well as differences in power and opportunity that can be traced back to this nation’s inception. The Black-white wealth gap reflects a society that has not and does not afford equality of opportunity to all its citizens.”

  

If the United States and Corporate America are sincere about closing racial economic gaps, here is a prescription:

1.      Corporate CEOs should empower supplier diversity departments to do business with highly qualified companies owned and operated by Black women.

2.      The Small Business Administration (SBA) should increase the size of its Economic Injury Disaster Loan advance from $10,000 to $100,000.

3.      Small Business Development Centers (SBDCs) should be empowered to actively seek out Black-owned businesses to make sure they are aware of the EIDL program and provide application assistance and support. There are 112 SBDCs scattered across the nation that, according to the SBA website, “make special efforts to reach minority members of socially and economically disadvantaged groups, veterans, women and the disabled.”

4.      Given the compelling interest that the nation has in preserving these businesses, and the clear evidence that there is disparate impact on Black people, the Congress should issue another round of PPP loans specifically aimed at under-served Black urban neighborhoods and rural communities.

5.      Given our personal responsibility to our own community, Black people (and all people of good will) should make it a priority to shop with Black-owned companies.

While it may be true that most Black-owned businesses do not employ hundreds of people, most of them do provide a relatively stable source of income for the proprietors, their families and employees.    If 40% of them fail to survive, there will inevitably be increased demand for services such as SNAP (food stamps), Medicaid and other support programs.  Let’s do the smart thing – come together as a nation and throw a safety net to thousands of American companies capable of providing great service during these difficult and unprecedented times. 

NBC Interviews Rayshard Brooks Months Before Atlanta Police Kill Him

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/rayshard-brooks-he-was-killed-police-said-justice-system-sees-n1231411

June 18, 2020, 10:51 AM EDT / Updated June 18, 2020, 12:26 PM EDT

By Ben Kesslen

Rayshard Brooks talked about criminal justice in the U.S. in a February interview, saying he wished the system didn't view us as if "we are animals."

Months later, Brooks, a 27-year-old Black man and father to four, was killed by police in the parking lot of a Wendy's in Atlanta.

The fatal shooting happened June 12, after two officers responded to a 911 call reporting that a man who appeared intoxicated was sleeping in his car in the restaurant's drive-through.

The officer who fired the fatal shots, Garrett Rolfe, was fired from his job and charged with felony murder among 11 counts total on Wednesday. The second officer, Devin Brosnan, was placed on administrative leave and is a cooperating witness for the state. He faces three charges, including aggravated assault and violation of oath.

Brooks' interview in February 2019 was conducted by Reconnect as part of a project about individuals on probation or parole.

"Some people, they get a tap on the wrist" from authorities, Brooks said about inequities in the criminal justice system. "But some people don’t."

Brooks also talked about the struggle to get back on your feet when you have a criminal record, and the emotional toll of being caught up in the system.

"You get treated like an animal," he said. "Some of the system could look at us as individuals; we do have lives, you know."

"I'm trying, I'm not the type of person to give up. I'm going to keep going till I make it to where I want to be," he said.

Brooks said being judged for a criminal record and denied employment is a "hard feeling to stomach" when he was just trying to support his family.

"There could be a way to erase some of these things," he said, referencing records that follow people and job applications that ask prospective employees if they've ever been arrested or incarcerated.

"It breaks your heart," Brooks said. "That puts us down."

Changing the World

June 2, 2020

Johnnetta Betsch Cole, Ph.D. and Janice L. Mathis, Esq.

George Floyd’s six-year-old daughter Gianna looked on quizzically while her mother gave a heart wrenching description of what the death of her father would mean throughout the child’s life.  Roxie Washington, Gianna’s mother, described the future.  He won’t be there to soothe hurts, to answer hard questions, to host the graduation party or the wedding reception.  The scene was all the more painful because Mr. Floyd did nothing sufficient to deprive him of the rights and responsibilities of fatherhood, which Ms. Washington said he relished.  Let’s say he was in possession of a counterfeit bill – the punishment for that crime is not execution without a trial.

Our nation and indeed the world are gripped by the story of Houston native George Floyd, who moved to Minneapolis looking for better job opportunities. Piled on top of the pandemic, 40,000,000 people unemployed, Black people dying at three times the rate of White people, the murder of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old African American woman in her own home and the hunting down of Ahmaud Arbery, the execution of George Floyd lit a keg of powder that was overdue to explode.

As a women’s organization, NCNW and our allies are particularly sickened and saddened by the growing number of Black women who lose their lives in police custody.  Breonna Taylor was killed in her own home, Tiara Thomas was killed by the police officer who fathered three of her children, Sandra Bland is alleged to have hung herself after being arrested on a traffic charge,  Natasha McKenna, who had schizophrenia, was killed with a stun gun when she “refused to comply.”  Although no unarmed Black person is exempt from excessive use of force, it is shameful that the death of an unarmed Black woman just does not receive the same attention from the public, the police or the media.

Eight days of global protests have so far proven insufficient to exhaust the rage so many of us are feeling.. global protests haveso And so far, the evidence suggests that rage is the right response.  The dueling autopsy reports do nothing to dispel the horror of Derrick Chauvin’s knee and body weight pressed onto George Floyd’s neck, but the preliminary reports confirm the commonsense conclusion that the cause of his death was homicide.  

Peaceful protests from New York to San Francisco were marred by looting and intentionally set fires, threatening to detract attention from the issue at the core of our pain – race based bias against African Americans by law enforcement and in virtually every other human endeavor. It is heartening to see veteran civil rights activists, basketball stars and peaceful protestors calling out looters with phrases like, “that’s not why we are here.”

Now that Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison has taken over the prosecution, the charges against Chauvin have been upgraded to 2nd degree murder (as opposed to the awkwardly conceived 3rd degree charge that requires no intent.)  And the other three officers “complicit” in Floyd’s death are under arrest and criminally charged with aiding and abetting murder.

Meanwhile, the Minneapolis Police Department will undergo an investigation of any patterns and practices of abuse.  Had we not scrapped President Obama’s 21st Century Policing Policy, George Floyd might still be alive.  Perhaps if Minneapolis had been subject to a rigorous pattern or practice investigation, no officer would have dared to brutalize Mr. Floyd.  Hindsight is 2020. 

Despite the rage and pain this incident has caused, we must look forward.  It is good to read the many statements being published by corporate, and non-profit organizations that are declaring that Black lives matter. And it is good to see Black and White people championing the same cause, shoulder to shoulder.  But as we know so well, these declarations and marching together in protest must be reinforced with sustained actions that call for the kinds of legal, policy and everyday changes in people’s behavior that will genuinely attack the root causes of systemic racism.

We are cautiously optimistic that finally, our nation might begin not only to speak the words but also to engage in the countless actions that might finally exorcise the devil of racism that has eaten at the soul of America from before its inception.  It is good to hear calls for the “good people” to stand up and speak out.  It was good to see clergy, including Bishop Mariann Budde say. “we need moral leadership.”  It is good to see chiefs of police on bended knee next to protestors.  (We owe Colin Kaepernick an apology.  We should all have been taking a knee with him.) It will be far better if we take that outrage to the ballot box and insist on the changes we have needed and deserved for so long. 

We must insist that the courts, the Congress and the state legislatures of our great nation curtail qualified immunity, a legal theory that forms the thick blanket of legal protection that shields  government officials from prosecution for their criminal actions. We must hear women’s voices with the same clarity and urgency that we hear men.  We must also insist that prospective police officers undergo psychological evaluation to weed out unreconstructed racists before they can be sworn onto any force.  And there must be implicit bias training for those who are unconscious that they are the beneficiaries of white privilege.  There must be an accurate national data base of excessive force complaints so that no police department inadvertently hires a candidate against whom multiple complaints of brutality have been proven.  Officers who know about illegal deprivation of civil and human rights must be encouraged to freely report what they see and what they know about fellow officers, without fear of reprisal.  And there must be truly independent citizen review committees empowered to protect the communities they live in.  We are not naïve.  Assuring justice in criminal investigations and prosecutions is a gargantuan task. But if we persevere and if we put human rights above political expediency and tribalism, love above hate, we may one day join with Gianna in saying that her daddy did not die in vain, for he truly changed the world.