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Potential
to Double Black Entrepreneurship
"From the President on
down, we as a society should make sure we do not recreate
poverty-stricken neighborhoods"
A Report from BlackMoney.com
John William Templeton, Editor
SAN FRANCISCO -- The author of the annual
State of Black Business reports calculates that the 70,000 black
businesses in Louisiana, MIssissippi and Alabama could be almost
doubled if a wise and equitable economic development strategy is
employed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Louisiana and
Mississippi are the two states with the largest proportion of
African-American residents, notes John WIlliam Templeton, editor
of BlackMoney.com.
Alabama has the seventh largest ratio of
black citizens.
A Hurricane Katrina recovery appendix has
been added to Unfinished Dream: State of Black Business,
Second Edition with an industry by industry analysis of the
potential growth of black businesses which can occur in the
impacted region.
"The economic boom enabled by the civil
rights movement that opened the South to international
trade and technology has largely passed African-American firms
by," notes Templeton. "A significant
proportion of the black labor force has moved into managerial
and professional jobs which prepare them to go into
business."
An analysis of the disparity between black
employment by industry and black self-employment, which is 4.1
percent on average nationally, indicates that there could be
another 66,000 firms in those states with the right economic
incentives.
"The pictures we saw at the Superdome
reflect communities without the business base to provide such
amenities as hotel rooms, taxicabs, tour buses which would have
been available in the emergency and the job base to quell
hyperpoverty," said Templeton.
The first industry sector to focus on should
be construction.
In recognition of the national observance of
Minority Enterprise Development Week through Wednesday, he urged
Congress to add provisions to the two already-passed disaster
relief bills totalling $62 billion to insure that small
businesses based in and employing persons from the disaster
zone, particularly from census tracts with high unemployment
even before the hurricane, do much of the reconstruction work.
"It doesn't make sense to ship people
across the country while trained workers and entrepreneurs sit
in shelters looking for work," he added. The scale of the
job ahead could spawn another 5,000 black contractors in those
states.
Current policy puts the onus on individuals
to come to various agencies for limited assistance. A
more effective approach would be to identify talent in impacted
communities, particularly experienced managers, provide the
support to get firms off the ground and match them with larger
companies such as the mentor-protege program currently used by
the Department of Defense.
Other industry sectors which could
immediately handle new entrepreneurs include the food and
hospitality sector, where black self-employment was less than
half the national average, particularly in tourism rich areas
like New Orleans and the Mississippi gambling coast. Templeton
participates in a campaign to promote black restaurants in San
Francisco that has sparked six new restaurants in the past
quarter to join more than 50 eateries employing more than
500 persons.
"We don't want to send people back to
hollowed-out communities filled with liquor stores and check
cashing joints like they lived in before," he
said. "Part of the vitality of the Black Belt is the
cuisine and it should be reflected in new and revived
restaurants that serve the communities." Food
service entrepreneurs can get a start by gaining contracts to
feed the disaster relief workers as the recovery begins.
Other sectors include repair businesses,
personal services firms, light manufacturing, technology
services and retailing.
"Policymakers should not assume that the
free market will take care of the issues, because the redlining
that had already flooded those neighborhoods with poverty puts
potential entrepreneurs at a distinct disadvantage," said
Templeton. "From the President on down, we as a
society should make sure we do not recreate poverty-stricken
neighborhoods as we have for the past 60 years through
government policies."
A task force of top officials and legislators
should be specifically tasked with the economic revitalization
of the black communities of the Deep South. "Otherwise,
the tendency will be to continue to ignore their plight,"
said Templeton.
Visit http://www.californiablackhistory.com
for the latest in curriculum resources. Jazz Genesis:
Birth of Jazz on the West Coast begins with tours to the
birthplace of "fillin' and fakin" in October and
November and an exhibition in February.
posted 14 September 2005
*
* * * * John William Templeton
Templeton is regarded as the top independent
content provider on the African-American experience as
president/executive editor of San Francisco-based eAccess
Corp. He is the founder of Black Business
Month in August, the 50 Most Important African-Americans in
Technology and SFSoul: Taste the Excitement.
In the field of technology, he has compiled
the annual Silicon Ceiling report on the status of
African-Americans in Technology since 1998 and was the author of
Industry Ignores $447 Billion Market for Technology Marketing
in 1998. In 2000, he created the 50 Most Important
African-Americans in Technology to raise the visibility of
black technology pioneers. In 1997, he curated an
exhibition on blacks in Silicon Valley for the Tech Museum of
Innovation.
As a co-convenor of the Coalition for Fair
Employment in Silicon Valley, he is credited with leading
the nationwide effort to scale back the H1-B guest worker
program through testimony at the House Judiciary Committee and
creating an alliance of civil rights, labor and professional
groups. That effort included involvement in the remarkable
campaign to defeat H1-B author then-Sen. Spencer Abraham in
Michigan in 2000.
An investigative journalist for 32 years,
Templeton holds seven national journalism awards and was the
editor of the first African-American newspaper to celebrate a
centennial. He was also the first black editor of a business
newspaper and created the affirmative action committee for
American City Business Journals.
In 1995, he created the first black
international business daily, Griot, the African-American,
African and Caribbean business daily, now published online
as BlackMoney.com .
Templeton was commissioned to compile the annual State of Black
Business report in 2004, which led to the creation of Black
Business Month each August. The second report, Unfinished
Dream, has been featured nationally this summer due to the
revelation that women are now the majority of black business
owners.
Author of 16 books, he received the Laureate
award in 2002 from the Friends of the San Francisco Public
Library and the Unsung Hero award from the San Francisco Public
Library in 1998. He received a Sesquicentennial
Commendation in 1998 from the California Sesquicentennial
Commission for writing the four-volume definitive history of
African-Americans in California, Our Roots Run Deep: the
Black Experience in California, Vols. 1-4. His history
of blacks in 23 Western states will appear in Oxford University
Press' African-American Heritage Reference Series in 2005.
He has curated 29 exhibitions at such venues as the California
State Capitol Museum, Los Angeles Central Library, California
Academy of Sciences, Tech Museum of Innovation and San Francisco
Main Library.
As a curriculum developer, his company is a
leader in the development of integrated learning systems for
learners of African descent. He was a consultant to the
Commission on Research in Black Education of the American
Educational Research Association and helped draft the 2000
policy statement on education for the National Black Caucus of
State Legislators.
As a speaker, he has spoken to the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, World
Affairs Council of San Francisco, the national conventions of
the NAACP, National Urban League, Black Data Processing
Associates, National Black MBA Association, UCLA, UC-Berkeley,
Xavier University and was an expert in the Microsoft
anti-trust trial.
He is an elder at New Liberation Presbyterian
Church in San Francisco, board member of the Friends of the San
Francisco Public Library, and member of the arts advisory
committee of the Museum of the African Diaspora.
Templeton is a cum laude graduate of the
initial freshman class of the John H. Johnson School of
Communications at Howard University with further graduate study
in survey research from UNC-Chapel Hill. He is also a
graduate of the Stanford Professional Publishing Course and of
the Minority Science Writers Seminar of the Council for the
Advancement of Science Writing.
His most recent exhibition--SFSoul: Taste the
Excitement features 58 black-owned restaurants in the world's
top tourist city and is described in a September issue of
Restaurants and Institutions magazine.
Contact John William Templeton
415-265-9455* * *
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*
 |
Malcolm X
A Life of Reinvention
By
Manning Marable
Years
in the making-the definitive biography of
the legendary black activist.
Of the great figure in twentieth-century
American history perhaps none is more
complex and controversial than Malcolm X.
Constantly rewriting his own story, he
became a criminal, a minister, a leader, and
an icon, all before being felled by
assassins' bullets at age thirty-nine.
Through his tireless work and countless
speeches he empowered hundreds of thousands
of black Americans to create better lives
and stronger communities while establishing
the template for the self-actualized,
independent African American man. In death
he became a broad symbol of both resistance
and reconciliation for millions around the
world.
Manning Marable's new biography of Malcolm
is a stunning achievement. Filled with new
information and shocking revelations that go
beyond the Autobiography, Malcolm X unfolds
a sweeping story of race and class in
America, from the rise of Marcus Garvey and
the Ku Klux Klan to the struggles of the
civil rights movement in the fifties and
sixties |
* * * * *
|
The New Jim Crow
Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness
By Michele Alexander
Contrary to the
rosy picture of race embodied in Barack
Obama's political success and Oprah
Winfrey's financial success, legal
scholar Alexander argues vigorously and
persuasively that [w]e have not ended
racial caste in America; we have merely
redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial
segregation has been replaced by mass
incarceration as a system of social
control (More African Americans are
under correctional control today... than
were enslaved in 1850). Alexander
reviews American racial history from the
colonies to the Clinton administration,
delineating its transformation into the
war on drugs. She offers an acute
analysis of the effect of this mass
incarceration upon former inmates who
will be discriminated against, legally,
for the rest of their lives, denied
employment, housing, education, and
public benefits. Most provocatively, she
reveals how both the move toward
colorblindness and affirmative action
may blur our vision of injustice: most
Americans know and don't know the truth
about mass incarceration—but her
carefully researched, deeply engaging,
and thoroughly readable book should
change that.—Publishers
Weekly |
 |
* * * * *
The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
* *
* * *
Ancient African Nations
* * * * *
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Browse all issues
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
* *
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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