How Black Entrepreneurship Uplifts the Black Community and What You Can Do to Support It

August is Black Business Month. Therefore, this month’s edition of UpCurrent focuses on the importance of supporting Black entrepreneurship.

I first dive into why and how Black entrepreneurship is a vehicle for upward mobility. I then highlight the work of one of my esteemed former Harvard colleagues, Steven S. Rogers, an entrepreneur, educator, and author who has made invaluable contributions to our understanding of the importance of Black enterprise and what everyone can do to support it. We’ll look at his book A Letter to My White Friends and Colleagues: What You Can Do Right Now to Help the Black Community, which dives into the root causes of racial disparities in America, and how individuals and organizations can redirect spending toward Black-owned institutions to help decrease the racial wealth gap.

But first: Why is Black entrepreneurship important?

Black entrepreneurship is a vehicle for upward mobility

I’m a huge champion of Black entrepreneurship—for many reasons. Starting and running a successful business is immensely challenging, but growing up in a family of Black business owners, I witnessed first-hand the freedom, empowerment, and service to the community that Black entrepreneurship can provide in at least two ways. First, it allows the entrepreneur to channel their talent into activities that promote their passion and purpose. Second, it can provide a relative buffer from the racial politics and discrimination that Black executives face in corporate America where the White elite often make the rules.

An escape hatch from discrimination

Research has shown that Black executives in corporate America struggle to attain positions of leadership, and continue the struggle to maintain them in the face of White envy, resistance, and perceptions of illegitimacy. Time and again I’ve seen friends, family members, and colleagues become entrepreneurs and experience a version of protection from the discrimination many BIPOC professionals experience in corporate careers. Now let me be clear: It’s not that Black business owners don’t face racism at all—they do. But as entrepreneurs, they’re in an environment that they create and control to a large degree—an environment that allows their work to speak for itself.

If you’re a Black business owner, and market forces are operating as they should, then excellence becomes its own reward. Racial politics play less of a role in determining whether or not you are successful. Moreover, Black excellence is often perceived as a threat in the corporate world. Copious research (and lawsuits) reveal that promising, talented Black professionals have been sabotaged, sidelined, and otherwise undermined to ensure they can’t progress beyond their White colleagues. Some of this is purposeful; some of it is due to implicit and unconscious biases. Either way, the result is the same: Black and minority professionals don’t have equal opportunity to achieve the same as White male professionals.

Entrepreneurship, on the other hand, provides a different context and environment for the quality of your work to shine through. If you perform well and build a community of support, there is greater opportunity to succeed. We saw evidence of this phenomenon in Tulsa during the early 20th century when Black entrepreneurs in the Greenwood District were able to create the thriving community commonly referred to as Black Wall Street. The business owners in this Black enclave were relatively immune to the Jim Crow era policies that affected how White businesses treated Black consumers and employees. In short, entrepreneurship allows Black and minority talent to be nurtured, instead of negated.

Job creation for the Black community

In the summer of 1991, I participated in a summer research program at the University of California, San Diego, along with other aspiring scholars and academics of color. One friend from the program happened to be from Los Angeles, and he invited a small group of us to spend the weekend visiting his family in the Viewpark/Baldwin Hills neighborhood of south-central LA. It was inspiring to see other thriving Black communities, similar to the one in which I had grown up in Lexington, Kentucky, during the 1970s and 80s.

While we were there, we went to a soul food restaurant called Aunt Kizzy’s Back Porch, a local favorite often frequented by celebrities (we saw Mario van Peebles during our visit) then owned and run by a Black couple named Adolf and Mary Dulan.

Adolf was extremely warm and affable. Seeing a table of young Black men, he stopped by to chat and, ultimately, drop some wisdom and inspiration. During the conversation, he posed a question many people ask you when you’re 20 years old: “What do you want to do after you graduate?”

I told him I wanted to be a professor (I was studying literature at the time). He responded, “That’s great . . . but you should really consider starting your own business at some point. Think about how many jobs you can create for our community.” 

His words left an impression on me. The Dulans made substantial contributions to the community, giving jobs and opportunities to members of the Black community who White business owners might overlook. They gave back. They changed lives. In fact, their daughter, Tiffany, who took over management of the restaurant in 2008, maintained their community-oriented approach, saying, “The success of the business is important, but the growth of minorities is even more important.” (Aunt Kizzy’s has since closed and Adolf Dulan passed away in 2017; however, Dulan opened a different restaurant, Dulan’s Soul Food Kitchen, in 1999, which is running with similar principles to this day.)

While no version of business ownership will fully shield you from racism and discrimination—as racism is baked into our society’s institutions (including a financial system that makes it extremely difficult for aspiring Black entrepreneurs to obtain capital)—entrepreneurship can reward talent and effort in a way that corporate positions often do not for Black professionals.

Supporting and celebrating Black business

For all the good that Black and minority entrepreneurship does for Black individuals and communities, Black businesses need more recognition and support from the “mainstream” market in order for us to redress systemic racism.

Retired Harvard Business School professor, Steven S. Rogers, himself a long-time entrepreneur and savvy businessman, wrote a book in 2021 titled A Letter to My White Friends and Colleagues outlining the ways in which White people can help Black banks, businesses, HBCUs, and the community at large. In addition, in February 2022 he published Successful Black Entrepreneurs, a work that highlights the achievements of several Black business titans and how they obtained their success.

He shares some historical context and practical perspectives on what it takes for Black entrepreneurs to succeed, while also providing numerous examples of those who have paved the way, including innovators such as:

• Sarah Boone, who invented the ironing board

• Lydia Newman, who invented the hairbrush

• Thomas Stewart, who invented the string mop

• George Sampson, who invented the automatic gear shift

• John Burr, who invented the lawn mower

• John Standard, who invented the refrigerator

He also discussed more recent entrepreneurial titans like Otis Gates, who built a wildly successful affordable-housing firm in Boston that promoted employee community service and its social-good mission, and Valerie Daniels-Carter, one of the most successful fast-food franchisees in the country.

Most Americans do not know these names. Indeed, most Americans do not know the history of Black entrepreneurship or the successes that have come out of the incredible efforts of Black and minority businesspeople. As Rogers argues—and I concur—we need to raise up these examples of Black excellence in American consciousness in order to change not only the perception of Black professionals but also the reality of their experiences in the future.

Actions you can take to help the Black community

In A Letter to My White Friends and Colleagues, Rogers shares heavily researched and data-backed suggestions for ways—exactly as the title suggests—White people can work with and help the Black community. He specifically underscores the importance of addressing the racial wealth gap, arguing that implementing reparations to eliminate the $153,000–wealth gap between Black and White households will solve many of our nation’s issues.

Among some of the actions Rogers proposes for his White friends and colleagues are:

1. Spending a portion of your annual household budget at Black-owned businesses and companies

2. Making large savings deposits into Black-owned banks

3. Supporting government reparations to Black Americans who are descendants of Black people who were enslaved between 1619 and 1865

Some readers may see these recommendations and think: Why do all of them have to do with money?

As Rogers explains, the more money we spend with Black companies, the more those companies are able to hire, grow, and provide opportunities for Black and minority communities. Your dollars spent there go further, on a very practical level, to address racial disparities and the racial wealth gap than they do when spent elsewhere.

Putting savings into Black-owned banks is similar. Because of institutional racism, BIPOC individuals and households often face significant discrimination from larger (and historically White) financial institutions. As a result, Black-owned banks have become an invaluable resource for Black and minority people seeking major loans—whether for mortgages, car purchases, education, or businesses. When you invest your money into Black-owned banks, you help provide a bigger coffer to support awarding more and more loans to Black people, thereby helping to provide more opportunities and to reduce the racial wealth gap even further.

These initiatives are part of what is called selective consumerism, and you can extend the practice even beyond exclusively supporting Black-owned businesses. You can be a selective consumer by paying attention to the practices of all of the retailers and service providers where you spend your money. What can you learn about the company’s track record of diversity and racial justice? All companies are in business to make money, but some are in business only to make money—whereas others also prioritize raising the bar of their social impact. Go out of your way to support the “good” companies and/or boycott the “bad” ones. If you are a business owner, seek out non-White vendors and subcontractors.

In honor of Black Business Month, I hope I have highlighted the importance of Black entrepreneurship as well as some of the ways in which we can all support Black businesses right away. What are some additional suggestions that you can offer to further promote this endeavor?

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If you’d like to hear a live discussion on this topic, Steven will be joining me for a conversation on LinkedIn Live next Wednesday, August 17, at 3pm ET / 12pm PT. RSVP and join us through the event page here!