Our Black Year

by Maggie Anderson

In the 1950s major corporations followed Pepsi and Esso in paying attention to African American consumers. The National Alliance of Market Developers, established in 1953, was created to provide professional training for African American pioneers in corporate America.

  Most of these professionals staffed the marketing departments and were specifically recruited to target African American consumers. The NAMD’s mission was to ensure that African American dollars were valued and to promote more inclusivity in marketing and advertising in general. Black consumers wanted to see more people like them in commercials as well as more products that reflected their preferences. They wanted to see the corporations making an effort to respect their culture and appreciate their support. Several extensive studies of Black consumers and the impact of their spending on the American economy were also published during that decade.

  But although corporate America responded vigorously with new products, ads, and diversity strategies, the efforts did not bring increased supplier, vendor, or franchisee diversity. This corporate munificence failed to benefit Black businesses. The fact that McDonald’s and General Motors had begun placing Black folks in their commercials was seen as a historic civil rights achievement. We responded with our loyalty and our money—leaving Black businesses behind. The effect of these “accomplishments” was to further siphon dollars from Black businesses and neighborhoods.

  The turbulent 1960s then brought the more confrontational “Black Power” movement. Marketers responded by creating and promoting the “soul” market, which sometimes celebrated but often dishonored Black culture and customs by relying on caricatures. This presented a great opportunity for Black marketing, branding, and advertising professionals, who offered advice on how to portray Black people respectfully by forgoing the exaggerated Afros, high fives, and jive talking.

  The Negro Handbook, produced by the Johnson Publishing Company in 1966, is another telling example of how marketing to African Americans helped drain the lifeblood from Black-owned businesses. The book was a universally accepted, credible tool for mainstream marketers, brand managers, and advertisers. Unfortunately, it also showed a clear disregard for African American–owned businesses. “The Negro consumer who was once the private property of the Negro owner and operator of hotels, restaurants, night clubs, and beauty and barber shops,” the handbook states, “has turned with increasing alacrity to white establishments which offer, in many cases, extra services, luxury atmosphere, and a degree of glamour for the same dollar.” That statement is little more than a polished, ad executive–friendly way of saying, “the White man’s ice is colder.”

  Then came the 1970s, when major motion picture studios discovered that urban Black consumers were an untapped market that could help pull those companies out of a collective financial nosedive. They made a series of “blaxploitation” films, starting with 1971’s Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song and including Shaft and Trouble Man, to name a few, that were made relatively cheaply but reaped tens of millions of dollars for mostly White film companies from largely Black movie audiences. Those films glorified drug dealers, pimps, and other nefarious characters who were able “to stick it to the man.” By the mid-1970s Black audiences became more discerning, but those movies had a powerful, lasting, and corrosive impact on the souls of African Americans. Conspicuous consumption and rogue independence, which conflicted with the solidarity and widespread hope that the civil rights movement engendered, were fundamental to “blaxploitation” films and were particularly volatile in a culture that was angry at its powerlessness.

  At about the same time, corporations started focusing on the booming industries of beauty and personal care products, on which African Americans spent about $750 million in 1977. Competition with Black-owned corporations for that market and others—notably advertising and insurance—became fierce and not always honorable. In 1975 the Federal Trade Commission ordered Johnson Products, the Chicago-based maker of Black beauty and personal care products, to place a warning that its popular Ultra Sheen Permanent Crème Relaxer contained sodium hydroxide, an ingredient that could cause hair loss and damage to eyes and skin. The company complied, but the FTC waited nearly two years before ordering the White-owned Revlon Company, whose products also contained the potentially dangerous substance, to place similar warnings on their labels.

  In addition, Black-owned advertising agencies, aside from seeing business decline from the slow economy of the 1970s, were suffering a talent drain to larger, White-owned, better-paying agencies—a trend that struck African American insurance companies, too. The smaller Black insurance companies relied heavily on “industrial insurance,” which carried greater administrative costs that were passed on to the consumer, and their smaller size hampered them from offering more reasonably priced coverage that White-owned firms, with their economies of scale, could provide. Like many Black-owned businesses, African American insurance companies were also hurt by the perception that transferring one’s business to a White-owned insurance carrier meant one was “moving up.”

  Professor Weems points out the broader, troubling consequences of the failing African American insurance industry. The number of what he calls “significant Black insurers” declined from forty-two in 1973 to four in 2006. That drop has probably expedited the erosion of urban Black neighborhoods. The reason: African American–owned insurance companies traditionally invest in their communities’ real estate, whereas White-owned firms do not—another example of how Blacks contribute to the bottom line of White-owned corporations without the corporations returning the favor.

  Then, the 1980s brought a sinister form of Black consumer exploitation. When market research indicated that urban Blacks were significant imbibers of alcohol, liquor companies intensified their advertising efforts in those neighborhoods, often with ads that linked a certain brand of liquor with sophistication, increased status, and sexual prowess, which, of course, preyed on Blacks’ inferiority complex. Cigarette companies were close behind. Both engaged in heavy billboard advertising in urban areas, funneling millions of dollars into marketing while the government spent far less on educating African Americans on the dangers of alcohol and smoking. In 1986, for example, the amount spent on such programs was the downright paltry sum of $512,193. Many of these alcohol and tobacco companies were Black advertising agencies’ biggest customers, donating millions of dollars to financially struggling, ethical Black organizations. Anheuser-Busch, for example, sponsored a telethon that supported the United Negro College Fund, and the brewer made large contributions to the National Urban League. The Joseph Coors Company, a target of protests for purportedly racist and anti-union practices, agreed to invest nearly $625 million between 1984 and 1989 with the NAACP, Operation PUSH, and other causes in African American and Hispanic communities.

  This was a destructive one-two punch: A rising, more aware Black consumerism coupled with intensifying competition from White-owned corporations worked to funnel more money away from Black businesses and communities. It continued in the 1990s and exists to this day.

  Larger companies targeted products and marketing specifically to the African American market. In 1991, for example, Maybelline launched its Shades of You line, while the Estée Lauder Company unveiled its Prescriptives All Skins. Both brands offered a vast array of makeup and related products for African American women, and they proved to be extremely successful. But they also dealt devastating blows to smaller ethnic cosmetic companies, such as Afram Cosmetics and Spectrum Cosmetics, two quality enterprises that had enjoyed exclusive reign over the Black female market before behemoth firms like L’Oreal and Estée Lauder decided to pay attention to it.

  The same thing happened in the film industry. Blacks comprise roughly 13 percent of the population, but we account for 25 percent of film revenue. Although recent Black-oriented films have a broader appeal and offer a more nuanced treatment of Black life than those in the early 1970s, most of the profits from these films end up in Whites’ bank accounts. The fact that,
as of 1995, less than ten movie theaters in the United States were Black-owned is shocking.

  More recently, as hip-hop has moved beyond the Black community and penetrated the culture at large, it has broadened African Americans’ influence, particularly in advertising, TV, and film. The problem, according to Professor Weems, is that “hip hop artists have been used to manipulate young consumers, to ‘play’ young people.”

  As he explained at a 2010 meeting of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, African Americans’ “acute case of status anxiety . . . fed the quest for bling,” a self-centered goal that erodes Blacks’ historical, unified struggle.

  “It is also worth noting,” he told the gathering, “that since African Americans do not own, in significant numbers, large jewelry stores, luxury car dealerships, yacht dealerships, or designer fashion businesses . . . the primary beneficiaries of the ‘Ghetto Fabulous’ phenomenon have been white businessmen.”

  That one of the main legacies of the civil rights era has been the demise of so many Black-owned businesses is ironic. In the 1960s and ’70s integration finally gave us the opportunity to shop with other people, and we reveled in the chance to show that our money was just as green as everyone else’s. We righteously flocked downtown and to the suburbs, spending our money at mass retailers like Walgreens, Sears, and Woolworth’s instead of our local, Black-owned firms. Those mainstream retailers were happy to take our money and target us with advertising that used Black models, but they didn’t actually care to build stores in our neighborhoods. The combination fed an economic crisis in Black communities, starving those local businesses to death, decimating neighborhoods, and opening the door for a steady incursion of business owners from outside the community. By the 1980s and 90s immigrant groups—willing to locate businesses in our tattered neighborhoods and leveraging the low rents and available space—set up minimarts and liquor stores, hunkering down for the long haul.

  As our spending power was growing, we experienced the hard-fought triumphs of integration and inclusion. At the same time, our economic strength was, in effect, being stolen out from under us. Opportunity and freedom in the 1960s feel like racist exploitation in the 1990s and 2000s.

  As Professor Weems points out,if one were to take a stroll through most urban black enclaves in America, one would be hard-pressed to see where increased African-American spending has improved the infrastructure and the ambiance of these neighborhoods. Black consumers . . . enhance the economic bases of these outside areas to the detriment of their own enclaves. This self-destructive tendency raises the question “Is the slow, but steady, destruction of urban black America (and its businesses) too steep a price to pay for unrestricted African-American consumerism?” For contemporary African Americans who would answer “yes,” the future demands the development of strategies that will stimulate more constructive economic activity within the black community. A truly free people possesses the power to produce, as well as to consume.

  What we found on Madison Street and much of the West Side conformed to this analysis. As discouraging as it was, reading those words made me realize all the more how important Karriem’s store—and our little adventure—was.

  Chapter 4

  A Dose of Reality

  LOOKING BACK OVER OUR BLACK YEAR, WE LEARNED valuable if painful lessons, including the dismal state of African American businesses in the Chicago-land area—not to mention the rest of the country. Other lessons underscored how naive we had been when we began this venture. But in our defense, the exuberant reactions we received even before we began our experiment had fueled our dreams. No wonder our expectations were so over-the-top.

  It started back in July of 2008, when we met with Ebony magazine’s Adrienne Samuels, the cousin of our friend Nat. She was so enthusiastic that she even gave us pointers on how to make my abstract—the written articulation of our vision for The Ebony Experiment—more appealing to the higher-ups at Johnson Publications. Her response was encouraging. It indicated that we would probably receive decent coverage from one of the oldest, most respected Black media companies in the country.

  But we also knew we were going to need some PBFs—Prominent Black Folks—to lend The Ebony Experiment credibility. With assistance from some celebrity endorsers, a couple high-profile academics, and the Black media, a campaign could take shape and keep growing. Inspired individuals would make and honor their pledges to “buy Black,” and The Ebony Experiment would track the cumulative spending and monitor how that money was having an impact in underserved areas and on our overall economic empowerment. We thought EE would be a great way to show that Black people of all backgrounds could unite to rescue our community.

  We had our plan, but it wouldn’t work without celebrity endorsers and commitments from Black media to keep the movement in the public eye. If those friendly folks would open their checkbooks to fund the project, things would move along faster. Our strategy to find the PBFs was fairly simple. We made two lists: one consisting of people we knew or had access to, and a second, generated in large part by the first, of prominent players who might be fired up enough to throw some support, financial or otherwise, behind The Ebony Experiment. When we finalized our lists six months before we launched the experiment, we had about thirty names.

  At the top of our list was Professor Steven Rogers, executive director of the Levy Institute for Entrepreneurship at Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management. John was a former student in his Entrepreneurial Finance class. Students rated him the most popular professor for ten-plus years. John had told me how impressive and demanding Rogers was in class. Kellogg is one of the top business schools in the world, and Rogers, at the top of its entrepreneurial department, is an icon. A member of the Minority Business Hall of Fame and the only Black person on the board of directors for eminent businesses like SC Johnson Wax and SuperValu, he used his influence to be an advocate for Black business. The principle of self-help economics in the Black community—that Black people cannot make it until their businesses do—was one of his core beliefs.

  I’d sent him our abstract of the project and arranged a meeting at his office. Maybe his early review of the material eased his mind. Maybe he saw from the outset the value in what we were planning. Whatever it was, he didn’t give me the anticipated third degree when we met. Instead, he asked about my family, my upbringing and goals, my politics, how I met John. He told me about his life growing up on the South Side and spoke lovingly about his parents. The conversation was warm and engaging. And then he asked me a question that gave me pause.

  “Maggie, are you free?” he said, in almost a whisper. He waited, letting the question sink in. “Because most people who come in here are not. I’m free. Cornel West is free because he criticized President Obama the other day. He is committed to truth, not ambitions.”

  He paused again and looked at me hard, but he was grinning.

  “I think you are free,” he said.

  At that moment I knew we were kindred spirits, or something close to that. I think he understood how difficult following through on our pledge to buy Black would be and that making that pledge took guts and a certain liberation from the fears most of us have about shaking up the status quo.

  Without making any promises, Rogers let me know that he was there for us. He instructed me to convert the abstract to a business document and PowerPoint presentation, to make it a more concise read for the busy VIPs we were trying to recruit, and to include a budget and sponsorship request. He said, with all sincerity, that I could call him when I needed something. I gave him a few names of people on our wish list, and he promised to contact them. He also warned me that although the academic community might find this experiment intriguing, the business world might feel threatened by it. That turned out to be prophetic.

  With Rogers in our camp, we had street cred. But as much of an inspiration and confidence boost as it was to have him on our side, I also wanted to get Michael Eric Dyson
involved. A professor of sociology at Georgetown University, he is the most prolific, eloquent, outspoken public intellectual and commentator on Black culture in the United States. He also happens to be my personal hero. I used to joke with John that I wanted to be Professor Dyson when I grew up.

  We first met in 2002 when he was a professor at DePaul University and a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, and we became e-mail buddies. When Michael left Chicago for a teaching job at the University of Pennsylvania, we kept in touch. Now he was in DC, and I was in Chicago with the abstract on this project that people were getting fired up about. How to get Michael Eric Dyson—The Heroic Michael Eric Dyson—on Team Double E?

  John and I took three hours to write a three-paragraph e-mail. The focus was primarily on the personal, although I did share our idea for The Ebony Experiment with Michael. In September of 2008 we talked more about it when we met at a café in Washington, DC, where John and I were attending the National Black MBA Convention. After I finished my spiel, Michael was speechless for about three seconds, which was something of a rarity in itself. Then he went off: about how Soledad O’Brien and Oprah would interview us; about the mainstream marketability (he was the first to see that) of the young, highly educated, suburban couple with the two adorable daughters—and how crucial such media exposure would be; about wanting to place the issues facing Black neighborhoods and our youth into the national dialogue. He was on a roll, and once Michael Dyson gets on a roll, there is no stopping him.

  “You don’t fit the militant, activist profile,” he said. “It’s perfect. You’ll be media darlings. They’re gonna’ fall in love with you. And if they love you, they’ll listen. Aaaw man, Mag, that American Dream stuff—that your parents and big brothers came here with nothing, became hardworking, productive American citizens. That’s gold, man. That’s just beautiful. John with those glasses, the girls with that frizzy hair all over the place, and you with that kind of ambiguous racial makeup thing going on. You guys are so cute and disarming. They just might listen. And that’s all you need. Everything else is backed up by facts, history, and science. If you get them to actually want to talk about this, everything can change. This is beautiful.”