Our Black Year

by Maggie Anderson

  My encounter with a lady in the store’s parking lot was typical. One summer afternoon prior to the store’s closing a pretty woman wearing a sundress and floppy hat approached me. She was holding a bag from the dollar store next to Farmers Best.

  “Do you shop here a lot?” she asked. I was ready to give her the whole Farmers Best–EE story. I was already digging for my card.

  “Yes! And I love it . . . ”

  “You know that place ain’t Black-owned,” she said. “No way is that big store Black. I ain’t stupid. Did you hear that on the radio? That it’s Black?”

  I couldn’t believe it. Although I wanted to scream at her, I took a breath and launched into the details about Farmers Best and EE—our pledge, the businesses, Northwestern’s study. She listened to all of it and then, in a staggering display of ignorance, said, “I’m not giving them crackuhs a dime of my money.”

  It was maddening.

  “Alright,” I said, feeling exasperated. “I don’t want to argue with you about this. I’ll pray for ya.”

  Sometimes I wonder whether something in our DNA prevents us from working together, whether the cultural liabilities we’ve experienced and, yes, cultivated over the decades have become the essence of who we are.

  One of my favorite examples is the bullshit hoax of glorifying the ghetto. We love to do that—to boast about “keeping it real.” It makes me roll my eyes and want to stick a finger down my throat. The truth—and we all know it—is that ignorant perspectives like the hollow “keeping it real” refrain guarantee that our neighborhoods will stay chaotic, impoverished, dilapidated, violent, and hopeless. But those neighborhoods are ours, baby. They’re all ours, glory hallelujah, and as long they’re ours, we’ve got something. Da hood is ugly, broke down, and scary, but it’s all mine! Now isn’t that something to crow about? If it weren’t so painful and embarrassing, it’d be funny. Well, here’s something else to consider: We never talk about why it’s ours. Pretty simple, really: The ghetto is ours because no one else wants it. Who would?

  Then there’s the ridiculous line of thought used to justify our complacency—a forced, slightly twisted logic that links our inertia with our spirituality. You know the phrases: “Blessed be the meek” and “The more we suffer here, the greater our reward in heaven.”

  In her book Talking Dollars and Making Sense: A Wealth Building Guide for African-Americans, Wall Street veteran Brooke Stephens comments, “From the days of slavery, African-Americans have bought into this bizarre fallacy that there was something noble about poverty and suffering, and that the only comfort we should expect will be in an afterlife.” In other words, be proud to be poor. We are not supposed to prosper: Our honor is in our exploitation and suffering.

  Really? So why didn’t Rosa just stay in the back of the bus and suffer proudly? Why didn’t our mothers and fathers in Selma quit at the Edmund Pettus Bridge? You know why? Because they understood that the time to act had come. They knew they had been denied basic human rights for too long and that the only course to take was to dig in their heels and say, Enough. No more will we take this humiliation and denial. We must stand—whether it’s claiming a place on the bus or marching to guarantee safe entry into the voting booth—and seize our God-given rights.

  Since then things have gotten a little complicated. We’ve allowed ourselves to compromise. We’ve been seduced—maybe sedated is a better word—and we’ve lost focus. The humiliation endures, but it’s more nuanced, more insidious, and the big difference is we’ve perpetrated it. We’ve betrayed ourselves and then directed our bitterness at everyone else. Time to take ownership, folks. Time to take action—again.

  I also hear this crap about “them”—White America—stepping on us because they want to be us. We get all righteous about how they exploit us and condemn us but never will be able to be us. Let them have all the prosperity and power, this ludicrous riff goes. They can’t take our soul. We’ve got our soul power! Translation: You’re lazy and don’t care anymore. You don’t believe we can make things better, and you’ve found a way to contort that into some kind of warped pride—the triumph of failure. How whacked out is that?

  “To go on blaming society, the white man, recent immigrants, Congress, the ‘establishment’ for one’s lack of prosperity is good for venting one’s frustration,” Stephens writes, “but what are you going to do about the situation once you get past the talking stage?” This line of thought is just “another category of Black paranoia and a set of excuses not to make any effort to change and stop being a willing victim,” she continues. “Our ancestors bought and paid for our success—it is time to claim it as being long past due.”

  Fear—not all that different from the fear in the White community and fear among Prominent Black Folks—is a powerful, hope-killing force in the African American psyche. “The bottom line is that most Black folks are scared to talk about money,” Stephens notes. “Scared to admit they’ve made dumb choices with it. Scared to take risks as entrepreneurs. Scared to trust and respect each other as professionals in business deals.... Scared to challenge outdated beliefs about prosperity and economic well-being. Scared to stop blaming racism for all the financial problems that exist in the Black community.”

  Amen, sister.

  Stephens’ words made me think about all the Prominent Black Folks who took a pass on supporting EE. Were they afraid of taking a bold step that somehow might offend Whites? Were they cynics who believed that most Blacks were incapable of running successful businesses? Regardless, their sense that their position is precarious seems to motivate their behavior. Dr. Walker told me, “I have found that the most wealthy and most prominent blacks achieved their wealth and power by placing themselves in the mainstream of American life and, for the most part will stay away from anything that can be considered racially divisive.” They flourish as long as they succeed in treading lightly—acknowledging they’re Black but not so Black that they jeopardize business relationships with well-heeled Whites.

  By way of example, Walker pointed to the rushed firing in 2010 of US Department of Agriculture employee Shirley Sherrod, an African American woman whose out-of-context remarks at a speech twenty years ago depicted her as unfairly dealing with a White farmer. The Obama administration couldn’t get rid of her fast enough, but then they were embarrassed when the media revealed that, in fact, Sherrod had treated the man with dignity, had actually helped save the man’s farm, and had become friends with him.

  According to Clarence Jones, no empirical data exist to show that the Black power-elite is lagging in its support of impoverished Blacks, but he thought that this lack of support might exist, and it might be generational.

  “My gut feeling, strangely enough,” he said, “is that . . . except for Bill Cosby and Oprah—I don’t think [it is] on [the older Black elite’s] radar. I really think that the predominant mindset is that ‘I did it so anybody can do it.’ And . . . there may be a sense of not wanting to put what they have at risk.”

  However, according to Jones, the new generation of African American sports personalities “really have a sense that, ‘I want to give something back.’ They feel much more of a connection and they’re more proud from whence they came. In many ways, they’re much more secure in what they’ve acquired than some of the older ones.”

  With all due respect to Clarence Jones, given our experience I believe that part of the reason Black people can never earn their rightful place in society is because we do not support each other. This failure does not have to do with our history in this country, racism, or discrimination. This failure is about whom we have chosen to be.

  I had a strong sense about all this before embarking on The Empowerment Experiment, but I refused to acknowledge it. Once we got rolling I wanted to believe that the desire to empower ourselves was latent but strong in all of us. If we just had a spark to ignite it, we could overcome our ingrained, destructive history. Maybe our belief was a survival tactic. Or chalk it up to our guilelessness
. Or maybe I just didn’t think that the defeatism would be so intractable that it could kill Karriem’s store.

  What made it worse, if that’s possible, was reflecting on all the empty promises people—Prominent Black Folks and not so prominent—made to us regarding their support of Farmers Best. I call it the “art of civilized hypocrisy.” Basically, folks were lying to our faces, especially people in Bronzeville and Hyde Park, vibrant neighborhoods with substantial Black populations near Karriem’s store. People there had no excuse to bypass the place except for the obvious reason: racism among our own people, against our own people.

  Then, once the stored was closed, folks would respond in shocked disbelief and ask why it had closed.

  “What?” I remember one guy telling me. “No way. It’s gone? I didn’t even get a chance to go. Damn. That’s rough.”

  “Wow! He should’ve been a little more patient,” somebody else said. “I was going to come and bring some folks with me. He gave up that quick?”

  That question would really light my fuse.

  “Not enough support,” I’d say, trying to stop the burning between my ears. After a while I stopped being polite and let them have it, which is what happened with a congregant of Trinity United Church of Christ who made the mistake of asking me about the project after she recognized me from the CBS Early Show interview. When she suggested that I ask Pastor Moss to include Farmers Best coupons in the church bulletin, I told her it was too late: The store was closed. She reacted the way everyone else did—with surprise.

  “It’s your fault,” I told her, “and everybody else in this church’s fault who didn’t have the simple decency to empower one of our own brothers by doing nothing more than shopping at his beautiful store once in a while.”

  Poor woman never knew what hit her. But I had all these other thoughts—questions, really—about what went wrong for Farmers Best. Why would folks like this seemingly well-intentioned woman never, ever wake up on a Sunday morning and drive a few blocks to Farmers Best but instead drive eight miles to the closest Whole Foods or Target Greatland? Why do we spend our hard-earned money in those disgusting neighborhood minimarts, owned by people who live in prosperous suburbs with high-performing schools and who treat us, their customers, with contempt while offering overpriced, inferior goods? Why are we so willing to help send their kids to college instead of supporting someone like Karriem, a caring, committed, hardworking role model who provides a wonderful store employing and mentoring at-risk Black youth?

  Are we that ignorant? Are we that comfortable with our misery? Do we really hate ourselves that much?

  After our Black year ended, the Chicago Tribune ran a second article reflecting on what had transpired, including the closing of Farmers Best. Karriem publicly pointed to the rough economy, deep-pocketed and not always upright competitors, and the unavailability of capital—there it is again—as the culprits. His love for us and his appreciation for our efforts on his behalf were strong, which was noble of him. However, his feelings for The Empowerment Experiment and the notion of Blacks supporting Black-owned businesses were ambivalent. Grudgingly, he acknowledged that the lack of community support was a factor in shutting him down.

  He said, “The Empowerment Experiment . . . made people aware of the lack of support for Black-owned businesses and aware that there was a Black-owned fresh market. What people chose to do with that remains to be seen.”

  Then Karriem said something that encapsulated his—and our—experience. He suggested that being highlighted as a Black-owned business might have hurt Farmers Best.

  “If you’re under the radar,” he said, “then maybe you won’t get that belief from customers that the other guy’s ice is colder than yours.”

  What happened to Karriem still keeps me up at night. The whole episode highlights one of the most enduring problems of this odyssey: I was enraged at the people I wanted to empower. I hated the people I wanted to help the most. That love-hate dynamic made me want to slap or spit on somebody, to burn something to the ground—and this lasted a long, long time. When it finally started to dissipate, it morphed into cynicism, which is debilitating when you’re trying to sustain a movement and instill hope.

  I almost felt as if Karriem’s closing, the PBFs’ rejection, and the overall Black divisiveness were signs from God that we were not meant to win this fight. I came to this bizarre conclusion that we Blacks suffer from a paralyzing psychosis brought on by a cancer, and that cancer is not the leakage, nor is the racism or the exploitation at the hands of other ethnic groups who had raided our neighborhoods and industries. We were the cancer. We were sick, poisoned, dying, and choosing to ignore the symptoms.

  I learned that it was going to take a lot more than a fantastic store and a dynamic entrepreneur to shake my peoples’ paralysis, to cure the cancer. And I couldn’t stop myself from coming to another conclusion: Farmers Best was everything EE could be and everything we in the Black community would never be.

  Although the Farmer’s Best closing knocked us on our rear ends, we were getting signals that we had at least piqued people’s interest. The e-mails, T-shirt orders, and registrations kept coming—between the website and the Facebook group, about eight thousand official EE members by August—and so did speaking requests. We received awards from or invitations to partner with several key organizations—from the United American Progress Association, a grassroots organization based on Chicago’s South Side, to the NAACP, National Urban League, and National Black Chamber of Commerce.

  Throughout this time we were reevaluating our media strategy, which had been focused on getting as much national, mainstream media exposure as possible, sometimes at the expense of neglecting smaller Black outlets. Our PR firm had to focus on paying clients, and it was not doing much in terms of promoting our story. So other media’s coverage triggered most of the media we got, and that made us think we may have been spending too much time explaining and defending instead of sharing and inspiring. Educating outsiders who wanted to understand the issues was important, but we wanted to spark real change, and nothing was going to change unless Black people were inspired to act. The result was that we altered our media strategy: We would focus our efforts on predominantly Black outlets.

  Which was why meeting Doug Banks, one of the most popular Black radio hosts on the air, was so invigorating.

  We crossed paths a few weeks after my June speech at Friendship-West Church, when I attended the National Urban League Conference in Chicago. Apart from being a radio giant, Banks is an author and public speaker, though he is definitely not your typical talking head. He presents a full-bodied, nuanced portrayal of the issues and believes in intelligent conversation—as much as can be achieved on a radio call-in show, anyway. In other words, he’s smart, articulate, and takes seriously his role as cohost of the nationally syndicated radio show, The Ride with Doug and Dede. Because of all that, people view him as a leader in our community.

  When I told him about The Empowerment Experiment, I could almost see the wheels clicking. That happened with lots of people. And, like lots of people, he said he supported the project 100 percent. What made Doug different was that he immediately took action, inviting us to be on the show, which airs in the all-important 2–6 p.m. weekday time slot. We set it up for August 18, a Tuesday. John and I were ecstatic. Every day on the show Doug submits a topic for discussion on “The Adult Conversation,” and folks call in. We thought Doug and Dede would interview us for the standard few minutes, which is what happened with most of our other media appearances. Instead, they called us at home and kept us on the show for an unprecedented three hours. The topic was “Should Black People Do More to Support Black Businesses?”

  We got our answer in a hurry: no bleeping way.

  While John and I passed a phone back and forth between us (there was better reception if we didn’t use separate receivers), we were subjected to an audio lashing. Only one caller supported self-help economics and pledged to do more to spend his mon
ey at local, Black businesses. The rest tore apart the ideals behind our mission, usually by recounting a story about a disappointing experience at a Black business and then swearing off ever patronizing one again.

  “Yeah, every time I go to my Black Popeye’s, they don’t have chicken,” the typical caller would say, “or I have to wait ten minutes for my food.”

  Someone said they were cheated at a Black-owned business; another claimed the customers at the establishment scared her; a third said the owners did. A caller complained that the Black-owned stores didn’t look like Wal-Mart. “Bottom line,” another critic pronounced, “is that Black businesses are always dirty, and the prices are too high. Black people are just greedy.”

  And then there was my all-time favorite: The Black folks who want credit for trying to buy Black once, ten years ago, and having an unsatisfactory experience, which leads them to dismiss the entire race as being incompetent business people. This old saw invariably triggers one of my loud, crazy-lady laughs.

  We’d gotten some of these reactions before, of course, so we were prepared with data about leakage, stories about encounters with high-quality, Black-owned businesses, and our suggestion to support only reputable Black businesses as a way to lower unemployment, strengthen the tax base, improve schools, and provide good role models. We told the onetime buy-Black shoppers to keep trying, that even Sam Walton started as a small-time retailer who needed customers from the community.

  I remember asking the Popeye’s caller whether he knew if the place was really Black-owned. “I bet you it’s not,” I said. “Have you ever considered who the owner is and what kind of service and quality he’d deliver to a Popeye’s in one of those nicer neighborhoods on the North Side?”

  To another skeptic I said, “But doesn’t it bother you that all your hard-earned money is sending everyone else’s kids to college, and our kids are the least educated and most likely to go to jail?”