Posted on July 22, 2011

Investing in America’s Growing Assets: Minorities

Mike Green, Huffington Post, July 17, 2011

How will America’s economic portfolio change in the next few decades as we race toward 2050 when racial minorities are expected to emerge as the majority of the U.S. population?

Investing today to uplift America’s minority students and innovators seems prudent.

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I don’t know where the notion was conceived that the election of a Black leader would, in an instant, mitigate the economic imprisonment and wealth gap established by institutions of oppressive policies and practices that have remained from post-slavery to this presumed “post-racial” era.

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The main economic categories that offer insight into a significantly divided Black and White America are simply: education and jobs.

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Consider that 87 percent of eighth-graders in high-poverty schools are not proficient in math. 88 percent are not proficient in reading.

The data indicate another economic crisis is set to hit the nation in 2015. Millions of unqualified students will flood the job market unable to obtain livable wages and engage in productive work.

What will become of these masses of minorities in whom the nation has failed to adequately invest?

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{snip} Unfortunately, no data suggests that government has ever been the answer to the employment problem for Black Americans in any substantive way. In fact, the data suggest just the opposite:

Since the days of Dr. Martin Luther King’s call for jobs from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 to this very day, unemployment among Black Americans has remained nearly double the overall jobless rate every year in a pattern so consistent that it is the focus of discussions and debates among those who have knowledge of the data.

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Historically, no such institutional investment focus has targeted regions predominantly dominated by African Americans. Historically, White American business owners have been reluctant to employ Blacks; and diversity, which receives some lip service, isn’t high on the priority list for leaders in White corporations and White-owned small businesses that dominate America’s job market.

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The revenue generated by all Black-owned business is less than 1 percent of GDP.

The National Venture Capital Association boasts venture-backed companies produced $2.9T. That revenue amounted to 21% of the nation’s $14T GDP in 2008. Compare that to Asian-owned businesses that produced $2.5T and employed half of all employed minorities in the nation.

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We’re racing toward the year 2050. It’s time to invest in those promising minority students and talented innovators who have failed to receive our focus and investment. After all, at the rate minority populations are growing, they represent the next generation of America’s leaders building the American Dream of the 21st century.