A Letter to My White Friends and Colleagues

CHAPTER FIVESupport Black-Owned Businesses

I am asking you to spend at least 8.46% of your annual household and business budgets with Black-owned businesses.

“I think supporting Black-owned businesses is so important. Why? Everyone that works here, is from here. We are providing jobs in this community.”¹

The Importance of Black-Owned Businesses

Supporting Black business also means supporting Black communities because businesses are usually more than just places that offer goods and services.² Black entrepreneurs are the largest private employers of Black people in the country. When you support Black entrepreneurs, you are helping to close the Black-White wealth gap.

Two people who are likely to gain wealth as a result of public support of Black entrepreneurs are Sergio Hudson and Christopher John Rogers. Both men own their own clothing design companies. Vice President Kamala Harris wore clothes they designed at the 2021 presidential inauguration.³ This was a very intentional choice made by the vice president. As Paul Cobler, the reporter for the Advocate, wrote, “she made it a point to wear clothes by Black designers.”⁴ The positive financial impact on their companies was best explained the day after the inauguration by Alison Bringe, the chief marketing officer of an analytics company: “When Christopher John Rogers showed his spring collection at New York Fashion Week, the brand generated just over $1 million, while yesterday's events accumulated upward of 8 times that ...