ANTHONY JOSHUA sparked a social media storm when he read out the words of someone who couldn’t attend a Black Lives Matter protest last year calling on the black community to “abstain from spending your money in their shops
and economies and invest in black-owned businesses”.
The former heavyweight boxing champion was subsequently criticised and labelled as ‘racist’ for reading out a widespread view of black capitalism as a solution to combat racial injustice.
Interestingly, most ethnic minority groups in Britain follow some sort of group economics. Chinese support Chinese, Indians support Indians, Pakistanis support Pakistanis etc. Nevertheless, it seems to be an issue when the black community attempts to mobilise themselves economically as displayed with the backlash of Joshua’s comments.
That same month witnessed the first-ever ‘Black Pound Day’ on June 27 founded by Brit award-winning rapper Swiss from the infamous So Solid Crew.
Their mission aims to “address the economic inequalities and imbalances affecting black businesses and entrepreneur’s in the UK and global diasporic communities”.
Black economics is a philosophy followed by many people of the African diaspora in the Western world as practitioners of this philosophy advocate the support for black-owned businesses.
The Pan-African icon Marcus Garvey is one of the most prominent figures of black economics with his civil rights group UNIA (Universal Negro Improvement Association) helping to marshal impoverished black people across the diaspora with an ethos of black capitalism.
Research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies earlier this year revealed the growing inequalities in education, skills and incomes as an implication of the COVID-19 pandemic.
This study suggests that among working-age adults, the presence of two-earner households is significantly lower for Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, black African and Caribbean households.
Black individuals also find themselves particularly overrepresented in insecure jobs with the lower rates of two-income households among black and Asian households making them more susceptible to financial issues following job losses from the pandemic.
One can go as far as positioning the black community in the new ‘precariat’ class group. This term was introduced by academic Professor Guy Standing who argues that the growing neoliberal policies across the world are producing numbers of people with common enough experiences to be grouped in an emerging class.
The precariat is those working and living ‘precariously’, usually in a series of short-term jobs with a lack of social protection.
Equally, more research also shows the black community is disproportionately affected by income inequality as the leading race equality think tank Runnymede Trust found in its April 2020 The Colour of Money report that black and ethnic minority groups are more likely to have low incomes due to “lower wages, higher unemployment rates, higher rates of part-time working, higher housing costs in England’s large cities (especially London), and because black households on average have larger families the imposition of the benefit cap has further disadvantaged our communities.
Similarly, the Resolution Foundation’s analysis into COVID-19 and its financial implications outlines the effects of the pandemic which led to stark gaps in wealth held by different ethnic groups in Britain.
It revealed on the eve of the pandemic that at least half of black African, Bangladeshi and black Caribbean households had less than £1,000 in a family savings account to serve as a buffer in case of a fall in income. Despite these statistics, black and ethnic minority spending power is estimated at over £300 billion.
The resources exist to rebuild, buy back communities, and distribute wealth.
Meanwhile, with a population of just under 50 million, African Americans are the second-largest consuming group in America, presenting businesses with a spending power of $1.4 trillion (£1.015tn).
Black households accounted for under 10 per cent of the nation’s spending on goods and services in 2019 despite making up 13.4 per cent of the population, according to management consultant group McKinsey.
Similarly, despite their spending prowess, African Americans, just like black Brits, remain among the most impoverished ethnic groups in the country. It is noticeable in black communities the lack of business ownership.
From Handsworth to Brixton, historically known black communities are becoming plagued with gentrification and a myriad of non-black-owned businesses who continue to profit at our expense.
We can see the differentiation between the South Asian communities or the Chinese communities on the topic of group economics. These two communities have their own banks, own supermarkets selling their products and employing their people, and they keep their money in their community.
With the black British community remaining amongst the most impoverished groups, the fall out of the pandemic only makes matters worst. The pernicious crab in a bucket mentality we have will only continue to be our detriment in this country and seeing us prevail in the face of persistent inequalities.
Black economics: Improving our socio-political position - The Voice Online
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