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.
Unfortunately, the excitement and energy of a nation that elected its first Black president a few years ago has dissipated. Did we expend all of our energy just to elect him to the office with none left over to do the necessary work?
I was hopeful such an election would translate into changes in the education system that routinely relegates poor black and brown students to lives upon a conveyor belt of chaos and confusion, where the American Dream is an elusive nightmare.
I was hopeful the infrastructure of private risk capital (angels and venture capitalists) would be expanded to include minorities. Unfortunately, both Whites and non-Whites seem to have relegated the president to the single-handed task of removing significant economic obstacles that block productive progress for millions of minorities.
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.
We should recognize the fact the election of President Barack Obama is a precedent-setting anomaly lacking the infrastructure of support necessary to make Obama's historic leadership much more than a first step in the right direction.
I've heard the premise that we live in a "post-racial" America where the presumed dying embers of red-hot racism that fueled the production of an economic foundation and built this nation's institutions upon the backs of slave and low-cost labor for centuries is only kept alive today by those with a victim mentality who continue to rant and rave about racism.
My response? Follow the economic data.
The main economic categories that offer insight into a significantly divided Black and White America are simply: education and jobs.
EDUCATION
There's no need to belabor criticism of the failed system of public education, which services 50 million American students and dispenses disparate results along racial lines readily seen when relevant data are reviewed.
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?
JOBS
On July 13, a coalition of more than 4,000 Black pastors released an open letter they signed and submitted to President Barack Obama petitioning to halt budget cuts that would negatively impact programs serving the poor.
As Christian leaders, we are committed to fiscal responsibility and shared sacrifice. We are also committed to resist budget cuts that undermine the lives, dignity, and rights of poor and vulnerable people.
The group, which calls itself Sojourners, made this specific point pertaining to the allocation of government resources:
A fundamental task is to create jobs and spur economic growth. Decent jobs at decent wages are the best path out of poverty, and restoring growth is a powerful way to reduce deficits.
The compassion on display by the pastors is honorable. 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.
"Job growth is going to be driven by the private sector but we can make some smart decision to encourage businesses to feel like this is the right time to invest and that America's the right place to invest," President Obama told the 26-member job council he formed in January 2011 with a goal of creating one million jobs.
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.
Need for Private Risk Capital
The Census Bureau's most recent stats on 1.9 million Black-owned businesses reveal the vast majority are sole proprietorships; and of those with employees, very few have more than 100. Add to that fact the total gross revenue of all those businesses was $137.5B in 2007 ... before the economic recession.
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.
Black Americans have no such risk capital infrastructure.
Angels and venture capitalists across the nation focus their investments on targeted regions. The private risk capital infrastructure, currently 65 years old, has largely ignored Black America, relegating more than a million innovative minority entrepreneurs to bootstrapping enterprises that lack the capital to move beyond the bootstrapping phase.
Even Startup America, a national collaborative venture endorsed by President Obama to support innovation and spur job growth, has yet to provide a plan by which it will assist Black America's innovators who lack the infrastructure of business incubators, accelerators and connections to private risk capital. The options provided by Startup America make assumptions that do not address the challenges facing Black entrepreneurs, thus indicating a strong need for minority representation amongst the decision-makers presiding over partnerships and investments.
For Black Americans, Hispanic Americans, Native Americans and other racial demographic societies that have been oppressed or ignored by the main power structure, the answer is we must invest in ourselves.
As minorities continue to grow in number, but lack authority and economic power, it is vital that investments in the education of our children are sufficient to adequately prepare them to become both qualified job seekers as well as innovative job creators. We need strong minority leadership in the 21st century that will emerge from those cohorts in whom we invest today.
Investing In America's Future
We need more organizations such as these that invest in minority youth and the future of America:
Usher Raymond IV is teaching youth entrepreneurial skills and global leadership with impressive results. His foundation, UNL, has developed a formula that shows every dollar spent generates 43 times return on investment. UNL hosts it Annual World Leadership Conference on July 20th in Atlanta and will honor Ted Turner among other leaders.
"We're teaching youth about the world," says Shawn Wilson, UNL's president. "That's how we make them stronger -- by taking them outside the classroom, even overseas, to introduce them to new paradigms. We broaden their vision by exposing them to global issues. We help them think outside of the box to seek global solutions."
Level Playing Field Institute:
Promising high school students from poor backgrounds are often prevented from realizing their potential solely due to lack of economic resources. The Level Playing Field Institute's Summer Math and Science Honors (SMASH) Academy removes the financial problem and changes the equation. Currently, servicing 80 students on each of the campuses of UC Berkeley and Stanford University, SMASH is gearing up to expand across the nation and service students nationwide.
Students spend three consecutive summers in 5-week immersive environments with top instructors. SMASH boasts 100 percent of its students are accepted to four-year universities, the vast majority majoring in a STEM field.
"We shouldn't be thanked for doing what we do," says Level Playing Field Institute founder Freada Kapor Klein, "It should be a non-issue. These are incredibly talented, ambitious, wonderful kids. There shouldn't have to be anything special for them. They should be in institutions that recognize and reward their talents. And they're not. Our educational institutions aren't set up that way. Our workplaces aren't set up that way.
"Being a real meritocracy is hard work. Let's get on it!"
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.
Follow Mike Green on Twitter: www.twitter.com/amikegreen2
African and "Hispanics" –Americans underperform, in school and out, in spite of the best attempts of the system. They underperform European and North-East Asian Americans, largely, because, on average, they have lower levels of general mental ability (GMA) (1,2). This is the proximate cause of most disparities. Any attempt raise up African and “Hispanic” Americans, must focus on increasing their GMA. As differences in GMA represent deeply rooted neurological differences which stabilize by adulthood, they would most effectively be addressed through providing cognitive enhancing environmental conditions early on at a time when the brain is most plastic. (This of course is assuming that the differences have a predominately environmental origin.) STEM programs, in short, aren’t going to cut it.
(1) Sackett, et al., 2008. High-Stakes Testing in Higher Education and Employment Appraising the Evidence for Validity and Fairness.
(2) Schmidt and Hunter, 2004. General Mental Ability in the World of Work: Occupational Attainment and Job Performance
Minorities have had enough free rides, and Whites are getting tired of it. Whites are currently reproducing well below replacement levels because we're too busy working overtime to make the playing field "level" for the less capable. At the same time, every minority is reproducing in this country at record levels and STILL it's nothing but complaints about what Whites owe.
If minorities are unable to get by in this free-ride environment, it's because the sad fact may be that they are simply unsuited to thrive without handouts.
Perhaps you'd like to offer evidence and examples of the "free rides" to which you allude?
Please allow me to offer you a timetable for contextual discourse. Begin your supportive evidence in the 1950s, wherein Whites controlled all institutions of power: federal, state, legal, educational, political, business, municipal, judicial, financial, influential (media), etc.
Proceed to explain how the tens of millions of disenfranchised non-Whites were given a "free ride" in the 50s. Then offer your explanation for each decade thereafter, thus providing six cogent, comprehensive supportive statements that clearly show how minorities have been given "free rides."
Also note that only those in power have the capacity to "give" something to the powerless. Thus, the paradigm of powerful and powerlessness point to the predicament that has led to the problems we continue to see today. After all, that paradigm has not changed, despite the "free rides" of which you speak.
My point is not that Blacks and other minorities should wait for those who hold power to offer "free rides" to those over whom they exercise power. My point remains that Blacks must save ourselves from the treachery of oppression.
When you arrive at the notion that we live in a "free-ride environment" you put on display an exhibition that suggests you've not taken into account historical paths to the present-day paradigms.
1. Via Affirmative Action and diversity programs and de facto quotas numerous individuals classified as “minorities” have been discriminated for.
2. The plurality of these individuals have no familial legacy of discrimination (e.g., they are recent African, Latin American, or Asian Immigrants or descendents of post-1960 immigrants).
3. That is, their families came to the US after – and benefited from -- the implementation of the discriminatory/ diversity programs.
4. An example of such discrimination is the racial gerrymandering that goes on in industry (1). For example, “Hispanics,” the vast majority of whom migrated to the US after the 1960s, score ½ of a SD deviation below European Americans on highly predictive unbiased assessments of cognitive ability (2). To fill de facto quotas and diversity goals, universities and employers must devise ways to discriminate for them relative to “non-hispanic whites” of same level of developed mental ability.
5. Another example would be the type of minority specific programs that you are agitating for. Programs dedicated to the advancement of recent non-White immigrants obviously are giving those immigrants a more free ride relative to White Natives and Immigrants.
6. There is no recourse in arguing that such programs compensate for historic “disenfranchisement,” since, again, the plurality of the individuals that these programs benefit have recent roots.
What a load of victimologist tripe!
Why is poor black academic performance never seen as a failure of black families to educate their children, or of the black community to support educational values, which are often referred to derisively as "thinking white?
If black Americans want to excel they'll ignore those who push this diet culture of dependency self-pity and helplessness instead of self-reliance.
The failure of blacks to succeed has little to do with racism and everything to do with: teen pregnancies, single-parent homes, broken families, substance abuse, and a black urban youth culture the glorifies insolence violence and vulgarity denigrates women.
That white neglect must be at the root of any black-white disparity, and that only the actions of whites can significantly improve the conditions of blacks is an exercise in denial.
Unfortunately, you see solely that which you focus on. Allow me to turn your attention to the fact the disparate dispensation of curricula in the public education system in America isn't controlled by those whom you criticize. The system is divided into high-poverty schools and low-poverty schools, which are symbolic of division along racial fault lines
Within the high-poverty schools, which have a student population of 89% non-Whites, the academic performance is abysmal. You blame the parents of the students. I do not discount the responsibilities of parents. Still, the curriculum and methodologies of teaching such curriculum are disparate when compared with low-poverty schools. The parents of students in high-poverty schools have no controls over curriculum.
So while you rail against the low achievements of the majority of students within the high-poverty schools, I submit the point that HIGH-achieving students in high-poverty schools are still receiving a LOW level of education in comparison to their counterparts in low-poverty schools.
There is an argument to be made regarding the role and responsibility of parents. That is a separate discussion from the role and responsibility of those who run an education system established upon the framework of disparate academic curricula.
These high poverty schools you speak of are no doubt urban schools, for those are where the vast majority of "minorities" attend. I'm very interested in why you think children who get more than twice the money spent on them than those in "low-poverty" schools are receiving a lower level of education?
There's a reason why white children in poor rural schools in Iowa outperform black children in "poor" schools in urban cities, despite the fact that far more cash is lavished on the black children.
What do you think that reason is, Mr.Green?
Mr.Green, I can't help but wonder why you think that whites should invest in non-whites instead of their own communities. Countless money has already been spent to lower this "achievement" gap, and government sponsored discrimination in terms of jobs, education and economics persists today in great quantities in favor on non-whites. If all this couldn't bring them up to the levels of whites, I simply can't see what will.
But more importantly, I am simply dying to know why you think whites should be the ones footing the bill and neglecting their own. After all, you did say you didn't want the government to do it, and clearly they can't do it on their own or they already would have... so that just leaves whites.
So I'm afraid I must disagree with you here. What's needed more than anything is for both sides, the "oppressed"(ha!) and the whites, to tend to their own. Whites have no obligation to do anything for non-whites, and the reverse is equally true.
If they can't uplift themselves, than any attempt by whites to do so would only end in failure as it has for the last five decades.
I support what you are saying, but none of this is really about Obama. It's about the business community missing out on the connection between its own future and the value of not only investing in minority businesses, but also the kids that could be those entrepreneurs and innovators one day.
I advocate strongly for STEM education, development of a robust private risk capital infrastructure within minority communities and the strong support of high-growth entrepreneurship. Government has a role to play in allocating funds toward R&D in public/private sectors for commercialization of ideas. It has political capital to expend in paving the way for us to invest in ourselves.
I strongly support the various efforts that lend themselves toward educating, training, mentoring and investing in our youth and high-growth entrepreneurs. Job creation and wealth generation is, as President Obama has unequivocally stated, driven by the private sector. The problem is private sectors primarily ignore minority sectors. Until minority sectors invest in developing risk capital infrastructures that invest heavily in minority high-growth entrepreneurs, the dynamic will remain minorities complaining there are not enough of us being hired.
The game is being played out in global innovation and competitiveness over market share across industries. Venture capital plays a key role. We need to be in that game with our innovators, our leaders, our companies and our capital. I advocate for full economic participation, collaboration and investment in the 21st century Innovation Economy. It's not about government. I'm talking about us.
I have wearied of government people who pledge they can create jobs (in the non-profit sense). Facilitate, maybe, but "create" is a bit misleading. But I have equally tired of whiners in the business community who blame all their woes on government and ask when government is going to do something. Then they put their drinks and plates down, go home and open their businesses late with the cheapest labor they could find and wonder why the customer base just isn't what it used to be.
I appreciate your article here. I, too, support STEM and many things you have said here. I apologize if my frustration with those who complain but won't work to solve appeared directed at you. It isn't.
The number one thing that made a difference for women moving ahead in business, IMO, was that women supported one another while building partnerships with men for the economic benefit of all. I hope we can all join together and make more of a difference with minorities in business, science, math, technology...
In short, a rising tide floats all ships.
Further, too many are encouraged to start small businesses without adequate knowledge of their market. The mushrooming of online marketers who are filling the void & offering success for a retainer's fee is almost immoral. The high cost of membership in many local Chambers of Commerce are prohibitive to many small businesses, particularly sole proprietorships, and their assistance to them, particularly minority-owned, is minimal.
If we are to re-energize our economy through entrepreneurship, we will need to do better, much better.
I was not aware that black unemployment had the same statistical pattern since MLK. Given this consistency, one could create a plausible case that although there have been societal changes (i.e. a Black President, more minorities finishing HSl, millionaires), indeed there remains a societal constant around the need for equal access to jobs which are the bedrock for most of Americans economic future and well being.
Additionally, the point you made on capital is right on and perhaps supersedes education (and jobs) in my opinion. Thoughts: having capital to compete in an increasingly competitive landscape is perhaps one of the most critical and least acknowledged elements in addressing current and future challenges faced by minorities. I would garner that less than 5 percent of graduates will ever even understand the ins and outs of how the Angel, VC and capital game works, as this information is more tribal and absorbed through being around those that are doing it, or those that are a phone call away from getting it.
Thank you for sharing
Ty Howard, ”Ghos”
www.ghostrade.com