Black Capitalism Research Articles

Black Women Playwrights: Exorcising Myths

A LICE CHILDRESS, Lorraine Hansberry, and Ntozake Shange, three outstanding contemporary black women playwrights, are crucial links in development of black women playwriting in America. These three playwrights, whose perspectives and portraits are decidedly different from those of black males and white playwrights, have created images of blacks which dispel myths of the contented slave, the tragic mulatto, the comic Negro, the exotic primitive, and the spiritual singing, toe-tapping, faithful servant. Childress, Hansberry, and Shange have created credible images of blacks, such as the black militant, the black peacemaker, the black assimilationist, the optimistic black capitalist, the struggling black artist, and the contemporary black matriarch. However, three images which appear most frequently in plays of these black women are the black male in search of his the black male as a walking wounded and the evolving black woman. The black male in search of his manhood, a product of ambivalence fostered mainly by continued disinheritence of blacks after World War II and Korean War, is a major new image in contemporary literature. Functioning in this role, black male struggles to realize who he is and what his function in life is to be. In his essay, Visions of Love and Manliness in a Blackening World: Dramas of Black Life from 1953-1970, Darwin T. Turner states:

Entrepreneurship and Black Capitalism

The literature presents a confusing picture regarding the performance of black entrepreneurs. One reason for the relatively higher failure rate for black entrepreneurs may be the environment in which they begin operations–-the inner city. A study was conducted of black-owned and white-owned Inner city firms to examine this issue. The findings suggest that the race of the owner is not a very Important factor for distinguishing between relatively successful and unsuccessful firms in this Inner city area.

Black Capitalism and Black Inequality: Some Sociological Considerations

Though economists have demonstrated that, in theory, black capitalism should have little direct impact on the well-being of black noncapitalists, indirect and non-economic effects have not been investigated. Empirical tests of this relationship have been inadequate. Though not denying that black economic well-being may affect black business, we argue that the effect is at least reciprocal, and probably stronger in the other direction. We find that, for cities, the extent of black entrepreneurial activity has a strong statistical effect on the well-being of the black population, even when controls are introduced for the many other factors that affect aggregate black welfare. We argue that the apparent effect is a sociological one, operant through variables such as group status and group power. The introduction of intervening measures of black “clout” into the model produces results that support this hypothesis.

Black Capitalism and Black Inequality: Some Sociological Considerations

Black Capitalism and Black Inequality: Some Sociological Considerations

Black Power and State Welfare Policy

The three strategies for the black movement are centered on black individual development resources, black capitalist resources, and political violence. The conflicts between the theorists of each strategy have been major. This study indicates that although black individual development, black capitalist, and black violence strategies are ideologically opposed, each one, nevertheless, has an influence on welfare policy. Black individual and violence resources influence Aid to Families with Dependent Children payments; black capitalist and violence resources influence the number of Aid to Families with Dependent Children recipients. These results suggest that there are a variety of means to social change even though there are ideological disputes about the values of each approach.

A Question of Coffee: Black Enterprise in Angola

In the early 1970's, before oil became the basis of external revenue, Angola was the world's fourth largest producer of coffee. Production rose to 200,000 tons, and the industry caused a great political debate to take place. Should coffee become a state enterprise with state farms, state marketing, state labour, and state capital as proposed by the popular wing of the nationalist movement? Or, should it be a settler enteprise with white planters, white managers, white marketing, white transport, and white profits to be re-invested in metropolitan real estate in Portugal? This was the colonial option in defense of which Portugal fought for thirteen years. The third and historically most interesting option was that coffee should be grown by black entrepreneurs on black land with black co-operatives and black profit-sharing. This third option, the fostering of a prosperous class of free peasants, was advocated by a powerful section of the colonial-military complex. It was also the policy of the segment of the nationalist movement. The idea of black capitalist entreprise had roots in the nineteenth-century history of Angola's coffee industry. It also sowed the seeds of powerful civil discord during the 1975 wars of foreign intervention that accompanied the last stage of colonisation. The roots of Angola's coffee industry lie back in the 1830s, although its major periods of prosperity and growth were the 1890s and the 1950s.1 In the nineteenth century many of the commerical peoples of northern Angola, unlike those of West Africa, were able to postpone the search for modern economic opportunity. The old Atlantic option of selling labour, rather than investing it in local enterprise, continued to be available. Uruguayans, Cubans, North Americans, and above all Portuguese from So Tome only very slowly reduced the traditional markets for slaves and for forced contract workers known as servitces.2 The signs of change were there, however, and in 1836 new legislation on slavery brought home to some Angolan entrepreneurs the message that the Atlantic labour market might not remain open forever. In the 1830s it was not unnatural that a preliminary search for economically viable initiatives should look at coffee. Angola's traditional economic partner, customer, banker, shipper, and food-supplier was Brazil which had successfully begun to diversify from mining and sugar into coffee. The initial attempts to gather, cultivate, and market coffee in Angola were apparently made by Brazilians. The initiative was followed up by Angolans in two ways. Firstly, peasants

Black Financial Institutions: An Appraisal

The focus of the Revolution is rapidly moving from the political and social services arenas to the economic. With this transition has come an increasing thrust in the business community toward promotion of capitalism. The rationale for black capitalism is the belief that blacks must acquire power in order to become effective and/or equal citizens. Economic power is possibly the most crucial type of power. Black ownership and control of some enterprise is a logical first step to full citizenship for black Americans.

The mix of black business: Implications for growth

When minority enterprise development programs first emerged in the late sixties, a number of critics predicted their early demise. Andrew Brimmer, perhaps t h e most widely quoted, concluded that existing businesses had arisen thanks to artificial barriers separating white business from markets. He saw these barriers disintegrating and anticipated greater competit ion for businesses as more powerful, better-managed white businesses entered the markets of blacks. Brimmer and others also believed that black capitalism programs were doomed because they would encourage the formation of small, inefficient businesses in slow-growing retail and service industries. 1

Blackamerica's Challenge to European Colonialism The Waller Affair, 1891-1895

At the close of the nineteenth century, Africa was the scene of an intense Anglo-French colonial rivalry. Nowhere was this competition keener than in the East African island of Madagascar. While Christian missionaries vied for control of the Malagasy's souls and English and French merchants strove to exploit the island's economic resources, the Quai d'Orsay and Whitehall fought for political influence over the native monarchy. France ultimately emerged triumphant and annexed Madagascar in 1896. In doing so, however, Paris was responding to pressure from a third source represented by a Blackamerican whose interest in Madagascar was only incidentally connected with that of Britain. Confronted by a rising tide of institutionalized racism at home, a substantial segment of the Negro community in the United States looked to Africa as well as to other nonwhite, underdeveloped areas as havens from prejudice and exploitation, and also as legitimate fields of economic endeavor. The Parsons Weekly Blade, one of a number of Afro-American newspapers obsessed in the 1 890s with the idea that racial equality could be achieved through black capitalism, came out in 1895 for annexation of both Cuba and Hawaii: We want these and

The Black-Owned Life Insurance Company: Comment

Duker and Hughes, in the June 1973 issue of this Journal, identified some issues and made recommendations to top level executives of blackowned insurance companies.1 Although they noted that black-owned insurance companies constitute one of the few bastions of black capitalism, it is important to reiterate that those companies actually only represent a fraction of one percent of the total assets of the industry.2 North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company is the nation's largest black-managed corporation, but is only 207th among the 892 U.S. insurance companies ranked by the National Underwriter Company.3 This is a direct commentary on the historical exclusion of blacks from the economic mainstreamrather than justification for ignoring the potential of black-owned insurance companies.

Historical and Modern Trends in Black Capitalism

Historical and Modern Trends in Black Capitalism

IMPROVING THE SELECTION OF CREDIT RISKS: AN ANALYSIS OF A COMMERCIAL BANK MINORITY LENDING PROGRAM

THIS PAPER EXAMINES the performance of Philadelphia's eight-bank minority loan program, The Job Loan and Urban Venture Corporation of Philadelphia (JLC),1 and assesses its ability to select good credit risks from its total minority loan applicant pool. JLC is a non-profit corporation that was created in April, 1968 by eight Philadelphia commercial banks for the purpose of issuing and guaranteeing loans to minority entrepreneurs. Through January, 1970 (the time through which the data used in this study were gathered), JLC processed 848 loan applicants, of whom 290 were approved for approximately three million dollars in loans. The key issue explored by this paper-how does a bank differentiate between potentially good and potentially bad credit risks-goes beyond the questions raised by the examination of a single program's performance. To properly evaluate the JLC program's ability to select good credit risks, a generalized method for selecting potentially superior loan customers had to be developed. This methodology, as developed here and applied to JLC, has potential applications in other minority-oriented loan programs as well as other non-minority credit operations. The findings about JLC, also, bear upon a turbulent and extremely important contemporary debate-the viability of black capitalism and the possible role of utilizing private sector capital to finance it. 2

Black capitalism and the development of the ghetto in the USA

Black capitalism and the development of the ghetto in the USA

The Black-Owned Life Insurance Company: Issues and Recommendations

Ongoing societal changes have altered the environment of black-owned life insurance companies. They are abruptly being thrust into direct competition with life insurance companies, a situation for which many of the black-owned companies are inadequately prepared. This new competition is for customers and personnel, especially sales personnel. This paper assesses the situation and discusses three major areas of decision which face the black-owned companies, those involving type of clientele, type of product and type of personnel. Recommendations are made for changes deemed necessary for the survival and prosperity of the black-owned life insurance companies. The black-owned life insurance company constitutes one of the few bastions of black capitalism.' Yet, despite national emphasis on nurturing black capitalism, the black-owned life insurance companies face serious crises. Ironically, the very social changes that promise these companies opportunity constitute the threat to their well-being. The American black is finally becoming part of America, and the black-owned company part of the American economy. This means that the protective cocoon provided by a largely segregated society has been removed from the black-owned insurance company. Already, and increasingly, it will be thrown into direct competition with firms, both for customers and personnel. Jacob M. Duker, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Marketing in the University of Connecticut. Charles E. Hughes, D.B.A., C.P.C.U., is Assistant Professor of Insurance in the University of Connecticut. This paper was submitted in April 19,72. 'Black-owned designates those companies which were founded by blacks, and continue to be dominated by blacks in ownership and management. Forty-three such companies are further identified by their membership in the National Insurance Association. The term white is used to identify firms which are not considered to be black-owned. The response of the black-owned insurance companies to this evolving situation must come in these three major interrelated areas of change: 1. Changes in Type of Clientele.Here, two major decisions are to be made: a. Should black-owned insurance companies attempt incursions into what might be considered the preserve of the companies by selling to prospects? b. Considering the changing educational, economic and social conditions of blacks, at what kinds of black consumer should the blackowned insurance company direct its

Black Capitalism: Problems in Development: A Case Study of Los Angeles

Black Capitalism: Problems in Development: A Case Study of Los Angeles

Corporate enterprise comes to the ghetto

‘Five years after Richard Nixon tried to steal black capitalism to enhance his ideological wardrobe—shortly thereafter to forget it because it fitted him badly—the black community is running up its own economic suiting, a genuine black capitalism, unbeholden to summer soldiers and sunshine patriots.’

Making Black Retail Outlets Work

The high rate of new black retail ventures' failure indicates that present methods of fostering black capitalism are failing. This paper examines the present shopping patterns, attitudes, and preferences of ghetto residents, non-residents employed in the ghetto, and white residents from surrounding neighborhoods. Based on an analysis of the marketing environment, recommendations for a systems approach to ghetto retail renovation are made.

Book Reviews

Book reviews in this article:Focusing on Suburban Growth. Suburban Land Conversion in the United States: An Economic and Governmental Process by Marion Clawson.New Hope in New Towns. Columbia and the New Cities by Gurney Breckenfeld.New‐Style Dwellings. PUD: A Better Way for the Suburbs by Maxwell C. Huntoon, Jr.An Overview. The Urban Economy by Fred Durr.Cross‐Cultural Investigation. The Cultural Context of Learning and Thinking: An Exploration in Experimental Anthropology by Michael Cole, John Cay, Joseph A. Glick, and Donald W. Sharp.Stability midst Growth. The Politics of Mexican Development by Roger D. Hansen.New Program for Farmers. Agricultural Development in India's Districts by Dorris D. Brown.Successful Development. Structural Change and Economic Policy in Israel by Howard Pack.A Multidisciplinary Review. Capitalism Today, edited by Daniel Bell and Irving Kristol.The OEO Pork Barrel. Citizen Participation: Effecting Community Change, edited by Edgar S. Cahn and Barry A. Passett.Commoner's Laws. The Closing Circle: Nature, Man, and Technology by Barry Commoner.One Area's Problems. The Environmental Destruction of South Florida: A Handbook for Citizens, edited by William Ross Mc‐Cluney.Black Capitalism. Blacks in Business by Edward H. Jones.Budgets and Bureaucrats. The Revolt against the Masses: And Other Essays on Politics and Public Policy by Aaron Wildavsky.

A Constructive Look at Mesbics

The Federal Government9s major thrust in promoting black capitalism is the MESBIC (Minority Enterprise Small Business Investment Company), begun in 1969. The MESBICs9 problems are many and are often similar to those of Small Business Investment Companies (1958). This article examines MESBICs and SBICs, MESBIC operations, MESBIC problems and solutions to those problems.

The black M.B.A: An alternative to black capitalism?

Five graduate schools of business have formed a consortium to recruit, encourage, and support black students seeking the M.B.A. degree. The author suggests that this proposal be evaluated critically, a step not taken with the concept of black capitalism, which appears to have failed to produce the expected results. The consortium plan has five essential elements: recruitment, special programs, financial aid, tutoring and counseling, and a business internship. Black student participation has been enthusiastic, dropouts are rare, and performance matches expectations. The author briefly answers several questions that should help to determine whether the plan ought to become policy.