Assisted Earning Facilities Need to Fade Away: A Commentary on a Free Press Article about the New "African American Business Alliance"
There's something very strange going on here. The article below about a new "alliance" of black owned business representative groups contains some strange numbers. Do the math. If, as the article states, the 19,530 black owned businesses in Michigan do a total of $1.58 billion dollars in revenue that means that the average black business does only $80,901.00 per year in turnover. Further the article says that the national total yearly revenue for all for black owned businesses is $89 billion dollars a year. This would mean that 1.77% of the total revenues of black owned businesses are generated in Michigan. These numbers are both impressive and pathetic.
First of all the "alliance" doesn't seem to include most of the memebersship of the Michigan Minority Business Development Council, the MMBDC. This is probably due to two significant reasons. First, the MMBDC, is not supposed to represent just black owned businesses, so its mandate and that of the new "alliance" are at cross purposes. Second, the OEM American automotive industry members still remaining in Michigan, GM and Ford, state publicly that together they do nearly $10 billion dollars a year of business with minority owned firms. I know for a fact that just one single minority owned and operated firm based in Michigan, Plastech Engineering, owned and operated by Julie Brown, a Korean American, has around the same revenue per year as all of the black owned businesses in the new "alliance" state that have all together.
Black people in Michigan surely number more than 1.77% of the national population of black people. Michigan must have at least double that percentage of the total of black people in America, so where do these pathetically small numbers for average revenues and total revenue come from? They come from the careful selection of members (all black) and the careful selection of businesses (typically very small) that make up this absolutely non representative (of minority businesses) group.
By the numbers the small businesses that make up the alliance are on the average too small to survive, and by their selection criteria for membership they have excluded the larger successful and broadly based true minority businesses that actually exist in Michigan.
The members of the alliance seem, by the numbers, to be a grouping of failed black owned business organizations that have seen their political power slip away, and are trying to generate economic power from combining pathetically small numbers.
Minority business enterprises only succeed when they become indistinguishable from ordinary business enterprises. Success is about profits and employment, not associations and awards.
The alliance was formed because the concept of minority business as a permanent class of assisted earning facilities is fading away, and those on the receiving end want to hold on to their living.
Affirmative action has clearly not worked to create a profitable, segregated by race, vibrant and growing) business community in Michigan.
Let's allow the race based assisted earning industry to die a natural death.
Let's all step into the mainstream and pull together.
Vote Yes for Proposition 2.
Published: October 17. 2006 3:00AM
Michigan business
4 black business groups join forces to lift economy
October 17, 2006
BY ALEJANDRO BODIPO-MEMBA
FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER
Candidates coming
The new African American Business Alliance will conduct breakfast meetings with gubernatorial candidates Jennifer Granholm and Dick DeVos to discuss issues affecting the minority business community.
The governor will speak 7:30 to 9 a.m. Wednesday at the Second Ebenezer Church in Detroit. The businessman will talk 7:30 to 9 a.m. Oct. 24 at the church.
Second Ebenezer is located at 2760 E. Grand Blvd. in Detroit. For more information call 313-887-6507.
Detroit's most influential black business leaders are coming together to combat a slowing Michigan economy by establishing a network of organizations called the African American Business Alliance.
The Booker T. Washington Business Association, the National Association of Black Automotive Suppliers, the Detroit Black Chamber of Commerce and the Black Women Contracting Association, which combined represent more than 500 companies in metro Detroit, have agreed to bring their organizations under one umbrella group to address barriers to business success and wield more influence over public policy in Michigan.
The newly formed group will work to promote black-owned firms, bridge gaps in access to capital and influence politics to the benefit of African-American business people.
The group also aims to provide black-owned businesses, entrepreneurs and youth pursuing careers in business with information, other resources and access to economic opportunities.
Bill Brooks, chief executive officer of United American Health Care Corp., will serve as president and CEO of the alliance. Its leadership committee will consist of representatives from all four organizations.
Patterned after the Consortium of African American Organizations in Ohio, the group will raise the profile of Detroit's African-American business community across Michigan.
"The timing, therefore, is particularly great because of what Detroit is doing and its attempts to revitalize its economy," said Geneva Williams, one of the organizers of the alliance and president of City Connect Detroit, a nonprofit that specializes in fund-raising.
The four organizations will maintain their individual identities while working together in the alliance, Williams said.
As part of its new mission, the alliance hopes to influence legislation that affects businesses in Michigan.
The group is considering forming a political action committee that would lobby for business-friendly policy.
"Take the Single Business Tax issue, for example," said Brooks. "Has anyone asked black business owners about this? I don't think anyone has. We should have something to say about these policy issues."
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 1.2 million black-owned businesses generated nearly $89 billion in revenue in 2002. Michigan had 19,530 black-owned businesses that reached $1.58 billion in sales.
Contact ALEJANDRO BODIPO-MEMBA at 313-222-5008 or abodipo@freepress.com.
First of all the "alliance" doesn't seem to include most of the memebersship of the Michigan Minority Business Development Council, the MMBDC. This is probably due to two significant reasons. First, the MMBDC, is not supposed to represent just black owned businesses, so its mandate and that of the new "alliance" are at cross purposes. Second, the OEM American automotive industry members still remaining in Michigan, GM and Ford, state publicly that together they do nearly $10 billion dollars a year of business with minority owned firms. I know for a fact that just one single minority owned and operated firm based in Michigan, Plastech Engineering, owned and operated by Julie Brown, a Korean American, has around the same revenue per year as all of the black owned businesses in the new "alliance" state that have all together.
Black people in Michigan surely number more than 1.77% of the national population of black people. Michigan must have at least double that percentage of the total of black people in America, so where do these pathetically small numbers for average revenues and total revenue come from? They come from the careful selection of members (all black) and the careful selection of businesses (typically very small) that make up this absolutely non representative (of minority businesses) group.
By the numbers the small businesses that make up the alliance are on the average too small to survive, and by their selection criteria for membership they have excluded the larger successful and broadly based true minority businesses that actually exist in Michigan.
The members of the alliance seem, by the numbers, to be a grouping of failed black owned business organizations that have seen their political power slip away, and are trying to generate economic power from combining pathetically small numbers.
Minority business enterprises only succeed when they become indistinguishable from ordinary business enterprises. Success is about profits and employment, not associations and awards.
The alliance was formed because the concept of minority business as a permanent class of assisted earning facilities is fading away, and those on the receiving end want to hold on to their living.
Affirmative action has clearly not worked to create a profitable, segregated by race, vibrant and growing) business community in Michigan.
Let's allow the race based assisted earning industry to die a natural death.
Let's all step into the mainstream and pull together.
Vote Yes for Proposition 2.
Published: October 17. 2006 3:00AM
Michigan business
4 black business groups join forces to lift economy
October 17, 2006
BY ALEJANDRO BODIPO-MEMBA
FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER
Candidates coming
The new African American Business Alliance will conduct breakfast meetings with gubernatorial candidates Jennifer Granholm and Dick DeVos to discuss issues affecting the minority business community.
The governor will speak 7:30 to 9 a.m. Wednesday at the Second Ebenezer Church in Detroit. The businessman will talk 7:30 to 9 a.m. Oct. 24 at the church.
Second Ebenezer is located at 2760 E. Grand Blvd. in Detroit. For more information call 313-887-6507.
Detroit's most influential black business leaders are coming together to combat a slowing Michigan economy by establishing a network of organizations called the African American Business Alliance.
The Booker T. Washington Business Association, the National Association of Black Automotive Suppliers, the Detroit Black Chamber of Commerce and the Black Women Contracting Association, which combined represent more than 500 companies in metro Detroit, have agreed to bring their organizations under one umbrella group to address barriers to business success and wield more influence over public policy in Michigan.
The newly formed group will work to promote black-owned firms, bridge gaps in access to capital and influence politics to the benefit of African-American business people.
The group also aims to provide black-owned businesses, entrepreneurs and youth pursuing careers in business with information, other resources and access to economic opportunities.
Bill Brooks, chief executive officer of United American Health Care Corp., will serve as president and CEO of the alliance. Its leadership committee will consist of representatives from all four organizations.
Patterned after the Consortium of African American Organizations in Ohio, the group will raise the profile of Detroit's African-American business community across Michigan.
"The timing, therefore, is particularly great because of what Detroit is doing and its attempts to revitalize its economy," said Geneva Williams, one of the organizers of the alliance and president of City Connect Detroit, a nonprofit that specializes in fund-raising.
The four organizations will maintain their individual identities while working together in the alliance, Williams said.
As part of its new mission, the alliance hopes to influence legislation that affects businesses in Michigan.
The group is considering forming a political action committee that would lobby for business-friendly policy.
"Take the Single Business Tax issue, for example," said Brooks. "Has anyone asked black business owners about this? I don't think anyone has. We should have something to say about these policy issues."
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 1.2 million black-owned businesses generated nearly $89 billion in revenue in 2002. Michigan had 19,530 black-owned businesses that reached $1.58 billion in sales.
Contact ALEJANDRO BODIPO-MEMBA at 313-222-5008 or abodipo@freepress.com.
posted by Jack Lifton at 9:45 PM
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