A convo with Lanee Javet

An insightful Black business thought leader Lanee Javet posted a video on Facebook that I recently responded too on Facebook.  She referenced convo I see a lot in reference to Black business by Black people.

That is Blacks don't support Black businesses more because too many are unprofessional.  Black business are unprofessional in ways like bad customer service, come in to work late, open up their shops late, workers have a bad work ethic etc.  I've seen these types of claims before online.

I listened to her whole video although it was hard for me to relate to because we have so many well run and professional businesses in NYC. I think there are about 250,000 businesses here and there are so many well run Black owned restaurants with good staff.

I have to say this is a important issue with me. With only about 2% support from Black people Black businesses employ about 1 million Black people and generates about $180 billion dollars. This means hypothetically if we could move our support from 2% to like 25% we'd have enough economic power to hire every Black person presently unemployed.

I understand the points Ms. Javet is making that some of our people aren't easy to work with but there of many like her and me who work very hard. But what I fear happens, and hope doesn't happen, is when we have bad experiences we stereotype our own ethnic group.

Lastly I'd have to say the negative experiences I get with major corporations and brands is much worst than what I get with our Black businesses in many larger respects. Look at these platform many Black people use now.

It stifles progressive Black thought and business but allows Black hate speech and trolls stealing elections. It is being sued for data breeches and pushes negative Black content over positive Black content. Google does bad things on our community too like favoring content from mainstream brands over Black content even on organic Black topics.

I could go on about the outsourcing on their customer services to places where English is a 2nd language and it is hard to get cogent customer service. It seems too often Blacks support bad service from mainstream businesses and if a Black business person does something a bit wrong they are ready to tear them apart and use it as a rationale never to support a Black business again while letting mainstream businesses fleece them all to often.