Houston Black Business Directory supports Buy-Black Movement

With Black unemployment rates at an all time high, there is a powerful movement sweeping across the Black community to try and recapture the 1.3 trillion dollar estimated spending power that the Nielson report has projected African Americans will have by 2017.  Now just sit back and think about that for a minute because it’s mind boggling. 1.3 trillion dollars.  There are 1 million “millions” in a trillion. Hmmm… Put another way, we could give 1.3 million African American businesses 1 million dollars in start-up capital every year with our GDP.  If African Americans were a country, we would be ranked 16^th in the world.  We have a huge economic power, and we need to use it for our benefit.

The Power of Buying Black
Buying within your own community is not a new concept. Every community, but the Black community, buys from their own businesses.  Latinos have mastered the “buy from your own” economics, and have gone from the poorest community to outpacing the Black community.  In a NAACP report by Nicole Kenney (economic program specialist) on the state of the black dollar, Kenney states that “…a dollar circulates in Asian communities for a month, in Jewish communities approximately 20 days and white communities 17 days. How long does a dollar circulate in the black community? 6 hours!!!” Basically, Asians keep a dollar in their community 120 times longer than African Americans.  According to Kenney, black businesses are the 2nd highest employer of African Americans after the government. We must advance and strengthen black owned businesses to create more jobs and provide capital for new start-ups,  and we do that by buying black.

Tweets, blogs and blurbs are popping up all over the web challenging African Americans to buy black and explaining the positive benefits it will have.  Economically speaking, this could be the start of a new revolution to put the Black community back on its feet. These are exciting times reminiscent of Marcus Garvey’s cries to “Be Black, Buy Black, Think Black, and all else will take care of itself!”

Houston’s Premier Black Business Directory
TheHoustonBlackPages.com was created to help Houston Black citizens find and patronize black businesses.  We are premier online directory promoting African American businesses in the Houston and surrounding areas.  Our goal is to help recycle dollars back into the African American community.  In addition to the directory, there are several other features including a market place, black-business coupons, and events and coming soon a forum and restaurant menus.