According to the Economic Policy Institute The voices of black economists have largely been absent from the recent media coronavirus coverage. Over the past month, for example, The New York Times, which has become one of the primary sources for economic insights about the pandemic, published 29 articles between opinion editorials and The Upshot mentioning the words “economist” and “coronavirus” between March 9 and April 9. 

However, if we thought about it candidly, having a Black economist speak to the country or even really to Black people is not something, we as Black people have ever really seen. Black economists have long been ignored by the economics’ profession and media. Sadie T.M. Alexander, the first African American economist, could not practice after she earned a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania in 1921 because of racism and sexism.

How does NOT having a Black economist speaking on our behalf affect the Black community? Since America has been a country there has always been an underlying opportunity to keep Black people in the dark when it comes to prosperity and financial heritage. If we do not have someone in the economic arena that is able to speak truth and present it to us as a people, how will we be able to truly accept it?  It’s not that we do not have economists. It’s more of a fact that we as a people do not know they exist,  Black economists have been carefully ignored.

When we look at poverty, the Black community has suffered more than any other race, not because we cannot understand being poor, but because we are not always given the tools, or even provided with knowledge of what exactly is happening to us as a people. Did you know that most issues in the black community began in the form of financial ruins? From day one Black people have been plotted against and given a different set of rules and then told that everyone was getting their fair share. The U.S. economy was built on the exploitation and occupational segregation of people of color. While many government policies and institutional practices helped create this system, the legacies of slavery, Jim Crow, and the New Deal. As well as the limited funding and scope of anti-discrimination agencies—are some of the biggest contributors to inequality in America.

 The division between Whites and Blacks set forth during the slave era in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries was the first stage in which Africans in America inequality was established. Though they helped build the world economy through the fruit of their labor, Africans in America were set to economically fail. It has always been okay for a small few of us to succeed and that is why when a Black person does well, it is exploited all over the media. However, if we as a group of capable people succeed together that would pose a great threat to the order in this nation. Our counterparts in almost every other ethnic group understand and have always understood that having a strong economy equals power. That is why their communities thrive and survive when all others die and are pushed into deeper recession.

As a people, we have always found loopholes with the hand that was dealt to us, but when we pull together as a people, like many of our ancestors did in the past, we seemingly pose a threat and everything we had was taken or destroyed.

In 1619 America adopted the concept of buying, stealing, and taking Africans from the African continent, with the help of her European allies, to build this country. Even at the end of official slavery, laws were put in place to keep us from succeeding. Even with that, we as a people thrived.  2020 has become an earmark for black people and there is an awakening in the black community. After Covid-19, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, we saw the true attitudes of America and something clicked in many of us to make changes. However, even with the awakening, many are stunted because they don’t know what to do with the AWAKENING. 

This is our time! As a community we must look at ways to enrich ourselves and make the necessary changes so that WE as a people can build the Black community. How can we impact our community? When slavery ended in 1865, Black people were promised 40 acre’s and a mule which would have amounted to 3 million dollars of family wealth for each Black person. Instead, we were given nothing, and laws were changed to make sure we would not have anything. However, now is different, if you look at what is going on in America, the narrative is changing. This is our time and TODAY we need to work hard toward having a thriving community.

What makes a community thrive? People having access to resources, support, equitable access to meaningful employment, living wages, affordable housing, transportation, healthy food, clean water, comprehensive healthcare, quality education and childcare. If you think that we are going to be granted any of this just because we ask for it, rest assured that we won’t. We have already been told we need to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. Therefore, asking for help has become obsolete. 

We need to learn as a community to FIRST rebuild what was taken from us and have our own: 

• Grocery Stores
• Schools
• Hospitals
• Banks
• Businesses
• Property/Housing
• Transportation

How We Need to Form Our Community

Shared Identity

For years we as Black people have looked at each other and recognized that we have a shared identity, but have been taught to look at each other with caution or contempt. For example, dark-skinned Africans are indifferent to light-skinned Africans and vice versa. When other nationalities look at us no matter how light or dark we are they only see one thing, a Black person. It’s time we stop looking out our differences and see that we all identify as being Black.

Shared Purpose

Black people have always been people of purpose and vision. However, we have never really as a whole worked together as a people to fulfill a common goal since the civil rights movement and the end of segregation. This is now our time to work as a group working towards the sole purpose of enriching our community.

Common Objectives

Because of the time we live in, we have one objective and that is to gain economic stability. We cannot expect anyone to just hand us reparations, we have to demand it. In the meantime, we need to work on the shared objective of becoming economically stable as a people.