A family's year of 'buying black'

naturalmanenyc

Well-Known Member
I thought I saw this at the time of the original article, but I did not find it in my search.

http://articles.latimes.com/2009/mar/10/nation/na-buy-black10

Website: http://eefortomorrow.com/EE_Home.html

A family's year of 'buying black'

In the 'Ebony Experiment,' an Illinois couple travels far to buy groceries, gas, even vitamins from black-owned businesses. What, they wonder, if all African Americans made the same pledge?

March 10, 2009|Ted Gregory

CHICAGO — Maggie Anderson drives 14 miles to buy groceries, which might seem curious given that she lives in bustling Oak Park, Ill. She and her husband, John, travel 18 miles to a health food store in Chicago for vitamins, supplements and personal care products. They drive some distance for gasoline too.

The reason? They want to help solve what they call "the crisis in the black community." They want to buy black.

The Andersons, African Americans who rose from humble means, are attempting to spend their money for one year exclusively with black-owned businesses and are encouraging African Americans across the nation to do the same.

They call it the "ebony experiment."

"More than anything, this is a learning thing," said Maggie Anderson, who grew up in the crime-ridden Liberty City neighborhood of Miami and holds a law degree and an MBA from the University of Chicago. "We know it's controversial, and we knew that coming in."

But the Andersons said they also knew that a thriving black economy was fundamental to restoring impoverished African American communities. They talked for years about how to address the problem.

What they came up with is provocative. One anonymous letter mailed to their home accused the Andersons of "unabashed, virulent racism. Because of you," the writer stated, "we will totally avoid black suppliers. Because of you, we will dodge every which way to avoid hiring black employees."

Apart from that letter, most comments have been encouraging, the Andersons said, adding that most people see the endeavor as beneficial to all.

"Supporting your own isn't necessarily exclusive," said John Anderson, a financial advisor who grew up in Detroit and has a Harvard degree in economics and an MBA from Northwestern, "and you're not going to convince everybody of that."

The undertaking, which began Jan. 1, "is an academic test about how to reinvest in an underserved community" and lessen society's burden, he said.

If focused on black businesses, the estimated $850 billion in black buying power in the U.S. each year can expand businesses, create jobs, and strengthen families, schools and neighborhoods, the Andersons and other advocates said.

"When a thriving African American or urban community is realized, certainly as a society as a whole we all win," John Anderson said.

They are using a public relations firm, have created a website -- ebonyexperiment.com -- have been laying the groundwork for nearly two years and have enlisted researchers from Northwestern University to detail and extrapolate the effects of their spending.

Still, the first two months posed challenges in finding stores that meet what Maggie Anderson called her "exacting standards." Her latest crisis is finding shoes and clothes for the couple's toddler daughters.

The Andersons buy gasoline cards from black-owned stations in Phoenix, Ill., and Rockford, Ill., and use the cards elsewhere.

After several weeks of searching, Maggie Anderson found Farmers Best Market in Chicago, a black-owned grocer 14 miles from their home, and God First, God Last, God Always Dollar and Up General Store, a black-owned general merchandise establishment 18 miles from their house.

They moved their personal accounts to Covenant Bank in Chicago, but have been unable to switch their mortgage and student loans to black-owned financial institutions. And they haven't changed utility companies.

Lawrence Hamer, associate professor of marketing at DePaul University, called the Andersons' project "brave and courageous," and said its logic was "exactly right."

But it probably will be futile in achieving anything meaningful in the black economy, he added.

"It's just so hard for a small group of individuals to have an impact on something that's so huge," said Hamer, who is African American. "It's almost like a viral marketing campaign. It only works if enough people catch the virus."

Even if they do catch the virus, Hamer said, it is extremely difficult "to get people's attention to change their behavior in any significant way."

Maggie Anderson conceded that "it's still little by little and it's still a lot of work, but I'm still very committed to this."

Although it may be one of the more well-organized and -monitored projects of its kind, the experiment is not the only venture of its kind, said James E. Clingman, a prolific writer on African American economic empowerment who teaches a class on black entrepreneurship at the University of Cincinnati.

African Americans have been buying black for more than a century, Clingman said. Booker T. Washington, long an advocate for African American economic power, was an early proponent, and African Americans have been forming black-buying cooperatives for decades, he added.

But thriving black businesses began dissolving in the mid-1960s, when African Americans focused on political power and civil rights and began patronizing white-owned businesses under the misconception that buying white signified blacks' upward socioeconomic mobility, Clingman said.

"Unfortunately, many black people abandoned their own businesses and supported others, thinking that politics was the way out," he said. "Politics still will not get you anywhere unless you have an economic base. Quite frankly, I'd rather have more black businesses than black politicians."

In June 2008, Karriem Beyah opened Farmers Best Market, which he calls "the only African American grocery store in Illinois that offers a full line of fresh market products."

Since being featured on the experiment's website, Beyah said, he has seen "incremental increases in the customer count" and received numerous e-mails and phone calls of support.

He said he believed in the mission.

"We, as African Americans, support everyone," he said. "The ebony experiment is saying, 'Listen, let's pay attention to us. Let's give some support.' Ebony experiment can bring awareness, and in that awareness comes better profits and better services and better opportunities. It just grows from there."

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tgregory[USER=221098]tri[/USER]bune.com
 
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Can someone explain how buying black gas cards benefit black businesses?

This is fascinating.

I'm also curious about where they shop for clothes.

S/N: i'm really amazed at myself for finding this so amazing. It shows me how far we've come in the days of segregation when there were so many more black owned stores, movies, businesses, etc.
 
i would love to do this..i try and support most blk business' i encounter...

They are using a public relations firm, have created a website -- ebonyexperiment.com -- have been laying the groundwork for nearly two years and have enlisted researchers from Northwestern University to detail and extrapolate the effects of their spending.
 
http://www.blackenterprise.com/2010/01/12/andersons-complete-year-of-buying-black/

Andersons Complete Year of ‘Buying Black’
Empowerment Experiment family discusses challenges, triumphs

by Marcia Wade Talbert Posted: January 12, 2010

09WFL-Anderson-LIVE2EXC.jpg


The Andersons in front of the now-defunct Farmer’s Best Market.
When you walk into a store you’re often preoccupied with whatever product you want to buy. Most times, the last person on your mind is the store owner. But for the past year, Maggie and John Anderson were not only concerned with the store owner, but with whether or not he or she was of African descent.

Their project, the Empowerment Experiment –formerly the Ebony Experiment — grew from their desire to spread awareness about black businesses that provided high quality, economical merchandise and to dispel the myth held in black communities that black products and services are inferior to those sold by other ethnicities.

You see, the Andersons made a public choice to spend all of their money with black business owners and professionals or black manufactured products throughout the entire year of 2009. They estimate that they spent about 70% of their income or about $70,000 on black businesses last year. They got the idea from similar projects like the “No Impact” family, who lived a year without electricity to reduce their carbon footprint.

They also wanted to draw a parallel between the lack of black businesses and the high rates of unemployment, recidivism, and chronic illness in black communities, says John Anderson, 38, a financial consultant with AXA Advisors, and president of In Sight Financial Management, his own consultancy firm.

Though the experiment is over, their cause is unfinished. The goal of EE was never to connect to the mainstream, but to encourage black people to support black-owned businesses, says Maggie, also 38 and a stay-at-home mother of two with a law degree and an MBA from the University of Chicago.

They plan to re-launch their Web site to include a directory of black businesses nationwide, a ticker that will track the money spent at black companies, and allow users to rate the products and services listed on their site. Researchers at Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management will release a study on the experiment this spring. Finally, by June the Andersons hope to publish a book chronicling their experience and the findings of the study.

Here, the Andersons discuss the successes that kept them empowered, the struggles that challenged them, and why they won’t be continuing the experiment.

BlackEnterprise.com: Do you consider the experiment successful?

Maggie Anderson: We do feel that we made history. Nothing like this has ever been done before and we actually did it. I think we were very successful in finding those diamond in the rough businesses like my alarm company, Foscett’s Communications & Alarm Co, and some of the products I encountered that are sold in mass retailers, like Reggio’s Pizza and my new toothpaste, Sudantha, an herbal toothpaste produced by Link Natural Products.

If spreading awareness was a measure of success, I think we were widely successful. My daughters’ pediatrician and her book club have all decided they are going to commit to spend 75% of their income with black businesses because of the Empowerment Experiment. I have at least 100 other instances like that of folks who are going to totally change their lives just because of our story.

What was the biggest disappointment?

John Anderson: One of the biggest disappointments…[was] the failure of one of the businesses that we supported quite a bit — our grocery store, Farmer’s Best Market. There was no reason for it to fail. That was really disheartening. We really took that failure to bed with us at night.

Why do you think the store closed?

Maggie: Every time I was in that store—and I was in that store all the time–it was empty. It was a big, full-scale grocery store. There was nothing wrong with it. All those people who came to the Empowerment Experiment meetings and who called in to the radio shows didn’t take the extra step to actually try and go into Farmer’s Best and support the owner.

Five blocks up the street there was a Greek-owned food and liquor store. It was dirty, the produce was rotten, and the meat smelled–the kind of place that wouldn’t survive a day in [a white community]. The parking lot was packed with black people. I really do believe that we suffer badly from this psychosis that our stuff is not as good as everyone else’s.

What is your response to the critics who say black businesses aren’t thriving because they have bad business principles and race has nothing to do with it?

John: We saw a lot of quality businesses that were doing the right things that just weren’t getting the level of support that we would have liked seen. If you analyze the failures of businesses across all ethnic groups that would be one factor, but it stands to reason why in our community the failure rates are significantly higher and average receipts are significantly lower. All of that can not be ascribed to poor service.

Do you plan to continue your experiment in 2010?

Maggie: It is painful not doing the experiment anymore. After we lost Farmer’s Best Market we did guerrilla-style grocery shopping. We’ve been living on convenience store and gas station food since August. As much as we want to [continue] we can’t keep living like that on an extended basis, especially with our daughters [Cara, 4, and Cori, 3]. But at least 50% of our spending will be with black businesses this year.

John: The bottom line is our lives are changed forever. The businesses that we supported throughout the year that are quality businesses in line with our mission, we want to see succeed and grow. We will continue to support them even if it is not geographically desirable to do so.

Note: Karriem Beyah, the former owner of Farmer’s Best Market plans to re-launch the store at a new Chicago location in February.
 
Can someone explain how buying black gas cards benefit black businesses?

This is fascinating.

I'm also curious about where they shop for clothes.

S/N: i'm really amazed at myself for finding this so amazing. It shows me how far we've come in the days of segregation when there were so many more black owned stores, movies, businesses, etc.
I've often thought that integration has done black people more harm than good for that very reason. :look:
 
Every purchase from a BOB helps :yep:

I refuse to believe that all BOB's give poor customer service and I hope no one uses that as an excuse to not shop at BOB's. I've gotten poor customer service from more WOB's in my life than BOB's.

If blacks won't support black's who will? Without our help the study will fail and that will be more proof that BOB's need not exist.

We are the only race (African American) that will do any and everything to ensure failure in our community. Free your mind!

Can we pledge to buy at least one thing fromm a BOB this XMAS?
 
What an amazing story! This has truly inspired me to search for black-owned stores here in Memphis, TN since African-Americans seem to outnumber other races here.
 
Every purchase from a BOB helps :yep:

I refuse to believe that all BOB's give poor customer service and I hope no one uses that as an excuse to not shop at BOB's. I've gotten poor customer service from more WOB's in my life than BOB's.

If blacks won't support black's who will? Without our help the study will fail and that will be more proof that BOB's need not exist.

We are the only race (African American) that will do any and everything to ensure failure in our community. Free your mind!


Can we pledge to buy at least one thing fromm a BOB this XMAS?

So sad at the bolded. :perplexed :sad: :ohwell:
 

The idea of putting up a website with a directory of black businesses would be really useful to those who want to buy black. I think most people are reluctant to support black owned businesses because 1) they're unsure of where they are, 2) they tend to have higher prices and 3) it might be too far to travel for everyday needs. But if we start looking at BOB's and start buying there more often, maybe then they could expand, be more local to some people and have competitive prices.

I think what they're doing is wonderful!
 
Miss*Tress

my parents have said that segregation is the worst thing that ever happened to black people, they are in their early 60's and have lived int he south their entire lives. i enjoy buying products from small businesses especially if they are black owned. if i love their service and the products, then i pass the own on to everybody i know:yep:
 
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What an amazing story! This has truly inspired me to search for black-owned stores here in Memphis, TN since African-Americans seem to outnumber other races here.

SherylsTresses
Hey sweetie,

There is a bob bss here in Memphis, Essentials located at 5281 Knight Arnold Rd. I have only been there once or twice to purchase Elucence shampoo when I first joined the site.

hths,
tishee
 
This is actually much easier to do now because of social media. I have an entire folder on IG of black owned businesses that I can reference when I want to buy something.
 
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