Social Responsibility in the Black Community

Category: Ethnic Marketing, Economics & Psychology

Watched TV lately? Wonder why suddenly caramel coated lady rap “sanger” Queen Latifah is Cover Girl’s spokes model or why Old Spice’s manly man, Isaiah Mustafa’s baked brown profile is featured between segments of the First 48? Could it be that our beloved Dr. Martin Luther King’s epiphany has manifested? In truth, two words explain why Black faces endorse brands traditionally catered to Whites: almighty dollar. Consumer researchers spend millions on think tanks strategically plotting ways to seduce the hard earned bills from your pocket to their cash register. Minorities are making money and the market knows it.

According to the Association of National Advertisers, businesses tailor 70 percent of ads to Hispanics, 59 percent to African-Americans and 27 percent to Asian Americans.7 The Multi-Cultural Marketing Study notes that 78 percent of African Americans believe that “Blacks as a group have more economic status and empowerment than ever before” while 72 percent of Hispanics adhere to this belief; 77 percent of non-Hispanic Whites also find that Blacks are gaining financial momentum.3 African American, Hispanic and Asian populations have a combined buying power of more than a trillion dollars, making minorities the new majority of commerce.7 Census data from 2006 reports that 17.4 percent of Blacks earn $75k/year and 16.3 percent earn between $50k-75k/year.6   The Los Angeles Sentinel tells that New York leads the nation in Black buying power followed by California and Texas respectively. Blacks are spending $145.2 billion on houses, 56.5 billion of food, 32.6 billion on cars, 23 billion on clothes and 18 billion on health care.

Tinted skin has come a long way since slavery. African Americans are increasingly obtaining all the symbols of success: living nice, driving fancy and eating well. E. Franklin Frazier classifies the emerging status of African Americans as the “Black bourgeoisie” also referred to as the “new Black middle class.”4 Historically, the bourgeoisie emerged after a delayed discovery of the Emancipation Proclamation. Freed slaves applied talents and skills in the motivation of entrepreneurship. Noted pioneers in the strides of human enrichment are W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington. Du Bois and Washington deemed education as an identifying mark of socially significant person, thus the emergence of Historically Black Universities (HBU). HBUs served as a breeding ground for Black fraternities and sororities.2 Despite success of the Black elite, there is a different version of life on the other side of the tracks. The partition of the haves and the have nots lead to question: Why do the bourgeoisie act so bourgeois? The initial efforts of Du Bois and Washington were to unify rather than segregate Black communities, yet upper class upper class African-Americans are often the gate keepers of a hungry man’s dream. It is well emphasized that well-to-do Blacks “forget where they came from.”4

A 2009 study conducted by Payne and Hamdi finds that the “hood rich” thug is more likely to give back to the community than those that dine on Sunday brunch or hold aspirations of perfecting a golf swing. Kobra, 29 a participant in the study quotes:

“…No I don’t see none of them (community professionals)…I don’t see none of them type [helping the community].”

Payne and Hamdi provide that a large number of well-to-do African-Americans fail to show “street love.”5 Hustlers, thieves, pimps and prostitutes of the 1960’s banded together to form the Black Panther Party; however radical in their approach, the organization showed “street love” to the Black and poor in a place where pin-stripped suits and ties were absent. Sy Landy attributes bourgeois attitudes to stereotype evasion. Traditional stereotypes of African-Americans include an uneducated, poor and seemingly hopeless populous. In an attempt to contradict the stigma, upper class Blacks repel the less fortunate. Landy maintains that it is the class of have nots that has enabled the status of the bourgeoisie. Lower income Americans have patronized Black-owned businesses, marched in masses at Civil Rights protests and assisted in the election of President Barak Obama.4Welfare programs mortar financial gaps for a representative number of African-Americans; however, all African Americans have a social responsibility to blighted communities and broken spirits.

Blacks are faced with much opposition, but interracial segregation should not be one of them. When our brother knocks we should answer, and remember the words of a great man who once walked the earth: “ For I was hungred and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty and ye gave me no drink; I was a stranger and ye clothed me not; sick and in prison and ye visited me not. Then shall they also answer him saying, Lord when saw we thee a hungred or athirst or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did not minister unto thee? Then shall he answer them saying; Verily I say unto you, insomuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.”  Matthew 25: 42-46

1.       Frazier, E. (1997). Black bourgeoise, New York, NY: Free Press Paperbacks.

2.       Graham, L. (1999). Our kind of people: Inside America’s Black upper class, New York, NY: Harper Perenial.

3.       Hill, C. (2009) New realities of empowerment pose a challenge for Hispanics and African Americans: New Yankelovich study finds. PR Newswire. http://www.yankelovich.com/products/Yankelovich%20Multicultural%20Marketing%20Study%202009%20Release.pdf

4.       Landy, S. (2005). Cosby’s campaign against Black workers, Proletarian Revolution, 74. www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/landy/2005/xx/cosby.htm.

5.       Payne, Y. & Hamdi, H. (2009). “Street love:” How street life oriented US born African Men from giving back to one another and local community. Urban Review, 41 (1) 29-46.