Buy Black

By Camille Daniels & Dassy Kemedjio

Black America has a unique relationship with entrepreneurship. According to a February 2020 Brookings Institute report, only 4.3% of the US’s 22.2 million business owners are Black, and the pandemic hit the Black community like a brick wall. In recent years, as more Black Americans take on entrepreneurship, they have seen success but have also struggled to get basic financing. However, for those that manage to succeed in getting the necessary funds needed to open, that’s only half the battle. Staying open, whether as a new or established business, brings its own set of challenges—starting with the obstacle of simply being noticed. This impacts those involved in fashion, beauty, and it even affects bookstore owners.

Recently, however, there seems to be a shift—those same business owners are suddenly gaining new audiences. What has caused this sudden turn of events when so many are not able to remain open in the midst of a pandemic? It comes down to six words: George Floyd’s death equals white guilt.

This past summer, Black entrepreneurship was celebrated in “Entrepreneur”, a record by Pharrell Williams feat. Jay Z that encourages Black people to secure their bags by starting their own business. Yet even that anthem could not fan the flames of interest in Black-owned businesses until the world witnessed the execution of 46-year-old Floyd by the knee of a police officer. His death became breaking news and protestors took to the streets, but people were still trying to figure out how to help (or prove how “woke” they were).

Then, a lightbulb: people could prove their support for the cause by supporting Black-owned businesses. The result was clear: Black-owned businesses were pushed into the spotlight and no longer on the fringe. Yelp saw a 35% increase in searches for Black owned businesses between May 7 and June 10, and corporations from Pepsi to Facebook all announced million-dollar funds dedicated to Black business owners.

Queen Bey herself teamed up with the NAACP to create a Black Business Impact Fund that supports some Black-owned businesses, as well as developing a “Black Parade Route” on her website which is a platform for Black-owned businesses internationally.

So many businesses thrived because of the new outpouring of support, and an unexpected benefit of the pandemic was the series of discoveries and rediscoveries we made of Black-owned brands.

Some of our favorites are Kai Collective, a womenswear brand founded by Nigerian fashion blogger Fisayo Longe that embodies a luxury aesthetic, or Love, Vera, a lingerie brand created by power couple Vera Moore and Nate Johnson that’s dedicated to empowering Black women and Black talent on the whole. For those interested in the art of the beat, try out Beauty Bakerie, a cosmetics company launched in 2011 by breast cancer survivor Cashmere Nicole. If it’s time you started loving on your skin, check out Kaike (pronounced “cake”) a plant-based skincare brand founded in 2015 by Keli Smith that uses clean products to target issues commonly faced by melanin-abundant skin. If you’re looking to support Black-owned bookstores, check out The Lit. Bar, the Bronx’s only bookstore that has an online curated variety of books and gifts for every reader or Harriett’s Bookshop, a Philly-based bookstore named after the legendary freedom fighter that specializes in female authors.

While this surge in patronage is definitely a highlight of 2020, we have to wonder if this is just the latest fad for white Americans, or if their dollars are here to stay.