The Ebony Experiment Launches

By Fredric Mitchell | Mon, Dec 22, 2008 1:55 pm

Maggie and John Anderson, a highly educated and middle-class couple, are launching the Ebony Experiment on January 1, 2009, aimed at reaching multiple social and economic conclusions by shopping with exclusively Black-owned businesses for the entire year.

Teamed with experts such as Dr. Michael Eric Dyson, Steven Rogers, Dr. Michael Bennett, and Walidah Bennett, the goal is to not only support growing Black-owned businesses in an effort to encourage budding entrepreneurs, but also show:

that average individuals and families can generate significant economic growth in the Black community if they were to commit to purchasing from Black–owned businesses and professionals.

In what will be an obvious difficult task, as there are very few, if any, Black-owned utility companies or media providers, the Ebony Experiment website does provide a way for those interested to submit their information and work with the Andersons’ to achieve this lofty goal.

Technically speaking, the landing site is a mixture of Flash and tabular HTML. Even with the current national exposure, the Ebony Experiment website does not rank number 1 when Googling ‘Ebony Experiment’, leading me to believe that someone is slipping on their SEO work. The website was designed by LabUSA.com, and it would be a real shame if that was not a Black-owned design firm.

Inevitably, as with Blackbird, the comments are plentiful about the purpose and ‘real meaning’ of solely supporting Black-owned businesses and franchises. In fact, the 15+ pages of ‘If I did this with White-only businesses’ on the Sun Times attest to that. While Angela did a nice job of bringing the analytical argument to the mainstream via TechCrunch, the root of those questions and that issue are much more complicated. You can read my full take on that over at YBPGuide.com.

I do await the results of the Ebony Experiment with much optimism, however.

Category: Web 2.0

Tags: Ebony Experiment, techcrunch

This post was written by:

Fredric Mitchell - who has written 19 posts on Black Web 2.0.

Fredric is a professional web developer specializing in Drupal and PHP over at brightplum.com. Although his affinity for all things interweb borderlines on unhealthy, his wife assures him that his son will grow up just as much of a tech nerd as he is. You can also find him giving back and blogging over at ybpguide.com.

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Tiffani Ashley Bell

I'd be interested in seeing how this plays out, too. It reminds me of how black folks *used* to have to do things at one point in history anyway, so I don't particularly see anything really wrong with it. Furthermore, in a society where it really feels like black dollars are not recycled in black communities, this would be absolutely great. You see white folks doing this kind of thing all the time (i.e., avoiding minority-owned businesses and explicitly favoring their own), so again, it's not anything abnormal. I hope this sparks interest from everybody to reinvest in the black community by supporting black entrepreneurs.

Kamau

This is such a great idea. I hope others will get involved and carry out their own Ebony Experiment.

Kim

I think this is an interesting experiment. It's definitely going to be difficult for them.

Leroy Campbell

My name is Leroy Campbell. I heard you on the radio. There is a God!
I pray that your idea spreads like wildfire. I am a self taught, self employed fine artist. God has blessed me to be able to make a living selling my art predominately to African Americans for 25 years.
I dont know how I can help. One of my intentions as and artist is to use
my art to instil in young African Americans self reliance, accomplishment, education and support of black owed and operated institutions and businesses. I came from very humble beginnigs,neither one of my parents were educated. I barely graduated high school,had it not been for people like the two of you, I might not be where I am today.You are my comfirmation that it truly takes a village for black wealth to become a reality,and to have an empact. May God bless the two of you.
Call me if you need me.(917)744-5705.

Leroy Campbell

web address correction

Leroy Campbell

web/email address correction

Sean

So does this mean that MLK's dream of a nation where his daughters would be judged by their character and not their skin color is now defunct? Is the new dream one of ethnic balkanization where the various ethno groups only do business with people that superficially look like themselves?

And I can assure you that the flip assumption that whites routinely avoid non-white owned businesses is nonsense. I do business with all kinds of people, and never has my selection of a business been tied to the skin tone of the business owner. I don't even know or care who owns the businesses I frequent. The fact that millions of your white neighbors happily voted for a black president should have been the clue that we're mostly past rejecting people merely for their skin tone. Rather sad to see that black people are now so eager to adopt segregation.

Dacowboy69

Thank God someone feels the way I do. We as Black Americans should and need to support our companies. I live in los Angeles, and everyone is supporting their own except us. It's funny when we start to mobilize for our own causes we always have to include everybody. If you check out history we did own our own buisinesses and did well. Good Luck.

Lydia

I read about The Ebony Experiment and was delighted to see this happening. I am Caucasian and grew up in Brooklyn many years ago. I lived in an immigrant blue collar neighborhood and went to school with African American kids. I saw how tough things were for them. I know of the stores in predominately African American neighborhoods where the produce and meat are inferior and prices are higher. Many large supermarkets don't bother opening stores there. I don't consider this experiment as adopting segregation. I see it as trying to help neighborhoods and I think that's great. I live in California and shop at stores that are owned by many different people and have learned a lot about different cultures. Good luck with this program.

Ralph

Saw your Don Lemon CNN interview - You did well, both of you.
What came across from you is a simple positive, proactive msg to giving back to the community Good job