Innovation Crisis in Black America Pt. 2: Where are Black Entrepreneurs and Angels?
By Mike Green
Today’s article is a continuation of a yesterday’s previous post.
There’s an economic crisis of monumental proportions occurring in black America. The challenges stretch across a vast spectrum of education, unemployment, entrepreneurship, investment and innovation. But you won’t hear much about this crisis from any of the so-called “mainstream” media.
Black Unemployment in America: Media Reports
The New York Times touched on the issue in, “The New Poor: Blacks in Memphis Lose Decades in Economic Gains.” The Times narrowed America’s economic crisis to the financial impact on a Memphis family and offered statistics to what it dubbed, “The Great Recession.” But the focus of the article is limited to job losses, foreclosures and economic despair in a single region that has turned back the calendar of progress.
The Washington Post Business Columnist Steven Pearlstein took a stab at the problem in his Sept. 7 column, “The Bleak Truth About Unemployment.” Pearlstein tells us the eight million jobs lost across the nation are largely a result of a structural, not cyclical, change. Manufacturing, construction, hospitality and retail have all lost two million jobs each, accounting for two-thirds of the total job loss across America. A fraction of the jobs lost are currently being recovered and Pearlstein doesn’t see the vast majority of those jobs returning anytime soon.
Black media, such as theloop21.com, are also decrying the travails of economic disaster. The Loop 21 dissects the most recent U.S. Bureau of Labor’s statistics on Black Unemployment (16.3%) and pushes the number as high as 48% in its Sept. 3 article, “Locked Out: The Truth Behind the Black Unemployment Rate.”
While media are bemoaning the Great Depression-like “Great Recession,” none are juxtaposing the explosive tech industries and Internet ventures against the backdrop of miserable forecasts of long-term unemployment and the catastrophic crumbling of industry infrastructures.
About This Series: Focal Point — Innovation
While the “Great Recession” impacts all of America, black America is suffering from new economic trauma just as it emerges from the shadows of institutionalized racism that stunted its growth for generations. And while white America races to support entrepreneurial innovators and seed high-growth companies, black America has been caught flat-footed and is in danger of being left behind in the dust of innovation-propelled technology — relegated to the role of consumers who transfer much of today’s black earned wealth to the high tech entrepreneurs of tomorrow.
This series seeks to not only expose the hidden crisis in black America, but also unveil little known opportunities through which solutions may be derived.
In part one, the voices of three innovative business leaders were introduced to address the challenges facing black America’s entrepreneurs and investors. This is the second of four installments in a series addressing the Innovation Crisis in Black America.
Today we ask: Where are African American entrepreneurs and angel investors in the exploding high tech industries?
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Category: Entrepreneur, Featured | Tags: angel investors, Entrepreneurship, innovation, unemployment
