Black $ green: black entrepreneurs wage uphill struggle in 20th century - excerpt from 'The Shaping of Black America' - part 2

Ebony, Oct, 1997 by Lerone Bennett, Jr.

And so, at the end of the long road that started in Jamestown, we are confronted once again -- on the level of the entrepreneur and on the level of the laborer -- with the two major paradoxes of Black/White America. The first paradox is that everything has changed in the field of race relations, and yet nothing has changed. This means, among other things, that we have not yet gotten down to the bottom line: the integration of the money and the power and the resources.

The second paradox, growing out of the first, is the Black America is one of the richest countries in the world with a total income of $324 billion dollars a year. The paradox here and elsewhere is that the billions of dollars that flow into Black America during the day are systematically siphoned off and used to enrich others.

Thus, the paradox of the poor rich country.

Poor yet making many rich; weak yet making many strong; empty-handed yet holding in his hands untold, unfocused riches and the power of numbers that will determine the fate of urban America -- this is the paradoxical profile of Black America on the eve of the new century. With an annual income larger than India, Switzerland and Sweden and with millions living below the poverty line and millions more unemployed and underemployed, Black America on the edge of the new century is a symphony of contradictions in search of a theme and creative conductors. It was not clear at the end of this period whether the enormous potential of this community would be orchestrated and focused on "the great ends toward which Black people move." But there were signs of progression as well as retrogression, and it was clear that Black America was groping toward some new equilibrium, as yet undefined.

(*) Based on figures compiled by the authority on Black hospitals, Nathaniel Wesley Jr. of Florida A&M University.