Protests Fail to Boost Black-owned Businesses - Arkansas Business Online
Protests Fail to Boost Black-owned Businesses - Arkansas Business Online |
- Protests Fail to Boost Black-owned Businesses - Arkansas Business Online
- White Supremacists Are Invading American Cities To Incite a Civil War - Washington Monthly
- Best Black Dating Apps of 2020 - DatingNews
| Protests Fail to Boost Black-owned Businesses - Arkansas Business Online Posted: 30 Aug 2020 10:00 PM PDT We were unable to send the article. Social media campaigns urged consumers to buy goods and services from Black-owned businesses after the killing of an unarmed Black man by a white Minneapolis police officer in May sparked protests against racism and police brutality. But several African American business owners told Arkansas Business that they saw little, if any, boost in sales. "We had a little surge after the George Floyd incident, and it's kind of tapered off since then," said Donnie Lindsey, who owns Lindsey's Hospitality House in North Little Rock with his wife, Eleanor. "It's been up and down with the coronavirus and everything just mixed together. So we've just been riding a big roller coaster, and I want to get off now." Donnie Lindsey said he didn't draw any attention to the fact that his company is minority-owned. With about 10 employees, Lindsey's Hospitality House is a barbecue restaurant and offers catering and a banquet facility. It is tied with eight other companies at No. 17 on this week's list of the state's largest minority-owned companies. "Our customer base has always been diverse," he said. "We try to cater to all people — black, white, yellow, brown — as well as different political positions and all of the genders." Korry Garrett shrugged off the idea that a new social consciousness had meant more business for his Sandstone Real Estate Group in Conway. "Not at all," he said. "I think the business we have is business we would have gotten anyway." Corporate statements of solidarity with the Black community struck him as "more of a publicity thing." Eight of Sandstone's 15 employees are Black, and the remaining seven are white, Garrett said. Like the Lindseys, he wants to do business with all races. This, he said, is an economic reality in the real estate business: "The Caucasians have most of the wealth. The dollar is green." Garrett said he does seek out minority-owned businesses for Sandstone to patronize. It's easier in some categories than others. "Insurance, it's pretty easy to find a minority insurance agent. Housekeeping. Title companies — it's hard for me to find a minority-owned title company. And most of the loan officers tend to be Caucasian. The dudes — I'm going to say that 95% of the commercial loan officers are white males." 'Speed Dating'Matching businesses up with vendors owned by women and minorities is the goal of the annual matchmaking event that the Arkansas Economic Development Commission's Small, Minority & Women-Owned Business Division will host on Sept. 17. The event will be held online this year. "It's kind of like speed dating, where companies can set up an appointment with procurement officials," said Patricia Brown, director of Minority & Women-Owned Business Enterprise at the AEDC.  Participants in the free event will have a chance to meet with business owners and government buyers. The AEDC certifies minority-owned business enterprises, and its directory was the starting point for this week's list of the largest such companies. Companies on the list were surveyed by Arkansas Business, and those that responded were eligible for the list. The 60 respondents that had more than two employees were included in print. The state of Arkansas has a goal that 15% of the total amount spent on state-funded and state-directed public construction programs and on goods and services each fiscal year be paid to minority businesses. The percentage breakdowns are 10% for minority businesses, which includes 2% for service-disabled veteran-owned minority businesses; and 5% for woman-owned businesses. For the fiscal year that ended June 30, state agencies spent $26.8 million, or 13% of their total amount spent on goods and services, with minority-owned businesses, according to a report released last week by the AEDC. That was an improvement from the fiscal year that ended in mid-2019, when state agencies spent $22.3 million, or 6.6%, on goods and services from minority-owned businesses. That fiscal year, the total budget for state agencies to spend on goods and services was $339.4 million. For the fiscal year that ended on June 30, 2020, that budget had been slashed to $205.3 million. COVID-19The effects of COVID-19 have hurt minority-owned businesses and small businesses, Brown said. "We're hoping that they can recover," she said. But not all businesses have seen a drop in revenue because of COVID-19. Marlon Haynes owns 21st Century Janitorial Inc. of Little Rock, No. 2 on the list of minority-owned companies. He said he's seen an increase in business of about 30% in recent months. He doesn't think the surge in business is because his company is Black-owned; instead, he believes clients have needed more one-stop commercial cleaning services during the pandemic. He said his customers don't care if his company is a minority-owned business. "They just want to know that their needs are taken care of," Haynes said. "So that's kind of been my philosophy since I started the company. We didn't want to just be, per se, just a minority business, but we are a company out there that provides services." Mark Mosby, though, hasn't seen a surge in his real estate and consulting business, Mosby Solutions LLC of Hazen, because of COVID-19 or because of his skin color. "I have experienced a lot of people not being able to make their rent payments and use the COVID as the reason for that," he said. Founded in 2002, Mosby Solutions buys residential properties, renovates them and rents them. Mosby has about 50 properties and, with 10 employees, is tied with Lindsey's at No. 17 on this week's list. Lindsey's also has seen a drop in business because of COVID. It's had more than 20 or 30 cancelations for the year for its banquet facility, said Donnie Lindsey. "We're still doing a little bit of catering, … and that has been cut to about probably 75% of what we would have done in the past," he said. Lindsey's restaurant business "has been pretty good" since restaurants were allowed to reopen on May 11, but it had to limit seating and keep tables 10 feet apart. "We're still only at 30% capacity," Lindsey said. Inventory ShortageGarrett, of Sandstone Realty Group, said his is an industry in which clients tend to work with agents of the same race — probably 70% of the time, he said. But when you've got the right house for sale, it doesn't seem to matter. And Sandstone could be doing more business if there were more houses to sell — especially the moderately priced ones. "It's most definitely a seller's market," Garrett said. "A nice home under $250,000 is going to fly off the market. There's a shortage of inventory." State Agency Spending With Minority-Owned Businesses |
| White Supremacists Are Invading American Cities To Incite a Civil War - Washington Monthly Posted: 30 Aug 2020 01:17 PM PDT  Wikimedia CommonsIn his 2004 Democratic National Convention speech, Barack Obama said: "There is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America — there's the United States of America." If it was true then, it certainly isn't true now. We are a nation on the edge of an increasingly hot civil war, one in which white supremacists are invading American cities, fomenting violence, and the overtly racist president they support sees the violence as benefiting him politically. For the last two decades at least, Democrats have labored under the notion that if they were just reasonable enough, they could heal sharpening political divides in America. Meanwhile, Republicans spent the same time period inflaming every cultural resentment they could, maximizing racist, sexist and homophobic resentments among primarily white men. Republicans worked overtime to try to set urban and exurban populations against one another, disempowering and disenfranchising city dwellers through gerrymandering and voter suppression. Donald Trump added kerosene onto the flaming bonfire built by Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh and Roger Ailes. He won the GOP primary not be being something radically different, but by accurately reflecting the existing dispositions of the Republican base. He embodies their ethos heart and soul, and they reward him with intense loyalty even as the economy begins to collapse and 180,000 Americans die in a pandemic he has ignored. Many like David Neiwert have long predicted this would end in violence, but were largely dismissed. Conservatives are now both more desperate and more cocksure than ever before. As more Americans started living in cities, as the racial complexion of the nation diversified, as young people locked out of housing, trapped in debt and forced into dead-end jobs realized the need for a radical rethinking of the social and economic contract, and as a larger percentage of white people went to college and by extension became increasingly inoculated from the very worst forms of bigotry, the hold of conservative elements over the country has weakened. The Right has lost the culture war. American corporations, solicitous of the economic patronage of younger trendsetters and growing families, have established ever more left-leaning branding (at least on social and environmental matters.) At the same time, however, political structures designed to empower the minority of conservatives in America to rule over its liberal majority are maintaining an apartheid-style government. The electoral college has put a conservative in the White House twice in the last two decades despite losing the popular vote, and threatens to do so again. The Senate majority belongs to conservatives who nonetheless control mostly rural states with a minority of the U.S. population, and the presence of the filibuster makes real change all but impossible even if Democrats were to retake the chamber. Gerrymandering ensures that the House of Representatives and state legislatures are stacked in favor of exurban dwellers and conservatives, with the result that even when Democrats do attain victory, those legislators are perforce more moderate than the majority of the Democratic base. And, of course, widespread voter suppression maximizes the disenfranchisement of urban progressives. Protected by these structures and with Donald Trump as president, conservatives feel that they are empowered to rule regardless of what majoritarian democracy would suggest. The protests against police violence are reflective of this broader trend. Most police do not live in the cities they serve. They tend to be extremely culturally conservative and out of the touch with the values of the taxpayers who fund them. In New York City, one of the nation's most progressive enclaves where the president no longer dares to tread, the police union defiantly endorsed Donald Trump. Police violence against racial minorities has been a longstanding problem for decades, and one that has started to receive national attention through the diligent efforts of activists and through the presence of ubiquitous video technology to capture actions that in years past would have been sanitized in one-sided police reports. But it's also the reality that in the age of rightwing radicalization, a large segment of the police have come more than ever to see themselves as occupying warrior forces in cities whose culture is threatening and alien to them. And the citizens of those cities know it and feel it– as psychological torment, legal harassment, financial hardship from court costs, and as scars on their bodies. Protests in this context are inevitable. And why not? The people of America's cities have a right to demand action from their city leaders. It's a problem for America's cities to sort out, as citizens demand that their representatives fear their political power as much as they do that of the police organizations. But the conservative white supremacist extremists are not content to allow that to play out. An empowered urban citizenry is a direct threat to their power, an acceleration of their loss of control. The "Boogaloo" movement wants to instigate a civil war along largely racial lines precisely to settle accounts before they suffer any further cultural or demographic declines. So a few days ago a radicalized white supremacist teenager drove across state lines with the specific intent of killing protesters against racist police violence, and murdered two people and injured a third. He did so after being welcome by local police, given water, and ignored when he attempted to surrender. He is being celebrated in right-wing circles for doing so, and so-called "Christian" groups are funding his legal defense. Yesterday, convoys of out-of-town trucks and SUVs bearing Trump flags stormed into Portland with the intent of creating confrontation. They allegedly rolled through groups of protesters in their vehicles, shooting projectiles and pepper spray into the crowds. In the ensuing violence, one of the far-right Trump supporters was shot and killed. The Portland murderer should, of course, be brought to justice. There is no excuse for deadly violence. But all of this is happening because white supremacists are invading American cities with the express intent of starting a civil war. President Trump sees them as "very fine people" who are on his side. He sees the violence as politically beneficial, a useful cudgel against Democratic nominee Joe Biden–even though the violence is happening while Trump himself is president, not Biden. Trump's election theme is that Americans won't be safe in a Biden presidency. The opposite is true. Americans won't be safe as long as a white supremacist president is leading a movement of bigots to incite a civil war, and attempting to ensure that the majority of Americans with cosmopolitan, egalitarian values remain politically disenfranchised and under the thumb of those who fear and despise them. |
| Best Black Dating Apps of 2020 - DatingNews Posted: 27 Apr 2020 12:00 AM PDT [unable to retrieve full-text content]Best Black Dating Apps of 2020 DatingNews |
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