One Family's Quest to Buy Black in America's Racially Divided Economy
November 14, 2011
What began as a 90-day project to “Buy Black” became a year-long project (2009–2010) and a foundation promoting black entrepreneurship for a Chicago couple, Maggie and John Anderson. They tried to get through the year patronizing only African-American businesses, “to document what products and services we could and could not find.” While this book shows them living their lives with social difficulties (what should one do if invited to a friend’s party thrown in a white establishment?) and emotional crises (a terminally ill parent, stressed friendships), the primary focus is on their foundation—its history, hard times, and highlights of the “Empowerment Experiment.” In merging the details of their effort—checking out establishments, getting celebrity endorsements, black business history, and multiple statistics—the book becomes repetitive, overwritten, and more tiresome than its dynamite subject deserves: “How insane is it that we couldn’t find a Black-owned store in all of Chicagoland with a consistent supply of fruits and vegetables?” If Anderson’s book gets readers to wrestle with that question, it will have done a good enough job to make what is largely a business history an effective probe into how African-Americans spend so much money that flows so overwhelmingly out of their community.
February 1, 2012
As the title indicates, this is the story of Anderson's quest to spend a year in which she and her family would patronize only black-owned businesses. The former McDonald's executive, now cofounder/CEO of a foundation for "promoting self-help economics," Anderson chronicles the rewarding moments, shocking revelations, and life-changing impact of what proved to be a surprisingly difficult commitment. Less radical than Mike Yankoski's experiment with homelessness (Under the Overpass: A Journey of Faith on the Streets of America) and more personal than Xavier de Souza Briggs and others' Moving to Opportunity: The Story of an American Experiment To Fight Ghetto Poverty, Anderson's book successfully illuminates the roadblocks faced by black business owners and the racial divide that continues to persist in the U.S. economy. VERDICT Part journal, part investigative paper, this book will appeal to students of sociology and economics as well as those looking for inspiration to effect positive change in their communities.--Sara Holder, McGill Univ. Lib., Montreal
Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
December 1, 2011
An African-American couple in a Chicago neighborhood pledged to spend 2009 patronizing black-owned businesses; they discovered that this was no easy task. With the aid of Pulitzer Prize–winning Chicago Tribune journalist Gregory, business-strategy consult Anderson narrates the story of their decision and how they struggled to carry it out. The book also covers the author's launch of a self-help economics movement while raising two young daughters and caring for a dying mother. While an appendix prepared by faculty and students at the Kellogg School of Management details the relevant statistics about the Andersons' expenditures and black spending power and entrepreneurship, it is the personal story of the challenges faced by the Andersons that brings those figures to life. Just finding well-run black-owned businesses was a time-consuming chore, and finding ones that managed to stay in business was even more so. Anderson was forced to drive to poor, rundown neighborhoods and to shop in stores that didn't stock fresh meat and produce, healthful foods, needed household products or clothing for her growing daughters. Adding insult to injury, following her public appearances to promote her black-empowerment message, vicious hate mail from both blacks and whites attacked her motives. The author's frustrations and disappointments—as well as hope—are the central focus, but there is a larger story at play. Anderson looks at the reasons for the present conditions, putting them in perspective with some history of self-help efforts in the 19th century, black cooperatives of the early 20th century and the effects of the civil-rights movement on black-owned businesses. An epilogue describes the plan for the Empowerment Experiment Foundation research center to study and document the effects of the self-help movement. Effectively highlights the economic disparity between blacks and whites and dramatizes the challenges facing those who would close the gap.
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