I'm reading a new book, "Minority Rules: Turn Your Ethnicity Into a Competitive Advantage", written by Kenneth Arroyo Roldan, the top dog at Wesley, Brown & Bartle, an executive headhunting firm that specializes in finding minority candidates for gigs in corporate America. Like others before it (see Cora Daniels' Black Power Inc.), Roldan's book is all about decoding the corporate labyrinth and unlocking the translucent barriers to success that minorities face as we climb the management ladder. I'm not far enough along in the book to critique Roldan's writing one way or the other, but I do have some context I'd like to lend to his subject.
In most cases I'd be quick to point out the difference between income -- what you bring in each week from a job -- and wealth or net worth -- cash or assets you own regardless of your employment status. But in this case, I think there's an important link between the two. Roldan's advice could be critical to helping more young African-Americans generate some real assets of their own, to the extent it helps anybody get a real job with some real income.
Why? For two reasons: 1) We as black folks tend to have fewer real assets than other Americans and 2) our incomes as a group continue to lag those of whites of the same age. The income and wealth gaps taken together, then, mean that attaining high-salaried management and executive-level jobs like those Roldan discusses in his book is a more critical step for young African-Americans struggling to gain an economic foothold than it is for similarly situated whites -- at least in many cases (there are always exceptions, and certainly not every white kid climbing the corporate ladder was born filthy).
That said, anybody care to share some anecdotes on the comments page about their own push to get a bigger, better job, or if you have one, how much did the salary bump really help you attain some real assets -- a house or stock options, as opposed to say, a new Land Rover with some nice rims?
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Home sweet...?
There are two homeowners in my family, and as much as I wish it were the case, I ain't one of 'em (Boston home prices be damned).
Still, for us, and probably for thousands of black families, that's progress over a generation ago, when my mother and seven of her eight siblings bounced between rented properties and the projects, where I was raised until I was about 10. By the time I was 13, my moms could finally afford a crib of her own. When I was in college, my aunt and her husband left brick city and moved on up to a nice spot in suburban Pittsburgh, nothing fabulous but nice enough for they and their kids and family gatherings that my mother can't be bothered with hosting.
Given that in my own lifetime my family went from subsidized housing to homeownership, that over the last decade you had to have been under a very large rock to not be lambasted with the advice that homeownership is the best way for families in this country to get their piece of the rock (this is even more critical for black families, which I'll discuss later) and that I got a pretty quick jump-off to my own career, it was only natural that I thought I'd be a homeowner by now. That the housing bubble (I'm coming back to that at some point, too) and those damn Boston home prices have stalled that goal is a big disappointment.
But not nearly as disappointing -- no, staggered -- as I was over the past two days listening to three of my white colleagues talk about buying new homes and selling old ones. That each of them already owned homes was no surprise; the telling thing was that they're all in the process of buying second homes, vacation homes or trading up from one place to a larger, ostensibly more valuable house, that they talked about it with the casualness of a barmaid taking a drink order.
Let me be clear: I'm not hating on my brothers from another color. But it was on some level galling to hear people talk about buying and selling homes (in Boston no less, where the median-priced crib costs a cool half-mil), like they were talking about the latest CD they downloaded.
It brought a lot home for me, thinking about my family members who accomplished so much by buying one house but perhaps so little in because their homes are the only they'll ever own. It makes me wonder if all the talk in the last few years about homeownership being the key to wealth wasn't more than a little overblown, whether no matter how much property my generation of African-Americans acquires, the wealth gap is just too wide to close.
Am I onto something, or just thinking too hard?
Still, for us, and probably for thousands of black families, that's progress over a generation ago, when my mother and seven of her eight siblings bounced between rented properties and the projects, where I was raised until I was about 10. By the time I was 13, my moms could finally afford a crib of her own. When I was in college, my aunt and her husband left brick city and moved on up to a nice spot in suburban Pittsburgh, nothing fabulous but nice enough for they and their kids and family gatherings that my mother can't be bothered with hosting.
Given that in my own lifetime my family went from subsidized housing to homeownership, that over the last decade you had to have been under a very large rock to not be lambasted with the advice that homeownership is the best way for families in this country to get their piece of the rock (this is even more critical for black families, which I'll discuss later) and that I got a pretty quick jump-off to my own career, it was only natural that I thought I'd be a homeowner by now. That the housing bubble (I'm coming back to that at some point, too) and those damn Boston home prices have stalled that goal is a big disappointment.
But not nearly as disappointing -- no, staggered -- as I was over the past two days listening to three of my white colleagues talk about buying new homes and selling old ones. That each of them already owned homes was no surprise; the telling thing was that they're all in the process of buying second homes, vacation homes or trading up from one place to a larger, ostensibly more valuable house, that they talked about it with the casualness of a barmaid taking a drink order.
Let me be clear: I'm not hating on my brothers from another color. But it was on some level galling to hear people talk about buying and selling homes (in Boston no less, where the median-priced crib costs a cool half-mil), like they were talking about the latest CD they downloaded.
It brought a lot home for me, thinking about my family members who accomplished so much by buying one house but perhaps so little in because their homes are the only they'll ever own. It makes me wonder if all the talk in the last few years about homeownership being the key to wealth wasn't more than a little overblown, whether no matter how much property my generation of African-Americans acquires, the wealth gap is just too wide to close.
Am I onto something, or just thinking too hard?
Sunday, August 13, 2006
Who wants to be a billionaire?
The cover story from Business Week's Aug. 14, 2006 issue took me back to a conversation I had with an old boss a few years ago when I was writing about minority businesses as a reporter in Baltimore. The publisher of the paper I worked for at the time -- a white guy in his early 50's -- had just given a speech to a group of mostly black businessmen and in a conversation in his office afterwards wondered out loud why it was that the entrepreneurial culture that sustained immigrant communities like the one his family sprang from hadn't produced the same benefits in black neighborhoods.
One part of that answer, I think, is that black folks in this country still suffer a host of pathologies left over form slavery/Jim Crow/Reganomics/pick-your-period of bad times for black people. But that's way too simplistic an explanation: black folks ain't hardly the only people in the United States who've had it bad, and yet everyone else -- from white Europeans in the 20th century to poor Hispanics with little education and little fluency in English today, seem to realize more than we do that the real way to gaining a foothold in America is through owning homes and businesses.
Which brings me to the Business Week story, about the latest generation of geeks getting rich starting Internet media companies. No surprises here: of the 10 young moguls featured, not a one was black. That, of course, could have as much to do with Business Week's editorial judgment as anything, but giving them the benefit of the doubt, I write for and read Black Enterprise faithfully and can't remember coming across too many stories about young black people with companies outside the entertainment world that are getting valuations in $500 million range.
So I read the story and came across some interesting tidbits: "...the cost of jump-starting a good idea has plummeted. At the same time, the sources of money have multiplied," it says. It explains how Kevin Rose, founder of Digg.com, a company valued at $200 million, "withdrew $1,000 -- nearly one tenth of his life savings" two years ago to start the site, and how he grew up in a three-bedroom flat in "standard middle class America."
So let's get this straight: "Standard middle class" people are starting companies with as little as a grand and an idea, there's money being thrown at them to fund said ideas left and right and the potential payoffs are enormous. Yet, no black folks anywhere to be seen. Anybody got a halfway decent idea why?
One part of that answer, I think, is that black folks in this country still suffer a host of pathologies left over form slavery/Jim Crow/Reganomics/pick-your-period of bad times for black people. But that's way too simplistic an explanation: black folks ain't hardly the only people in the United States who've had it bad, and yet everyone else -- from white Europeans in the 20th century to poor Hispanics with little education and little fluency in English today, seem to realize more than we do that the real way to gaining a foothold in America is through owning homes and businesses.
Which brings me to the Business Week story, about the latest generation of geeks getting rich starting Internet media companies. No surprises here: of the 10 young moguls featured, not a one was black. That, of course, could have as much to do with Business Week's editorial judgment as anything, but giving them the benefit of the doubt, I write for and read Black Enterprise faithfully and can't remember coming across too many stories about young black people with companies outside the entertainment world that are getting valuations in $500 million range.
So I read the story and came across some interesting tidbits: "...the cost of jump-starting a good idea has plummeted. At the same time, the sources of money have multiplied," it says. It explains how Kevin Rose, founder of Digg.com, a company valued at $200 million, "withdrew $1,000 -- nearly one tenth of his life savings" two years ago to start the site, and how he grew up in a three-bedroom flat in "standard middle class America."
So let's get this straight: "Standard middle class" people are starting companies with as little as a grand and an idea, there's money being thrown at them to fund said ideas left and right and the potential payoffs are enormous. Yet, no black folks anywhere to be seen. Anybody got a halfway decent idea why?
Thursday, August 03, 2006
Community banking in the internet age
This week I reported for BlackEnterprise.com on one black executive's three-year journey to create an online bank that would be funded largely by black churches and average-Joe investors and would serve African-Americans in cyberspace. That journey ended when the lead investor in the deal couldn't come up with the cash before a federal deadline forced the bank to have to pull the plug.
Online banks these days are doing pretty good business and they're well-liked by consumers because they kick back interest rates in the 4 to 5 percent range on savings accounts and don't force you to change your arrangement with your regular bank to do so. But with that said, even the man who wanted to start this particular bank acknowledged in my story that there were always questions about whether starting a "community bank" aimed at black folks was the most pragmatic thing to do. After all, brick-and-mortar community banks are competing against the Bank of Americas of the world, and on the Internet, there is no real physical or well-defined ethnic community as there in the real world. So the question stands: how many of you think a black-targeted online bank will eventually be started and survive? And how many of you would use it? Let us know in the comments section.
Online banks these days are doing pretty good business and they're well-liked by consumers because they kick back interest rates in the 4 to 5 percent range on savings accounts and don't force you to change your arrangement with your regular bank to do so. But with that said, even the man who wanted to start this particular bank acknowledged in my story that there were always questions about whether starting a "community bank" aimed at black folks was the most pragmatic thing to do. After all, brick-and-mortar community banks are competing against the Bank of Americas of the world, and on the Internet, there is no real physical or well-defined ethnic community as there in the real world. So the question stands: how many of you think a black-targeted online bank will eventually be started and survive? And how many of you would use it? Let us know in the comments section.
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