Lack of funding is a major roadblock to creating and growing businesses for black entrepreneurs. This story focuses on a website and an app, Purchaseblack.com, that is trying to direct dollars to these entrepreneurs. Our recent report, The Color of Entrepreneurship: Why the Racial Gap Among Firms Costs the U.S. Billions, offers the background for the need to circulate money into black-owned businesses:
Algernon Austin, a senior research fellow at the Center for Global Policy Solutions, did an analysis of minority entrepreneurship, finding that “we need to add 1.1 million more businesses owned by people of color to the economy in order to make the racial composition of American business owners match that of the overall American labor force.” According to Austin, these new businesses would add about nine million jobs—enough jobs to achieve full employment for all racial groups. “These jobs would close the black-white unemployment-rate gap and the gaps for Hispanics and American Indians as well.”
