My standard monthly expenses

1. Rent - Apartments owned by white folks
* Do I have any comparable quality black owned options in Austin? No.

2. Utilties - phone, gas, cable, electricity, internet - all owned by white folks

* Does anyone know of a black owned utility provider? I don't think there are any black owned ISP's in austin.

3. Car Payment - Honda makes the car, but the money goes to Ford Motor credit, who are owned by Caucasian Americans, but since they paid off Honda initially, I guess I give Asians a good chunk of my money there.

* Are there any black owned Car Makers or major financial lenders?

3. Insurance - Geico - white folks again.

* Black owned insurance companies operating in the State of Texas - ? Possibly, but since I get insurance through my folks, I haven't looked into it.

4. Maintenance - Oil changes, Car washes, Gas and Scheduled maintenance - Local Honda dealership owned by white folks, mostly employing Latinos. Car Washes - I buy the supplies from Hi Lo and do it myself. Hi Lo owned by white folks. Exxon, owned by white folks.

* Black options - none

5. Student Loans and Credit Card - White folks again.
* Black options - none that I know of.

6. Groceries - HEB, Randalls's (Texas Grocery stores) - owned by white folks who are good ol boys.

* Black options - Charlie's Food Spot on east 12th street. It's not close and it's a convenience store. There are some Frutaria's, so I could support Brown business (which is far easier to do)

7. Restaurants - Finally an area where black folks at least have some businesses.

- Carribbean way - a Jamaican spot
- Stubbs BBQ - A nice sitdown BBQ spot on the white side of town, owned by black folks. They have a gospel brunch on Sundays.

But black folks don't own pizza spots, Chili's type restaurants, nothing on the lake...., no fast food chains

I could go on, but I think you get the point. When I need a dashiki or a new copy of the Isis Papers, I'll head on down to the Black store. If I need a haircut, Kings and Queens barber. But those are the only areas in which I run into black businesses.

For purchases I don't make every month there aren't really that many options. Where are the black office wear designers. I mean I would love to rock a dress shirt designed by and for black folks. But FUBU, like every other black/hip hop designer, make clothes for teenagers. I have a professional job like the other 66% of African Americans in the middle and upper class. My boss isn't going to approve of me rocking some tims and a hoody.

When i want to buy hard goods, there aren't any black circuit cities. Where is the black IBM or Apple?

Even when I buy hip hop, 90% of the money I spend goes to white folks in one way or another. I don't even go to the only black music store because they only carry cd's and tapes. I buy vinyl.

If I were Asian or Hispanic I might have some more options. But being black, the fact that most of my people are employees and not employers stops me from doing so.

k. orr

I think the main problem is..... most of the black owned businesses only cater to one customer, "Black People"....

If our businesses, would produce products for everyone then we would prosper a lot more....

Another thing is, we will openly state everytime "THIS IS A BLACK OWNED BUSINESS".... well, automatically that tells everyone except black people "YOU AREN'T WELCOME"...... I mean how many ties have you heard a business say "THIS IS A WHITE OWNED BUSINESS" or "THIS IS AN ASIAN OWNED BUSINESS".... hardly ever.

I think business owner need to quite focusing on the fact that they are blackk owned and just do their business.

Look at Johnson & Johnson, it's a black owned business, but they don't publicize that ish because what does it matter? It just helps our statistics a little, which is a good thing, but we must take a different approach.

We must do our jobs and cater to everyone.

AND I'M OUT (c) Dilated Peoples

Peace!!!!!!

AIM: BurbKnight

-GOOOOOOOOODNIGHT EVERYBODY (c) Yakko Warner, "Animaniacs"

-"What the devil is that on your answering machine"- Xzhibit

-I'M SAYING WHAT I MEAN AND I'M MEANING WHAT I SAY!!!!!!!! IN 2000- me (in "fed up" mode)

Okayplayer Directory: http://theblackknight.tripod.com/okayplayer/okayplayer.html

My homepage:
http://members.tripod.com/~TheBlackKnight

>Look at Johnson & Johnson, it's
>a black owned business,

You might want to check this link out.

http://www.johnsonandjohnson.com/who_is_jnj/hist_index.html

I think the your thinking of Robert Johnson, owner of BET.

k. orr

Peace!!!!!!

AIM: BurbKnight

-GOOOOOOOOODNIGHT EVERYBODY (c) Yakko Warner, "Animaniacs"

-"What the devil is that on your answering machine"- Xzhibit

-I'M SAYING WHAT I MEAN AND I'M MEANING WHAT I SAY!!!!!!!! IN 2000- me (in "fed up" mode)

Okayplayer Directory: http://theblackknight.tripod.com/okayplayer/okayplayer.html

My homepage:
http://members.tripod.com/~TheBlackKnight

Black businesses will take the money of ANYBODY.

The problem is getting our foot in the door & then getting racists people to buy from us when they have their own to buy from. Why would they do that unless they have no choice?

That's the only reason we buy white, we have no alternatives for the most part. We buy from people who don't welcome us EVERYDAY....and their spots scream "white owned" and damn near "nigga keep out". Matter of fact, we'll sue to have the opportunity to give our money to people that hate us. So on that area, please give me a break....I don't think that announcing that a business is blackowned is making nonblacks feel unwelcomed.

That's not going to happen..often.

We can support ourselves & our communities decently with black commerce. yeah, there will be sacrifices in certain areas but there's no progress without sacrifice.

ANother issue is that we don't own standards such as utility companies, etc.

Those industries though will be very difficult to break into, the monopoly is already in affect (see WTO). I don't know how we overcome that.

Johnson & Johnson is not black owned.... that was a mistake on my part........ carry on

Peace!!!!!!

AIM: BurbKnight

-GOOOOOOOOODNIGHT EVERYBODY (c) Yakko Warner, "Animaniacs"

-"What the devil is that on your answering machine"- Xzhibit

-I'M SAYING WHAT I MEAN AND I'M MEANING WHAT I SAY!!!!!!!! IN 2000- me (in "fed up" mode)

Okayplayer Directory: http://theblackknight.tripod.com/okayplayer/okayplayer.html

My homepage:
http://members.tripod.com/~TheBlackKnight

So start where you can. We can't do it all at once. Grass roots movements start with the action of one person.

I can't address each issue that you raise, because I don't have enough information, but I want to point out a couple of things.

First, most government contracts these days require that at least a percentage of the work that is performed be performed by minority-owned business enterprises or women-owned business enterprises. You might want to investigate whether your city/county/state has these requirements in place and, if not, let your representatives know that this is important to you. That will feed seed money into businesses and help them grow.

Second, there may be more opportunities to Buy Black than are immediately apparent. I just took a look around and found out that, after holding onto it for a couple of years, I guess I finally threw away my copy of Fortune that listed the top 500 Black-owned/managed businesses. And damn, it's been too long, so I don't remember rightly who they all are. But I think that there must be a new issue since then, and I'll see if I can't dig one up. Beatrice Foods was a big one.

Third, there are mutual funds that invest in environmentally friendly investments ("green" funds), there are mutual funds that make investments in women-owned/oriented businesses, so I'm willing to bet that there are funds that do the same for minority business enterprises. You can own a stake in a Black owned business by buying shares of the company or investing in a mutual fund that does so (Illosopher is going to get me for promoting capitalism so heavily, but I'll take my chances here. :-)).

I think you raise some very good points, and I think that it's true that, especially at first, it will be a struggle to keep our dollars where we want them. But don't give up hope. Just asking the question, "How can I support my community?" is the first step toward change. It is exactly this kind of conversation that leads people to band together to buy an apartment building or start a grocery store.

One love.

:)
Do the best you can with what you got. Use what opportunities you can to BUY BLACK. Do some more research.

Check this out:

My OB- Black Woman
Dentist - Black Woman
General Physician - Black Woman
Car Detailer - Black Business
Almot EVERY peice of BLACK art/pictures/figurines/scultpure..... bought from other Blacks. (Buy ALL Black culture items from Black people if you can - How somebody that don't look like you, gonna sell you you?)
Florist - Black woman
Dayna's Shoes - Black Retail
Restaraunts - Quite a few. But can't nobody do soul food like somebody WITH some soul!
Even in Eckerd's and Walgreens, I only buy greeting cards with Black folk on them. Sure, some other person may profit but so have I.

It aint easy, brah. But we GOTTA do it as often as we can and BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY.

P.S.: Come to our discussion titled "Do you buy asian"

Live from the Shoe Sto'
NuShooz
I,I, I Can't Wait!

My rented duplex - owner and realty place is Black Owned.

Live
Nu
I,I, I Can't Wait!

This brings up an interesting question: is there a place on the Web where black folks can connect with other black businesses to buy vital products and services? If not, why not? Surely someone on here knows HTML. Let's build, people. spirit68@aol.com is the e-mail. i can't help with the tech stuff, but I'm a heck of a writer (verbally). Any takers? Hit me up...

Spread love,

Spirit
http://www.theamphibians.com

9 out of 10 people with two arms find something interesting about http://www.theamphibians.com
This summer: new audio, same odd sense of humor. Don't get "left" out, mossie your two-armed self on over and check it out.
_____________________
The funniest exchange on Okayplayer this month (from a Cali Agents thread)

WTFxSTFU writes...

Rasco really ruined the lp for me, I dont understand how he gets jocked like he does. He's so wack. Some of the lines he throws really make me sick. But Planet Asia is dope. - WTFxSTFU

Rasco responds....

thanks for the $16.00 yours truly the wack rapper.
RASCO

minorityinterest.com...it's a web site coming soon that bills itself as the place to go to find minority owned businesses...peep how they describe themselves...

"The mission of minorityinterest.com is to build the premier online resource center for minorities and minority-owned businesses. minorityinterest.com will promote responsible commerce to minorities in the areas of education, healthcare and personal and business finance. minorityinterest.com will also establish an arena for commerce and procurement in which minority-owned businesses will be able to interact with Fortune 1000 Companies as well as Government agencies. In an effort to accomplish our mission,
minorityinterest.com will provide Internet connectivity through the use of its “mio.net” URL, combining that service with a low-cost high-quality computer, leading the effort to bridge the digital divide while providing
access to our resources."

Well, peep that out....they have a place where you can leave your e-mail addy so they can inform you when the site comes online later this summer.

Spread love,

Spirit
http://www.theamphibians.com

9 out of 10 people with two arms find something interesting about http://www.theamphibians.com
This summer: new audio, same odd sense of humor. Don't get "left" out, mossie your two-armed self on over and check it out.
_____________________
The funniest exchange on Okayplayer this month (from a Cali Agents thread)

WTFxSTFU writes...

Rasco really ruined the lp for me, I dont understand how he gets jocked like he does. He's so wack. Some of the lines he throws really make me sick. But Planet Asia is dope. - WTFxSTFU

Rasco responds....

thanks for the $16.00 yours truly the wack rapper.
RASCO