SHOPPE BLACK

Why Aren’t There More Black Fashion Designers?

4 mins read

Within a fashion industry that touts itself as celebratory of difference, diversity, and inclusion, Black design talent consistently remains, at best, marginalised and all too often plagued by systemic employment discrimination.

Let me be clear: the established, mainstream fashion design community does not have a diversity problem, it has a “Black people problem.”

Designer, KIBWE CHASE-MARSHALL

Within the majority of luxury, contemporary-level and mass-market design studios, talented Black designers are seldom equitably afforded opportunities to attain senior designer, design director, creative director or vice president of design titles.

More often than not, they are blacklisted by influential recruiters and hiring managers, resulting in little to no prospects for stable employment or market rate salaries.

Designer, Maxwell Osborne

Fed up with watching this most blatant form of discrimination thrive while the broader industry capitalises on Black celebrity associations and the recent uptick in Black casting, I decided to do something.

Over the holidays, I began conceiving what would become a social media campaign; the goal was to ask and answer my own questions, in hopes of developing a plan for how the fashion design community could move toward fairer hiring practices.

On Wednesday, January 3rd #BreakSilenceBreakCeilings went live.

Designers, Darlene and Lizzy Okpo:

A few days thereafter, H&M depicted a young Black boy in a hoodie reading “coolest monkey in the jungle”, confirming how recklessly fashion brands with little to no Black leadership utilise images of Black people. (The Swedish retailer has appointed a diversity leader since the incident.)

In fashion, timing is everything, and the time has come for the industry to remedy the systemic marginalisation of Black design talent.

Designer, Carly Cushnie

My path to working in fashion was non-traditional. Back in 1997, when I was struggling to find my footing and secure loans to attend New York University, I was offered a role as a designer at Michael Kors where I’d been interning for two seasons.

As my prospects for financing school waned, I enthusiastically accepted the role and threw myself into the challenge of mastering a new craft.

Designer, Tracy Reese

I was not formally trained in apparel design (save for a few courses I had taken at Pratt), but having grown up the son of two architects, I was very comfortable with technical drafting. My sketching ability became my value to the team, as I designed hardware details, show-specific accessories and communicated styling directives via illustration across categories.

Over the course of the next decade, as I landed roles within the studios of Isaac Mizrahi, Oscar de la Renta, Ralph Lauren, Gap Inc., J. Mendel and An Original Penguin, I grew strong in my abilities to lead fittings, appraise and select fabrics, and build colour stories as well as nurture talent, predict market trends and build valuable vendor relationships.

Designer, Samantha Black

But within the professional environments in which I worked, I rarely encountered another Black face. Wherever I worked, I was consistently the highest titled Black team member. I was also consistently making considerably less money than my non-Black counterparts.

By the early aughts, headhunters were still reaching out, but I noticed that they rarely seemed to passionately advocate for me in the manner that many of my non-Black peers enjoyed.

Read the full article at Business of Fashion

 

BY KIBWE CHASE-MARSHALL

 

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Why Are There So Few Black-Owned Grocery Stores?

5 mins read
Grocery Stores

The full-service supermarket that Circle Food Store owner Dwayne Bourdeaux runs in New Orleans’ Seventh Ward is clean and stocked with locally sourced produce that arrives with days to spare.

Dwayne Bourdeaux, owner Circle Food Store

The butcher cuts meat daily in the store and offers not only standard cuts, but also items that are locally popular—raccoon, pig lips, pig ears, rabbit, and so on.

Concerned about the rate of diabetes and hypertension among African-Americans—the majority of his customers—Bourdeaux not only sells healthy food, but also incentivizes it by offering $5 worth of free, fresh produce to those who spend $5 on it.

“You should serve the community, because it’s not all about making money,” says Boudreaux, an African-American in his early 40s, who lives seven minutes from the store he has worked at nearly his whole life, before taking it over from his father. “I’d sell more liquor, alcohol, cigarettes, and fried foods if I wanted to make more money.”

Dwayne Boudreaux in Circle Foods.

Dwayne Boudreaux in Circle Foods. (Photo courtesy of Hope Credit Union)

But, he continues, “to be a part of the community, you don’t take the money out of the community and not reinvest it back into it. It’s like a family—you have to nurture it, you have to provide for it, you have to look out for people. To be a part of the community, you have got to care.”

His is a rare success in Black and brown communities nationwide, but not for lack of effort. In fact, Boudreaux is one of the nation’s few remaining Black people operating full-service supermarkets.

No organizations track the number, but sources familiar with the situation and some of the remaining grocers suggest that fewer than 10 Black-owned supermarkets remain across the entire country.

And the number continues to shrink: In the past two years alone, Sterling Farms in New Orleans, Apples and Oranges in Baltimore, and several branches of Calhoun’s in Alabama have all gone out of business.

This is problematic because strong anchor businesses like grocery stores can serve as the center of neighborhood economies, recirculating local revenues through wages and nearby businesses. They can also be neighborhood hubs, where people go to buy good food as well as employment centers and sources of community pride.

Kia Patterson, owner of Compton Grocery Outlet

But where there are no grocery stores, or where they’re not enmeshed in the fabric of the community, problems arise: Grocery store ownership directly ties to larger struggles and themes like economic stability, self-determination, power, control, and racial and class stratification, says Malik Yakini.

Yakini is the director of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network, an organization that builds self-reliance, food security, and justice in Detroit’s Black community. When a neighborhood loses a local grocery store, he says, the African-American community essentially becomes what he describes as a “domestic colony.”

“[Black neighborhoods] are seen as a place for the more dominant economy to sell things,” Yakini says. “We’re more interested in building community, self-determination, and self-reliance. We’re interested in being more than consumers of goods that others bring to sell, and often goods that are inferior to what’s sold in the white community.

“We’re not a place to dump cheap goods,” Yakini continues. “African-American communities need to be producers of goods and stand eyeball to eyeball and shoulder to shoulder to other economic groups. Those that haven’t are subject to all sorts of abuse.”

Read the full article at Civil Eats

 

Related:  First Black Owned Grocery Store Franchise Opens in Compton

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How Artist Derrick Adams Learned About Freedom From ‘The Negro Motorist Green Book

4 mins read
Derrick Adams

On a recent wintry morning, the multimedia artist Derrick Adams was sitting in his cozy basement studio in Brooklyn talking about distant cities and faraway times. “It’s like reading a fairy tale book.

I see the names of beauty schools and men’s clubs and taverns, and I think, ‘What does that place look like?’”

Derrick Adams
Derrick Adams at his studio in Brooklyn with elements from his new show, “Sanctuary,” at the Museum of Arts and Design. Credit Andrew White for The New York Times

Mr. Adams was referring to the establishments listed in the “The Negro Motorist Green Book,” a series of AAA-like guides for black travelers published from 1936 through 1966, and the inspiration for “Derrick Adams: Sanctuary,” an immersive installation opening at the Museum of Arts and Design (known as MAD) on Jan. 25.

In his collages and immersive installations, Mr. Adams uses fabric and wallpaper to suggest roads and car doors. A steering wheel was made from a hat brim. Credit Terrence Jennings/The Museum of Arts and Design

Widely used at a time when African-Americans were navigating physical and social mobility through the swamp of Jim Crow laws and attitudes in the mid-20th century, the Green Books, as they came to be known, listed businesses from gas, food and lodging to nightclubs and haberdasheries that welcomed African-Americans when many did not.

A collage in progress in Mr. Adams’s studio melds a modernist grid with vintage-looking fabric in a brick pattern that elicits the old establishments, building facades and travel. “I’ve thought a lot about barriers, and accessibility, and obstacles, and perseverance,” the artist said. Credit Andrew White for The New York Times

While they reflect a disturbing reality of American history, the books also offered the hope of partaking in the American dream. “They enabled African-Americans to travel like Americans and to feel American,” the artist said.

“Beacon,” 2017, by Derrick Adams, suggests the welcome after a long day of driving. Credit Derrick Adams Studio

Recognized internationally for his kaleidoscopic explorations of the black experience, Mr. Adams, 47, who is African-American, is the first major visual artist to use the Green Books as a creative point of departure.

MIAMI, FL – DECEMBER 02: Derrick Adams attends Interview & Cadillac Celebrate Art of Daring at Maps Backlot on December 2, 2016 in Miami, Florida. (Photo by Jared Siskin/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)

For him, they are not only a Civil Rights artifact and instrument of social change, but also a fascinating record of black leisure time and the built environment — subjects that are continuously percolating in his work.

Read the rest at the New York Times

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Chronic Pain & The Opioid Epidemic: A View in Black & White

11 mins read
pain

There was a time when I’d wake up every morning in chronic pain. The pain I endured was vaguely diagnosed after going to the doctor several times in one year to address the aches in my lower back and pelvis. So far, the treatment has been a combination of ibuprofen and, at one point, six weeks of physical therapy.

However, like many Americans who live with ongoing aches in their own bodies, the low to moderate pain at times persists. Despite this, because I’m a young, healthy Black woman, I continue throughout my days uncertain of when my body will actually be pain-free.

In 2012, the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) concluded that 11.2% of American adults (25.3 million people) have experienced some form of pain every day over the course of three months. So, while chronic pain is new to me, it is not a new phenomenon among Americans.

I bring this up to paint the story of how opioid addiction became a national epidemic, yet is not the burden of Black Americans, at large. Though a growing number of hip hop artists like Lil Wayne, The Weeknd, and Meek Mill are a case study for the burgeoning prescription drug crisis in urban communities with the emergence of “Modern Drug Rap,” the mainstream perception is that the opioid crisis is that of white America.

Fact is, the diagnosis of “chronic pain” officially became treatable during the mid-90s when doctors, who were once wary of prescribing opioid medication, were lured by Big Pharma into making painkillers widely available.

A fascinating Last Week Tonight with John Oliver segment points out how the pharmaceutical industry began amplifying the message that opioids were appropriate to use not only for acute pain but for all manner of conditions that cause common body aches.

In 1996, Purdue released the blockbuster drug, OxyContin through an aggressive marketing strategy that boasted relatable testimonials of pain patients whose lives were miraculously turned around by the opioid.

At the time, Purdue claimed that less than 1% of patients who took opioid medication became addicted, and went as far as to have doctors on payroll called Pain-Management Specialists insist that “pseudoaddiction” is “relief-seeking behavior mistaken as drug addiction.”

This justified their appealing message of a quick, easy cure for pain, available to those with the medical insurance plans or social influence to acquire the prescriptions. This was mainly the dwindling middle class, and affluent whites. By 2000, doctors were writing nearly 6 million oxycodone scripts per year and, shortly thereafter, the headlines began to reflect the true risk of the highly addictive medication.

By 2007, Purdue admitted responsibility and paid $634 million in fines for lying to the public with misleading marketing about the safety of OxyContin. Other prescription opioid companies also paid multimillion-dollar fines after being sued for over-marketing to the public and insurance companies to pay for drugs like Fentanyl, the drug 100-times more powerful than morphine that ultimately claimed the life of rock star Prince.

While the pharmaceutical companies bear a great deal of responsibility for the epidemic, where more than 250 million opioid prescriptions are written every year, the fact that the epidemic is overwhelmingly affecting white Americans is telling.

Meanwhile, the response to this crisis by the Federal government, declaring the Opioid Epidemic a Public Health issue as opposed to a Criminal Justice one, is rooted in the country’s institutional and structural racism.

If I were a white woman in my late 30s living in Suburbia, USA with excellent health coverage, the theory goes, the mere mention of the chronic pain I currently suffer would afford me a refillable opioid prescription. However, being a 30-something Black woman in Brooklyn, grateful for the therapy provided by my Obamacare, there was never any mention of an opioid painkiller remedy with my zero-refill 90 count ibuprofen.

Not that I desired one. That’s not that point. The point is that doctors have historically undertreated African Americans for pain in comparison to whites by not prescribing painkillers for reasons ranging from the false belief that Blacks have a higher tolerance for pain to the belief that they may sell the medication for profit.

An example given by journalist Soledad O’brien is that a Black patient who’s had teeth extracted may not get the same 90-day supply of Vicodin that a white person with better health coverage might receive.

This is one theory that explains why many Blacks have not been as adversely affected by the prescription opioid epidemic. We simply do not get the same access to pain pills as whites. With this context, it’s better understood why the opioid and heroin crisis is a white American epidemic. Many looking to rehab centers like The Recovery Village for help with recovering from such an addiction.

For the substance abusers who initially had access to prescription opioids, heroin became a much cheaper and more easily accessible option once the scripts ran out.

75% of heroin abusers started with pharmaceutical pain opioids such as Oxycontin, Vicodin, or Percocet, which are taken both by prescription and recreationally. Yet, in the last five years when whites from suburban, wealthy, rural, and lower class areas became addicted to heroin, America declared the Opioid Epidemic a Public Health Crisis.

Enter, Michael Botticelli, the Obama administration’s Drug Czar and Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) from March 2014 until the end of the 44th presidency. Without saying he single-handedly spearheaded the shift from treating drug epidemics as a criminal justice issue to a public health one, it is accurate that in becoming head of ONDCP, Botticelli had long been a critic of the nation’s previous failed approach to dealing with drug issues stating that, “We can’t arrest and incarcerate addiction out of people.”

There is no more talk of violent “super-predators” with innate criminal pathologies, as disenfranchised “crack addicts” and their “crack babies” were universally characterized in the ‘80s and ‘90s while being siphoned onto the conveyor belt of mass incarceration. Now, the national push today is for empathy, compassion, tolerance, and accessible treatment for the nation’s addicted. 

News media headlines tout “The New Face of Addiction” within families “who did everything right.” Could this shift in perception be because overdoses have reached the doorsteps of government-elected officials?

New York State Assemblywoman Diana C. Richardson has been trending on social media for her 2016 response to the opioid epidemic in comparison to the crack crisis. In her remarks, she highlights the racial disparity and hypocrisy in the way the two drug crises have been handled.

Crack was an indisputable criminal justice agenda, in no way considered a national public health priority. It was met by the New York Rockefeller Drug Laws during the relentless War on Drugs.

diana c. richardson

Prior to crack, when heroin plagued the Black community post-Vietnam, it was a criminal justice issue. Richardson is spirited and resolute in exclaiming that because the opioid crisis affects a “different demographic of race and class,” it has become a public health issue diverting the addicted from prison into treatment facilities.

She ends her speech by declaring what’s missing from the drug epidemic discussion: the Restorative Justice element toward the individuals who were jailed or now have permanent records.

For all the families who were ripped apart due to the criminal justice handling of the crack epidemic, as opposed to establishing a public health-based treatment infrastructure, in what way are they made whole by their government?

Black Americans who faced addictions that equate the same issues of whites addicted to opioids and heroin have absolutely nothing to show for the lack of humanity, compassion, empathy and foresight that the government has granted this current whitewashed drug epidemic. And that is quite the national tragedy.

– Contributed by Mai Perkins

Mai Perkins, aka FlyMai, is Cali girl in a Bed Stuy world with global bon vivant flair and the passport stamps to prove it. She currently works in Edtech, and is the author of several blogs including Uberlicious.nyc and MaiOnTheMove.com and is a columnist for the music publication Pop-Mag.com.

With an MFA in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College and an MA in International Affairs from The New School Milano, she reps her beloved alma mater Howard University every chance she gets. As a poet and a creative non-fiction writer, she looks forward to soon publishing her first manuscript, The Walking Nerve-Ending.

Insta: @flymai16

Twitter: @flymai on Twitter

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5 Ways Black Owned Businesses Can Improve Customer Experience

3 mins read
customer experience

Let’s face it, Black businesses have a horrible reputation when it comes to offering a great customer experience or customer service.

Whether this stigma is justified or not, the fact remains that businesses should always strive to offer the best customer experience possible.

Customer Experience

Keep these stats in mind:

  • 78% of consumers did not make an intended purchase because of a poor service experience. Source: American Express Survey
  • It is 6-7 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to keep a current one. Source: White House Office of Consumer Affairs
  • A 2016 study found that 75% of companies said their top objective was to improve customer experience.

So, what can Black owned businesses do to improve their customer experience and keep their customer coming back? Glad you asked!

1) Help customers to help themselves

The majority of consumers will always check a website for information before calling or e-mailing a business, so make it easy for them to find answers to their questions quickly and easily by deploying an online FAQ, or live Q&A sessions.

Customer Experience

2) Listen to customer feedback and react

In order to improve your product and service offering, you need to have the best possible understanding of what your customer’s needs are.

Providing customers with several ways to provide feedback (social media, email, on-site suggestion box, etc) will enable you to monitor and implement changes and address issues when they arise.

3) Don’t take it personally

The ability to swallow one’s pride and accept blame or negative feedback is crucial. Whether your team works directly with customers or looking for feedback on social media, they’ve got to keep the customer’s happiness in mind.

4) Listen to your team/staff feedback

If you have a team or staff that are on the front lines dealing with frustrated and agitated customers, be aware that they are knowledgeable about the customer’s wants, needs, and pain points.

They should be given the opportunity to provide this customer insight regularly, via a method that is most comfortable for them.

Customer Experience

5) Embrace the complaints

When a customer takes the time to share suggestions or vent frustrations, you can be sure that they are one of several customers that share the same frustration — or soon will, unless an improvement occurs.

Better for you to hear it and make the change before these customers move on to your competitor.

Tony O. Lawson

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ZAAF CEO on Creating a Luxury Brand and Changing the Perception of Africa

7 mins read
zaaf

ZAAF is a luxury leather goods brand that manufactures its products in Ethiopia. As an African, I love seeing us take our natural resources and create world class brands that can compete with the usual household names that we’ve been trained to desire.

I wanted to know more about this brand and the brain behind it, so I had a chat with ZAAF founder and CEO, Abai Schulze.

What inspired you to start ZAAF?

It all came down to a convergence of both opportunity and passion. My passion derives from the reality that design and creative expressions of “physical creation” had always been a driver for me, even as I spent my university years focused on an economics major at George Washington University.

We are all familiar with the stereotypes that exist about African countries. How important is it to you to change these perceptions with your work?

We promote Ethiopia’s, as well as the entire continent’s rich heritage and cultures through exacting top quality products made with indigenous natural resources by our gifted artisans.

Each piece draws its inspiration from a particular region, and is crafted with the finest materials.

Color, texture, and ageless patterns made on a traditional loom, are merged with carefully selected leather to create a discrete statement of elegance and practicality.

I believe our effort at ZAAF accentuates an angle that speaks to the legitimacy of art, the taste of truthful luxury and the beauty of an earnest human endeavor all built around the hope of a nation.

zaaf

Positioning a luxury brand synonymous with Ethiopia in the global marketplace is an effective way of displacing negative stereotypes about the country.

Ethiopia has one of the leading manufacturing industries in Africa. What do you feel needs to be done in order for the country to capitalize on this?

Yes – Ethiopia is on track to become Africa’s industrial powerhouse, but there are some challenges that need to be addressed in order for the country to really capitalize on its resources.

zaaf

One issue in particular I want to highlight is that we must develop our labor force’s skills so individuals can become more productive and truly understand quality control.

It is equally vital that companies pay a sustainable wag as the high turnover indicates this has yet to be achieved.

zaaf

What is the most fulfilling and most challenging aspect of the work you do?

My driving passion and vision for many years were centered around using my education and experiences to create economic opportunities in my country of birth.

We are trying to be a part of the solution by making skills and capacity building integral to our operating model. I believe we are having an incremental but certainly positive impact on the job sector.

I also hope we are having a “knock on” effect and inspiring other young entrepreneurs and designers to enter the space and invest in people.

Of course there are difficulties around infrastructure, red tape and elements like logistics – those go without saying. These challenges should be “priced into” any decision to open and operate in any frontier market.

I think a particular challenge, which is also a wonderful opportunity, for my sector is the need to invest continually in human capital.

I’m highly reliant on qualified and specifically skilled labor who can build unique hard and soft skills. Filtering through, selecting and further investing into this human capital is probably my most unique challenge.

How important is it to you to invest in your community and in what ways are you doing that or planning to do that in the future?

I strongly believe that education and job creation play a critical role to provide economic opportunities in any emerging economy.

So at ZAAF, we support educational programs by inviting students to our workshop, inspiring them with our work, or sponsoring programs that support our vision in these issues.

We believe that financial success and mission impact go hand in hand. We must succeed as a business and achieve financial success in order to create a deeper development impact, build local capacity, and generate sustainable markets.

The success of our company rests upon our ability to create new linkages between emerging market producers and discerning developed market customers and to generate profit, growth, and revenue in the markets for our artisans.

Where do you see yourself and your business in 5 years? 

We will continue to expand our production in line with our growth goals, while also expanding the range of products we offer. We also aim to grow partnerships and distribution channels.

We will be a globally recognized high-end brand that gives discerning consumers new and exciting choices, and in many cases a whole new perception of Ethiopia and the African continent.

What advice do you have for aspiring entrepreneurs?

Quantify your risks. Build up an appropriate tolerance for risk and surround yourself with people who inspire you and hold you accountable for your actions and progress on your goals.

I would also advise entrepreneurs to double-down on execution. I’ve always said –  execution is the stuff of success – passion is just one of the ingredients.

 

-Tony O. Lawson

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kweliTV is Sharing The Stories of The Global Black Community

8 mins read
KweliTV

Even in 2018, it can be a struggle to find diverse and positive depictions of Black folk on TV or the big screen. Thankfully, kweliTV is working to resolve that issue. We spoke with CEO, Deshuna Shencer. This is what she had to say:

DeShuna Spencer – CEO, kweliTV

SB: What inspired you to start kweliTV?

DS: The inspiration to launch kweliTV was based off of not seeing enough films and shows on TV and on streaming services that reflected my experience as a black woman.

When my husband and I cut cable, we ended up getting a subscription to a mainstream streaming service. I was shocked and disappointed that the award-winning black films that I read about on blogs were missing from this service.

If I wanted to watch an indie black film I had to travel to a film festival probably hundreds of miles away to see it.

With my background in journalism, I began doing research online about the film industry and how black filmmakers have difficulties getting their films distributed even after having a successful film festival run.

That’s when the light bulb went off in my head to launch a streaming service for indie black films. I was extremely nervous about starting this company.

Besides directing and producing a documentary a few years back, I had no other experience in the film industry.

I was a journalist with a background in running online magazines and a communications department. But at the same time, I had been frustrated with how mainstream media told black stories for years.

I know longer wanted to just complain about it. I wanted to do something to make change.

Another inspiration of mine was to create a space that could unite the global black community.

We rarely get an authentic glimpse at the lives of those who look like us in countries such as Brazil, Kenya, Portugal, France, Ghana, etc. I was curious about those stories and I’m excited that we’re able to tell them.

SB: How do you select what content to use?

DS: Films have to have been an official selection at a film festival. The main character must be of African descent—no sidekick stories.

Then, we watch the film to make sure it is not monolithic and that it depicts an authentic voice for the global black community. While it’s not a “make or break” criteria, we want our films to have meaning and tell messages within their stories.

For instance, one of our films, OJUJU, is a zombie apocalypse film based in Nigeria that won numerous awards.

While at its core OJUJU is a horror film, at the beginning it tells a very brief story about the inadequate water supply in this part of the country—a real issue that affect thousands of people.

In the film, someone drinks from contaminated water. They become sick, die and then turn into a zombie. Of course no one will turn into a zombie in real life after drinking dirty water.

But even with the films main theme—horror—it still touches on a social element that is a reality for millions of people around the world.

SB: What is the most inspiring and and challenging part of the business?

DS: In business and in life, there are ups and downs. When I first launched kweliTV’s beta back in 2015, we got so much buzz. People were subscribing, but because the developer who built it didn’t complete the job, the site had a lot of issues.

We planned to move out of beta by January 2016, we didn’t officially launch until about 19 months later in the Fall 2017. I can write a book about that journey alone.

We lost a lot of customers because of it. I thought about giving up so many times.

But the inspiration to keep going came from the hundred plus filmmakers whose content was on the platform, believed in the vision and stuck with me even during the most challenging times.

My inspiration also came from the extremely patient customers who would email us saying that they believed in what we were doing. I am in constant contact with customers to see what they like and how we can improve.

I know all of my filmmakers personally and I send them regular updates on what’s happening with the platform. My customers and filmmakers inspire me the most. I do this for them.

SB: How would you describe (non monetary) success for kweliTV?

DS: Success for me is very simple. I want kweliTV to be the go-to space for our community—in the US and abroad—to come together to celebrate and support our diverse stories and storytellers from around the world.

SB: Where do you see the business in 5 years?

DS: In five years, we hope to be a global presence in which we’re creating original programming produced by, written by, directed by and starring people from the African diaspora.

SB: What advice do you have for aspiring entrepreneurs?

DS: Trust your gut and be open to change. Don’t let a bad day/week/month cause you to give up on what you believe is your calling—a better day is around the corner.

Try to be scrappy and use the resources (no matter how few the are) to launch your business.

If you’re waiting for a loan or an investor’s check to validate or move on your idea, it may not ever happen.

As Diddy said once, “The calvary ain’t coming.” Get use to the rollercoaster ride of entrepreneurship. Strap in tight, the ride is bumpy but worth it if you’re willing to work hard for it.

Try kweliTV FREE for 7 days!

 

Tony Oluwatoyin Lawson

IG: @thebusyafrican

 

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9 Caribbean Restaurants In The UK

2 mins read
Caribbean Restaurants

Caribbean cuisine is known and enjoyed for its exotic flavour. Our list of Caribbean Restaurants in the United Kingdom has some great choices that will leave those taste buds tingling.

Hopefully, you can handle the spice!

caribbean food

Caribbean Restaurants In The UK

PandaBerry Caribbean restaurant & Jerk centre. We are family run business dedicated to serving you hot, delicious and nutritious food.

Levi Roots Caribbean Smokehouse aims to aim to serve the best Jerk Chicken in the world amongst other traditional Caribbean favourites.

The Rum Kitchen is a Caribbean eatery that bends the rules. We focus on bringing Caribbean beach shack drinks with travel inspired flavours to London.

Negril is a Simple, unfussy Caribbean restaurant with a traditional comfort food menu & outdoor seating.

Rudie’s is a hip Jamaican joint serving banging real jerk and small plates with a contemporary twist.

Cafe Caribbean is a counter-serve Caribbean joint with chalkboard menus listing familiar regional cuisine.

Jamaica Patty Co. is a simple takeaway for traditional Jamaican patties, plus soups, coffee, juice and imported cakes.

Fish, Wings & Tings is a compact restaurant dishing up a vibrant menu of Caribbean favourites at pavement tables.

Bokit’la is the first French Caribbean street food vendor based in London. It’s a family run business sharing a taste of Guadeloupe.

 

Also check out our list of African Restaurants in the UK.

 

Tony O. Lawson

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Revisiting MLK Day: A Look at Martin Luther King Jr. and Economic Justice

7 mins read

In a letter to Coretta Scott during the summer of 1952, about a year before they would marry, Martin Luther King Jr. wooed her with his sentiments on economic principles following a few tender lines of poetry.

“I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic,” he wrote. “And yet I am not so opposed to capitalism that I have failed to see its relative merits.”

Martin Luther King Jr.

Throughout his rise to prominence as one of the most influential and universally known civil rights leaders in history, economic justice would be an underlying pillar of his legacy.

However, his radical commitment to leveling economic inequality for all Americans, in addition to the work he did to advance civil and human rights, has been characterized as under-appreciated and is often overlooked in mainstream reflections of his greatest achievements.

In a 1998 PBS Frontline documentary entitled “Two Nations of Black America,” it is fascinating to study rarely seen video footage of Martin Luther King during the last two months of his life. In his later speeches, King had begun to acknowledge the lack of material gains brought on by the Civil Rights Movement in the way of improved conditions and quality of life for many African Americans.

In efforts to address the national statistics on poverty during the Johnson administration, with close to 30% of Americans living below the poverty line, in the early part of 1968 King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference organized the Poor People’s March on Washington, more widely known as the Poor People’s Campaign.

This anti-poverty movement, which will commemorate fifty years by relaunching with plans of action this spring, demanded that Congress and executive agencies increase commitments to full employment, guaranteed annual incomes, and increased low-income housing for all Americans regardless of race, creed, or religion.

Dr. King openly critiqued the government’s failure and neglect of nearly a third of the country and his rhetoric was anything but the hand-holding, kumbaya sentiments of the 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech:

“At the very same time that America refused to give the Negro any land, through an act of Congress our government was giving away millions of acres of land in the West and the Midwest, which meant that it was willing to undergird its white peasants from Europe with an economic floor.

But not only did they give the land, they built land grant colleges with government money to teach them how to farm. Not only that, they provided county agents to further their expertise in farming. Not only that, they provided low interest rates in order that they could mechanize their farms.

Not only that, today many of these people are receiving millions of dollars in federal subsidies not to farm, and they are the very people telling the black man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps. And this is what we are faced with, and this is the reality. Now, when we come to Washington in this campaign, WE ARE COMING TO GET OUR CHECK.”

It’s no coincidence that Dr. King was assassinated during this tour for the economic empowerment of Blacks and others across the nation living in poverty.

On the eve of that dark day in American history, while in Tennessee in support of the Memphis Sanitation Strike, Dr. King delivered his final searing speech, “I’ve Been To The Mountaintop.”

There is a different type of urgency in his eloquence as he encourages his Black audience to take full note of their collective buying power and to leverage the strategy of boycotting businesses with racist, discriminatory practices.

You can hear the love and welfare in his pleas to parishioners and constituents to make deliberate efforts in choosing to spend their dollars with Black owned and operated businesses over convenient, mainstream alternatives.

Listening to “Mountaintop” half a century after King’s assassination, and understanding the sheer relevance that it still holds today points to why we should absolutely pay more attention to MLK’s legacy of fighting for economic justice and freedom.

Particularly in the wake of the current administration’s egregious failures to the American people including tax bill reforms that favor the wealthy, threatening to obliterate the shrinking middle class. Dr. King was unapologetic when he said that “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”

That includes the economic freedom that we need to build long term, generational wealth for Black families and communities across the globe.

As Dr. King’s focus shifted toward solutions to poverty and fair housing conditions in addition to social inequity, it’s imperative that we consciously shift our focus toward his contributions to progressive economic models by further support of Black-owned businesses.

– Contributed by Mai Perkins

Mai Perkins is Cali girl in a Bed Stuy world, with global bon vivant flair and the passport stamps to prove it. She currently works in archival documentary research for historical film and television projects. She’s earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College and an MA in International Affairs from The New School with a concentration in Media & Culture, but reps her beloved alma mater Howard University every chance she gets. As a poet and a creative non-fiction writer, she has published her first manuscript entitled The Walking Nerve-Ending, which is available on Amazon. She is @FlyMai16 on Twitter/IG.

Top 12 African Restaurants in The UK

2 mins read
African Restaurants

Whether you’re looking for savory dishes that originate from the East, West or South of the Continent, this list of African Restaurants in the United Kingdom has some great choices to explore.

African Restaurants in the UK

Couscous Darna deals in the fragrant and warming dishes of Marrakesh. They serve a unique list of Moroccan beers, wines and cocktails to explore.

Ikoyi is a Chic space with decor that reflects the cuisine: a modern twist on authentic West African flavours.

Squires African Restaurant has over ten years experience of delivering authentic West African cuisine.

Zoe’s Ghana Kitchen brings Ghanaian flavours to @Popbrixton and beyond.

Momo serves Couscous, tagines and lamb dishes in colourful setting filled with furnishings from a Moroccan souk.

Mosob is a family-run restaurant serving authentic, vibrant Eritrean cuisine in a setting that reflects the country’s culture, with original art and artifacts.

Sweet Handz blends a relaxed atmosphere with delicious authentic Ghanaian food.

Enish Restaurant is an upscale Nigerian restaurant in London serving the best Nigerian Food.

Hammer & Tongs entire menu is braai-cooked over Sickle Bush & Blackthorne wood imported directly from South Africa.

805 is a stylish, contemporary restaurant,in light and airy setting for Modern Nigerian and West African dishes.

Adulis serves Eritrean food, based on stews and unleavened bread, served for sharing, in modern-rustic setting.

Spinach and Agushi are famous for their home cooked Ghanaian street food sold at Exmouth, Broadway and Portobello Market in London.

Tony O. Lawson

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