Maggie and John Anderson were successful African American professionals
raising two daughters in a tony suburb of Chicago. But they felt uneasy
over their good fortune. Most African Americans live in economically
starved neighborhoods. Black wealth is about one tenth of white wealth,
and black businesses lag behind businesses of all other racial groups in
every measure of success. One problem is that black consumers -- unlike
consumers of other ethnicities -- choose not to support black-owned
businesses. At the same time, most of the businesses in their
communities are owned by outsiders.
On January 1, 2009 the Andersons embarked on a year-long public pledge
to buy black. They thought that by taking a stand, the black community
would be mobilized to exert its economic might. They thought that by
exposing the issues, Americans of all races would see that economically
empowering black neighborhoods benefits society as a whole. Instead,
blacks refused to support their own, and others condemned their
experiment. Drawing on economic research and social history as well as
her personal story, Maggie Anderson shows why the black economy
continues to suffer and issues a call to action to all of us to do our
part to reverse this trend.