A revival of
black pride is happening in the Brooklyn, NY region. Some recent examples of the festivals
increasing awareness in this genre include: the Afropunk festival; Juneteenth
festival; Black and Latino Gay Pride and more.
Organizations are working toward this too, such as Harlem Capital
Partners and All-Star Code.
According to
an NYU Sociologist, Jacob William Faber:
“We’re in a sociopolitical moment where there’s greater acceptance of black people having pride in themselves. It sounds silly — or sad, really. It should be normal. But we live in a world where saying ‘black lives matter’ is controversial. It’s a rebuttal to the idea — the false choice — that if you want investment you have to accept displacement.”
And it seems to be
working. The US Census Bureau’s recent
survey of business owners found a huge nationwide escalation of black-owned
businesses between 2007 and 2012 from 1.9 to 2.6 million, mainly from black
women. Indeed, there have been 24 (out of
35) female black entrepreneurs profiled by Black-Owned Brooklyn.
In addition,
according to the Mayor’s Office of Minority and Women-Owned Business
Enterprises in 2017 Brooklyn had 319 black owned contractors (a large jump from
2015’s 295 stat). Sean Combs (who is
currently developing an app to help locate local black-owned businesses) said:
“I want to be an authentic, unapologetic warrior for black culture. This is not about taking away from any other community. We’ll still go to Chinatown. We’ll still buy Gucci! But the application will make it possible for us to have an economic community. It’s about blacks gaining economic power.”
