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Opinion – COVID-19 and the Black Business Community

Published

5 years ago

May 7, 2020

We’ve heard it, perpetually-year after year, decade after decade, generation after generation—the African American community is the most maligned and underrepresented population per capita, in US history. Notwithstanding a legacy of accomplishment despite excessive personal attack; academic achievement despite underfunded institutions, freedom despite mass imprisonment, and human survival despite genocide: the African American business community must and will survive.

We are presently facing the direst human contagion of the last century; a novel corona virus, COVID-19, threatens to destroy the African American community. We have not faced a medical battle of this proportion–nearly 75,000 Americans have died in less than 100 days–since the 1918 Spanish Flu decimated the US population by some 200,000 fatalities. How did America become the greatest and wealthiest nation on the planet following that epic health crisis? The likely answer is on the backs of African Americans, Spanish Americans, Asian Americans and Native Americans—the collective peoples of color.

Where is the documented history of our survival and wealth building since that time, save the unthinkable assassinations wrought from Jim Crow and Civil Rights eras?

Despite the unthinkable assassinations that occurred during the Jim Crow and Civil Rights eras, and with some atrocities still occurring, we must and will survive. As we rise from this present-day annihilation, we further resolve [that] our economic vitality will not be held hostage nor lay in a perpetual state of weakened life support. As Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. declared in his 1963 March on Washington speech when he said, “we have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check…America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds.’ But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.”

And still today, the wealth inheritance for the African American community whether held back, denied, stolen or misappropriated is still past due.

Our survival is part of a continuum. The African American [Black Business] community will again create its own funding vehicles following the successful footsteps of many history-making and successful businesspersons such as Madame C.J. Walker – First female African American millionaire and inventor; Arthur George “A.G.” Gaston – Noted hotelier and entrepreneur; John H. Johnson – Founder and Publisher of Ebony Magazine; Sheila Johnson – Co-Founder of Black Entertainment Television Network, first African American female billionaire, hotelier and Oprah Winfrey – Billionaire media mogul and philanthropist.

We must and we will survive by following their examples of self help and mutual support.

Cathy Adams, President of the Oakland African American Chamber of Commerce (www.oaacc.org) states, “The African American business community will survive this health crisis but the degree of our recovery will be determined by the financial resources and healthcare services made available. Before we were staring COVID-19 in the face, the Black community was swimming upstream against a current of inequities and insufficient services to balance the quality of life across racial demographics. Nonetheless, we have pushed forward. The goal now is to recover, equally, during and on the other side of this debilitating economic and health crisis.”

Sandra Varner

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Activism

2024 in Review: Seven Questions for Frontline Doulas

California Black Media (CBM) spoke with Frontline Doulas’ co-founder Khefri Riley. She reflected on Frontline’s accomplishments this year and the organization’s goals moving forward.

Published

23 minutes ago

December 22, 2024

Oakland Post

Khefri Riley, co-founder of Frontline Doulas. Facebook photo.

By Edward Henderson, California Black Media

Frontline Doulas provides African American families non-medical professional perinatal services at no cost.

This includes physical, emotional, informational, psychosocial and advocacy support during the pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum period. Women of all ages — with all forms of insurance — are accepted and encouraged to apply for services.

California Black Media (CBM) spoke with co-founder Khefri Riley. She reflected on Frontline’s accomplishments this year and the organization’s goals moving forward.

Responses have been edited for clarity and length.

Looking back at 2024, what stands out to you as your most important achievement and why? 

In 2024, we are humbled to have been awarded the contract for the Los Angeles County Medical Doula Hub, which means that we are charged with creating a hub of connectivity and support for generating training and helping to create the new doula workforce for the medical doula benefit that went live in California on Jan. 1, 2023.

How did your leadership and investments contribute to improving the lives of Black Californians? 

We believe that the revolution begins in the womb. What we mean by that is we have the potential and the ability to create intentional generational healing from the moment before a child was conceived, when a child was conceived, during this gestational time, and when a child is born.

And there’s a traditional saying in Indigenous communities that what we do now affects future generations going forward. So, the work that we do with birthing families, in particular Black birthing families, is to create powerful and healthy outcomes for the new generation so that we don’t have to replicate pain, fear, discrimination, or racism.

What frustrated you the most over the last year?

Working in reproductive justice often creates a heavy burden on the organization and the caregivers who deliver the services most needed to the communities. So, oftentimes, we’re advocating for those whose voices are silenced and erased, and you really have to be a warrior to stand strong and firm.

What inspired you the most over the last year?

My great-grandmother. My father was his grandmother’s midwife assistant when he was a young boy. I grew up with their medicine stories — the ways that they healed the community and were present to the community, even amidst Jim Crow.

What is one lesson you learned in 2024 that will inform your decision-making next year?

I find that you have to reach for your highest vision, and you have to stand firm in your value. You have to raise your voice, speak up and demand, and know your intrinsic value.

In a word, what is the biggest challenge Black Californians face?

Amplification. We cannot allow our voices to be silent.

What is the goal you want to achieve most in 2025?

I really would like to see a reduction in infant mortality and maternal mortality within our communities and witness this new birth worker force be supported and integrated into systems. So, that way, we fulfill our goal of healthy, unlimited birth in the Black community and indeed in all birthing communities in Los Angeles and California.

Oakland Post

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U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries Speaks on Democracy at Commonwealth Club

Based on his first speech as House minority leader, “The ABCs of Democracy” by Grand Central Publishing is an illustrated children’s book for people of all ages. Each letter contrasts what democracy is and isn’t, as in: “American Values over Autocracy”, “Benevolence over Bigotry” and “The Constitution over the Cult.”

Published

9 hours ago

December 22, 2024

Oakland Post

: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries at the Commonwealth Club World Affairs Council on Dec. 2. Photo by Johnnie Burrell. Book cover: "The ABCs of Democracy" by Hakeem Jeffries.

By Linda Parker Pennington
Special to The Post

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries addressed an enthusiastic overflow audience on Monday at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club, launching his first book, “The ABCs of Democracy.”

Based on his first speech as House minority leader, “The ABCs of Democracy” by Grand Central Publishing is an illustrated children’s book for people of all ages.

Each letter contrasts what democracy is and isn’t, as in: “American Values over Autocracy”, “Benevolence over Bigotry” and “The Constitution over the Cult.”

Less than a month after the election that will return Donald Trump to the White House, Rep. Jeffries also gave a sobering assessment of what the Democrats learned.

“Our message just wasn’t connecting with the real struggles of the American people,” Jeffries said. “The party in power is the one that will always pay the price.”

On dealing with Trump, Jeffries warned, “We can’t fall into the trap of being outraged every day at what Trump does. That’s just part of his strategy. Remaining calm in the face of turmoil is a choice.”

He pointed out that the razor-thin margin that Republicans now hold in the House is the lowest since the Civil War.

Asked what the public can do, Jeffries spoke about the importance of being “appropriately engaged. Democracy is not on autopilot. It takes a citizenry to hold politicians accountable and a new generation of young people to come forward and serve in public office.”

With a Republican-led White House, Senate, House and Supreme Court, Democrats must “work to find bi-partisan common ground and push back against far-right extremism.”

He also described how he is shaping his own leadership style while his mentor, Speaker-Emeritus Nancy Pelosi, continues to represent San Francisco in Congress. “She says she is not hanging around to be like the mother-in-law in the kitchen, saying ‘my son likes his spaghetti sauce this way, not that way.’”