What Happened to Black Capitalism?

Like Jim Crow, it didn't scale.

I tried. I mean I really tried hard. I wanted so badly to have such a thing as black capitalism. And I may have been a little premature because I asked the question in the days before the world wide web existed. You know, back when it was just Usenet? Don’t remember? Too young? Ask GPT, I don’t have the time. Ok. Here’s a taste of 1994. Happy?

But I tell you what, since I’ve always had that Tuvok streak of Vulcan mind discipline and logic, I figured that there could be ways to identify what was what. So I came up with the following rubric.

Ujamaa = Howard University Drama Club
Black Capitalism = Rocawear
Blackface Capitalism = Denzel Washington movies.

Blackface Capitalism rules.

That was written by me in 2003 back when I was just getting started in my [black] conservatism. But still, I was mostly skeptical. I was thinking maybe something cool might happen. It’s not as if black Americans didn’t understand or respect capitalism. It was that we couldn’t get all of our various flavors into it. That’s the difference between Black Capitalism and Blackface Capitalism.

Well it turned out that Jay-Z made ‘the’ flavor into a big business, and he took over a section of the recording industry. I wouldn’t hesitate to suggest that his empire now rivals that of David Geffen’s who was the biggest entertainment mogul I ever knew. Still not quite as big as Sumner Redstone, now that I think about it but still world class. Anyway, Jay-Z did get the big 200 foot yacht of a serious capitalist. Unfortunately that boat is too narrow for all black American tastes, and I think some of its decks are a little greasy. But that’s how some people like it.

Flavor or Power
Here’s the current point of view I carry and perhaps you’ve heard me say it before. There is no such thing as black power. There is black flavor. There is American power. There are some black Americans who have taken control of parts of American power. Outside of DEI, they have not done it with black flavor. Except for Jay-Z, which of course includes Beyonce. Clear? Flavor is not Power.

In short, the winner is integration.

Outside of integration, there is certainly flavor as black as it wants to be. When it comes the the money part, that’s still just Ujamaa. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing powerful about that. Once upon a time, I was down with cracking wise about the Blues Aesthetic and making references to Loas and Orishas and trickster archetypes. Silly rabbit. Tricks are for kids.

Now here’s the thing. Blackface capitalism is now just your run of the mill capitalism. I think the above video is a definite proof of how it has all become about flavor, whereas 30 years ago, we were expecting a lot more substance in our black capitalism. At least I think I was.

Nevertheless, we are all accommodated to the blackface marketing. I’m still using the term ‘blackface’ because I’m talking about flavor. There is nothing substantive about flavor when it is marketing. There is something substantive about the different way you play jazz piano and blues guitar. But if you’re just marketing the same product to different demographics, it’s all the same, just a different flavor of the kool-aid.

Let me be clear. Black capitalism was supposed to be the engine of growth for America’s black communities. What we got in Detroit, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago and Washington DC and who knows how many other major cities, were black mayors. What we didn’t get were black CEOs of the major employers of those cities, much less black owned businesses that could raise all boats. Nice dream. Wishful thinking.

Now if you go to Rocawear dot com, you’ll come up with nothing. The label has been sold to a company called Iconix. What do they do? Branding. You will surely recognize many of their brands. Ecko, Mossimo, Candies, Starter, Umbro. These are sold all over the world. It’s a massive success. But it’s fashion and flavor. It’s not power. It’s a fine capitalist endeavor but that’s not what black capitalism was supposed to be about.

Still, since we should all recognize by now that integration was and will continue to be the winning strategy, we should all be pleased that there is some modicum of ho hum about blackface fashion branding. You might be excited by Rocawear or Hoodrich. That’s how it should be. Pick your style. Express yourself. Do you.

Hoodrich, Birmingham UK

But don’t mistake flavor for power. An elephant walk exercise is power.

Sheppard AFB, Texas

I don’t desire or need black flavor to be anything particularly more or less than it is. I’ve got the flavor I like and just about all of the power and responsibility I can handle. I don’t bother comparing my own flavor to anyone else’s, but I do pay attention to American power, now and back through history.

What happened to black capitalism? It was a racialized vision of an excellent idea, and the racial part of it turned out to be a barrier to that idea. If the African American wasn’t interested in integrating into society, he would have never left the Old South. He did so for the open market.