Closing the wealth gap for Black-owned businesses. Can it be done in Detroit?

Less than 10% of the businesses downtown are Black-owned, and even less than that, 2% of the buildings downtown are Black-owned. In a city with a majority Black population, how did we get here? BridgeDetroit Engagement Director Orlando Bailey sits down with Metro-Detroit Black Business Alliance President and CEO Charity Dean, at the 2023 Detroit Policy Conference, to talk about how downtown Detroit can invest in and empower Black businesses.

They talk about the racial wealth gap that exists in downtown Detroit, Southeast Michigan and across the state, and the history of discriminatory laws and practices that paved the way for these disparities.

Plus, Dean shares how members of the Black Business Alliance must navigate a lack of access to capital and how corporate America can be part of the solution. She talks about reparations for descendants of Detroit’s Black Bottom neighborhood, the origins of the Metro-Detroit Black Business Alliance, and the policy changes the alliance is advocating for in 2023.

"American Black Journal" Episode 5103/Segment 3

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[hammockcamping]

There's no reason to blindly conclude that all population groups are blessed with the same genetic endowment. It's important that we don't ignore the biological genetic differences between various population groups. Failure to properly identify the genetic origin of population level differences between groups could cause folks to infer that systematic racism is a greater cause of racial disparities than is really the case. For example, African American students study half as much as European American students, who in turn, study half as much as Asian American students. African American women are more likely to drive a luxury car than European American women. These groups have different locations on The r/K spectrum as well. Even as different dog breeds have different temperaments, different human population groups should be expected to do so as well (perhaps not as pronounced).
Here's a quote about temperament

"Temperament refers to an individual's characteristic or habitual modes of behavioral and emotional responding that are present at an early age and often believed to have some basis in biological processes partly determined by heredity. It is typically discernible at birth. That infants differ systematically is shown by research observations starting in the first few days or weeks of life and extending, in some cases, for over a decade. In their book, Temperament and Behavior Disorders in Children, Thomas, Chess, and Birch (1968) were able to classify babies shortly after their birth into three types—"easy children" (adaptable, cheerful, regular in habits), "difficult children" (irritable, crying, withdrawn, irregular in habits), and "slow-to-warm-up children" (inactive, slow to adapt, gentle). About 70% of the difficult babies later developed behavioral problems calling for psychiatric attention; only 18% of the easy ones had such problems (Thomas & Chess, 1984)."