THENEWYORKER,FEBRUARY8, 2021 31
“Remember when we were first dating and we couldn’t keep
our hands off each other and we pulled over to the side of the road
outside Scranton and made love right there in the car?
I think that’s when I hurt my back.”• •
capitalism made the term itself sound
rather cynical, especially once his var
ious schemes had been exposed.
But the entrepreneurial spirit Nixon
identified really did exist—there was a
reason that, in 1968, “Black capitalism”
seemed like an appealing political slo
gan. It was a time when many corpo
rations were scrambling to appear sup
portive of social change, and many
activists were trying to decide what to
make of them. In a recent book titled
“Franchise,” the historian Marcia Chat
elain chronicles how McDonald’s re
acted to protests and urban unrest in
the nineteensixties: by recruiting Black
franchisees, who in 1972 came together
to found the National Black McDon
ald’s Operators Association. It still ex
ists, and calls itself “the largest organi
zation of established African American
entrepreneurs in the world.” If Black
capitalism works, then this is how: not
through highprofile government ini
tiatives but through trade groups that
most people have never heard of—Black
capitalists quietly helping one another
make money.
One of the oddest things about
Black capitalism is that its major pro
ponents have generally emerged from
the world of activism, not of capital
ism. Madam C. J. Walker, who built
an empire of beauty products in the
nineteentens, was among the most
celebrated Black entrepreneurs of the
twentieth century and a strong sup
porter of civil rights, but she did not
generally speak the language of Black
capitalism. If “Black capitalist” de
scribed her life, it did not necessarily
describe her ideology. George and Joan
Johnson were the founders of Johnson
Products, the first Blackowned com
pany to be listed on the American Stock
Exchange (in 1971), but they, too,
seemed more interested in practicing
Black capitalism than in preaching it.
Even apparently sympathetic politi
cians have often declined to wave the
banner of Black capitalism. “Black cap
italism is not our panacea,” Maynard
Jackson, the vicemayor of Atlanta, de
clared at a National Urban League
conference in 1970. Three years later,
he was elected the city’s first Black
mayor, and he helped establish Atlanta
as a Black business hub—the real Soul
City, you might say. And some com
munity groups, like the Harlem Com
monwealth Council, prospered by help
ing draw businesses to preëxisting Black
communities. By contrast, the avowed
Black capitalists have sometimes pro
duced more inspiration than enrich
ment. Floyd McKissick once wrote
that Marcus Garvey, despite his “finan
cial failure,” had done a lot for “Black
pride and cohesiveness.” Healy writes
a similar encomium to McKissick near
the end of his book, lauding his “vi
sion and courage.” He dreamed big,
and he went bust. Perhaps that, too, is
Black capitalism.
What is the alternative? Last sum
mer, amid the protests for racial justice,
sharp criticism of capitalism was com
mon. But so were efforts to celebrate
and support Black businesses, and de
mands for corporations to promote more
Black executives. Some activists criti
cized “white capitalism,” a crafty for
mulation that McKissick probably would
have appreciated, because it leaves open
the possibility that nonwhite capital
ism deserves support. At the same time,
President Trump made a Nixonian pitch
to Black voters, reminding them how
well they had done under his Admin
istration, at least until the pandemic.
Paeans to Black capitalism are ev
erywhere, even though the term has
fallen out of favor. In 1971, Huey Newton argued that Black capitalists were
more trustworthy than white capital
ists, not because they were nobler but
because they were weaker and poorer,
and therefore had to be more account
able. “If he wants to succeed in his en
terprise,” Newton wrote, “the Black
capitalist must turn to the community
because he depends on them to make
his profits.” This formulation helps ex
plain why ambitious Black capitalists
have tended not to espouse Black cap
italism: they know that in order to pros
per they may have to grow less depen
dent on the Black community and more
tightly integrated into the broader econ
omy. Half a century after Nixon’s cam
paign promise, it is still unclear how
much the federal government can do
to foster Black business ownership; in
the world of entrepreneurship, as else
where, racial disparities have survived
many attempted remedies. But there
seems to be broad agreement that we
should celebrate the achievements of
Black entrepreneurs and executives, no
matter which communities they serve.
This, after all, is the promise of capi
talism, and often the reality: it makes
us less separate, while also making us
less equal. The world it creates does
not resemble a utopia—unless, of course,
you compare it with the world that
came before.