Pandemic fallout cuts deep wounds for Black-owned businesses. Can corporate America help? | Opinion

By John Harmon Sr.

While the pandemic has presented economic challenges for everyone, small businesses owned by people of color have been among the hardest hit.

Nationally, the number of active business owners in the United States fell by 22% from February to April 2020 as the pandemic forced businesses to close their doors. But for Black-owned businesses, the devastation ran nearly twice as deep.

The number of active African-American business owners declined 41% and locally, 41% of Black businesses were projected to stay closed resulting from the George Floyd protests last June as well as the continued effects of COVID-19.

This narrative has become the norm across America. It’s time to address this crisis head-on.

The pandemic poured gasoline on a fire that was already smoldering. Businesses operating closest to the margin were most likely to fail as the worst, but shortest, recession in 75 years quickly

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How Comcast is Celebrating Black-Owned Businesses and Business people All through #BlackBusinessMonth

In addition to the high-quality products and solutions, information, and ordeals Comcast results in, the media big has made it a priority to enable amplify Black voices in a way that encourages diversity, entrepreneurship, and representation for men and women of shade.

Keesha Boyd, the executive director of Multicultural Television set/Film at Comcast, has assisted spearhead lots of of the multicultural initiatives at the telecommunications enterprise, such as the not long ago launched Black Expertise on Xfinity that serves as a system for emerging Black content creators and a hub for reliable tales representing Black lifestyle.

Just after looking at how poorly the pandemic impacted Black-owned enterprises, Comcast launched Comcast Rise in late 2020. Rise, which stands for the “Representation, Financial commitment, Power and Empowerment” of enterprises owned by individuals of color, aims to give modest minority-run enterprises the resources essential to continue achievement well into the long

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Black-owned new Mississippi shop is not anxious about Amazon | Company

Gulfport, Mississippi — In a compact business in downtown Gulfport, Tonisha Kimble writes a new chapter in the record of black-owned bookstores in Mississippi.

Right after years of carrying out organization as an on-line seller, Kimble opened space for a e book and toy shop in the Seven Miracles of the Planet before this month. The store features Kimble-built notebooks, which includes cartoons, picture publications this sort of as “Freedom We Sing,” and Audre Lorde’s words. “My care is not self-fulfillment, but self-preservation, it is a political act. War.”

Her retail outlet has joined various black-owned bookstores in Mississippi.

Non-exclusive record: Biloxi has a store and publisher, Black Authors Rock. Pearl has a Milestone Christian Bookstore. In accordance to recent entrepreneurs, Jackson is residence to the Marshalls Audio & Bookstore, the country’s oldest and most continually operated black-owned bookstore.

These shops go towards countrywide tendencies. From 2000 to 2012, the

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