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Black Businesses Matter, But Will They Get Fair Share Of COVID-19 Aid Money?

NNPA NEWSWIRE — “African Americans never really recovered from the housing crash and economic meltdown and that reality is going to be a very important factor for Black people, especially since the U.S. may be going into some form of depression,” said Bill Fletcher Jr., former president of TransAfrica Forum and a senior scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies. “I saw a report last week that shows the Washington metropolitan area could lose 35 percent of small businesses. Add a layer of race onto that—lower savings rates and profit margins and most small biz not able to sustain themselves for three months and the problem becomes clear.”

Published

4 years ago

April 13, 2020

Oakland Post

By Barrington M. Salmon, Contributing Writer, The Final Call
@bsalmondc

President Donald Trump and Congressional leaders announced the $2 trillion economic stimulus package—the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act to great fanfare, touting the deliverables of different aspects of the provisions and their belief in its ability to slow the economic tsunami exacerbated by the novel coronavirus pandemic. One of the major selling points is a $1,200 one-time payment to adults.

The pandemic has cut a wide and deadly swathe through communities across the country, overwhelmed the medical infrastructures of places like New York City, Detroit and New Orleans, and brought much of America’s economic activity to a standstill. At press time the grisly tally in the U.S. stood at 356,942 confirmed cases and more than 10,524 deaths. New York is still the epicenter with more than 122,031 confirmed cases and almost 4,159 deaths.

In a desperate effort to blunt the spread of Covid-19, state governors have ordered as many as 230 million people to stay home, which has brought commerce to a virtual standstill. Along with the sudden and brutal decline of the much vaunted, record-setting stock market, the economy began a freefall dragging with it jobs, businesses—large and small—and the destinies and fortunes of tens of millions of American workers.

Compared to other small business owners, African Americans have generally had to face more daunting challenges such as smaller cash reserves to draw from, difficulty in securing bank loans and other financing and being sole proprietors or “mom and pop” establishments that are ineligible for most small business loans.

Businesses, big and small, have been savaged, with the hardest hit sectors being the travel and hospitality industries and the retail sector.

Financial planner and wealth manager Ivory J. Johnson acknowledged that Covid-19 has shaken up U.S. businesses and hit Black customers hard.

“It’s having a tremendous effect,” he said. “Cash flow just stops. Ten percent retail, 10 percent of restaurants, 20 percent of the population just stopped. This is the end of the business cycle, we’re at peak employment where wages go up, corporate money gets squeezed and they fire Bob,” he explained.

“People didn’t have time to pivot. For Black business, access to capital may not be there and Black customers are going to be hit very hard. It’s going to be a challenge for all businesses. You have to figure what you need to do now.”

He characterized the relief package as, “keep the light on money,” likened the U.S. economy to a Ponzi scheme with the U.S. government printing money “out of thin air,” and said now that corporations—who are carrying between $4 trillion and $10 trillion worth of debt—face an economic reckoning, the realization is dawning that the way they’ve been doing business is untenable.

“They are now seeing that this isn’t sustainable,” said Mr. Johnson, who for the past two decades has helped families and small businesses create and protect wealth, and who has guided them to see the benefits of developing a financial game-plan. “Nobody ever shoots Santa. People don’t care and weren’t complaining when they were making money.”

Mr. Johnson said the Covid-19 pandemic merely accelerated what has been happening to the economy, just at a slower rate.

“Here’s the reality: what happened is that they are creating money out of thin air, buying assets, feeding the Ponzi scheme,” he said. “They were rigging earnings, strip-mining stocks and buying back stocks, while the Federal Reserve pushed down interest rates and have been buying bonds and assets.”

Mr. Johnson, who founded Delancey Wealth Management. LLC in 2012, said 35 percent of small businesses couldn’t sustain a three-month shutdown, while 70 percent wouldn’t survive past six months.

He said the country is staring at the abyss. The unemployment rate during the Great Depression was 25 percent and financial experts are predicting that unemployment figures could reach that figure before all this is done. In late March and early April, about 10 million Americans filed for unemployment. The next jobs figures are expected to be considerably higher.

Veteran labor organizer Bill Fletcher, Jr. said there are a couple of layers to consider when contemplating the effect coronavirus will have on African Americans.

“One is the question of the impact of the crisis on Black America and Black businesses. One of the things that we’re going to have to deal with in this country, irrespective of race, is going to be trauma,” he said. “I think that it will have a particular type of impact on Black America—looking at illnesses and a further elimination of wealth, along the lines of 2008 crash,” added Mr. Fletcher.

“African Americans never really recovered from the housing crash and economic meltdown and that reality is going to be a very important factor for Black people, especially since the U.S. may be going into some form of depression,” said Mr. Fletcher, former president of TransAfrica Forum and a senior scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies. “I saw a report last week that shows the Washington metropolitan area could lose 35 percent of small businesses. Add a layer of race onto that—lower savings rates and profit margins and most small biz not able to sustain themselves for three months and the problem becomes clear.”

What comes out of this crisis will be equivalent to the aftermath of a war, he said.

“It’s not like coming out of a recession with the infrastructure intact. Even if the number of people who die isn’t as high, we’re looking at high levels of devastation economically,” Mr. Fletcher explained.

Marc Morial is one of a number of critics who don’t believe the package goes far enough and said he and others in the Civil Rights and business communities will have to push just as hard as they have to ensure that more is done for African American businesses. He said he doesn’t have to look too far to see the impact of the pandemic on small Black businesses owners in New York, where he lives.

“My barber is closed down. That’s where three people work. It’s their livelihood,” he said soberly. “Every barber shop, every hair salon has been closed down.”

Mr. Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League, said he, other Civil Rights organizations and their allies fought fiercely to ensure that Congress wouldn’t pass a bill that completely ignored African American businesses at perhaps their time of greatest need.

“The $2.2 trillion recovery relief plan is a down payment,” Mr. Morial told The Final Call. “In the best case scenario, it will offer two months relief for small business owners and four months relief for unemployed worker. There is a need for them to go back. We fought hard in discussions, along with the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), to ensure, for example that lending platforms would be open to non-profits, sole proprietors and mom and pop stores.”

“The language is broad and inclusive, and the execution may take a while. We have to lean in on this opportunity hard. African American business owners shouldn’t sit around and wonder if they should apply. Apply! We have to put pressure on the process for it to serve us.”

Mr. Morial said, “There will definitely be a need for more money and we’re working with Rep. Karen Bass to see what the next package will look like.” President Trump signed the bill March 27.

Ron Busby, President and CEO of the U.S. Black Chambers, Inc. (USBC), played a similar role as Mr. Morial pressing lawmakers to include provisions favorable to African American businesses.

“I want readers to understand that in the 700-plus page bill, nowhere was the word, ‘Black,’” said Mr. Busby, who serves on the Pfizer Small Business Council, National Newspapers Publishers Association Foundation Board of Directors, and White House African American Leadership Council. “It is a race-neutral bill, has nothing to do with Black people. The U.S. Chamber advocated to keep it race neutral to ensure that the bill would get support. Congress felt it would be easier to get passed that way.”

Mr. Busby said while $2 trillion seems like a great deal of money, $349 million will go towards the Small Business Administration’s Payment Protection Program (PPP).

“That also seems like a great deal of money but it’s not enough funding,” he said. “It will be very difficult for Black and small businesses. We fought for small, Black-owned businesses, fought for a couple of things—to ensure that businesses wouldn’t be cancelled because of supply chain issues and problems with developing products and widgets because of the epidemic. We also fought to get a ‘front-pay’ program where businesses would get paid in the next 15 days.”

“The federal government is notorious for slow payments of 60, 90, 120 days— and most Black-owned businesses are more interested in and dependent on cash-flow. They (negotiators) pulled it out at the last minute but they said they will continue to pay businesses through the disruption.”

Mr. Busby and other observers say most Black businesses have small payrolls and use what is called 1099 workers and contract employees, but if business owners apply for the PPP, it will pay 100 percent of their payroll for the next three months. Some aspects of the plan are still vague, saying he’s not sure how the wording will be received at banks, he added.

Ohio Congresswoman Joyce Beatty and Rep. Dwight Evans of Pennsylvania told The Final Call that the good news is that small businesses including those who work as 1099 employees, beauty and nail salons, painters and others who are self-employed will have an opportunity to participate.

“April is when they can first apply,” she said. “The good news is that dollars are available. It’s first come, first serve. It was important for us to make sure that individuals who work as contractors weren’t left out. We can’t make a commitment that everyone will get in but people should prepare their packages, go to the Treasury website and download the application package.”

Rep. Beatty, who is vice chairman of the Small Business Committee and serves on the Committee on Financial Services and the Consumer Protection and Financial Institutions subcommittee among others, said she has worked very closely with Chairman Nadya Velasquez and other committee members.

“CBC members have stepped up. We’re teaming up and working together but there are a lot of devils in the details, especially those not in the traditional SBA,” said Rep. Beatty, who has served in Congress since 2013.

She said she and some of her colleagues met with Civil Rights leaders and will continue to do so as all of them try to stay ahead of this crisis. Congressman Evans said providing economic distress loans, the PPP and $10 million for minority development agencies is very important and underscores the importance of small businesses.

“Small businesses are the backbone of our economy and it’s very important in terms of what these programs will mean,” he said. “We will probably need more money and jobs as ways to build wealth. Closing the income and wage gap and stabilizing and building Black businesses is a priority for Rep. Karen Bass.”

Rep. Beatty agreed with Mr. Morial and Mr. Busby that there’s much more that needs to be done to make sure that African Americans have a safety net during these calamitous times.

“The old adage is that when America gets a cold, African Americans get pneumonia,” she said. “What’s happening with coronavirus has exposed so many disparities. Disparities are being shown by the media. In Detroit, for example, 14 percent of the population is African American but 40 percent of those dying are African American. The increasing numbers of people who are incarcerated, homeless. We need to look at the total picture of disparities.”

Zeville Preston, a member of New York City’s Black Business Empowerment Committee (BBE) was scathing in her criticism of the relief package.

“This bill is D.O.A. (dead on arrival). We need something of value. Black blood and bodies built this country and as usual, once again, we find ourselves at the back of the line,” she said. “We’re 22 percent of New York City’s population but we are less than two percent of business and get less than two percent of the contracts, numbers which have declined over a five-year period. Black businesses dying on the vine and the governor cares not at all.”

“This is to put CBC on notice. They want people to think they did something, and they did nothing.”

A March 20, 2020 letter sent to the CBC points to 94 proposals to help African Americans that the body sent to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, with only three speaking directly to Black people and only money allocated to Historically Black Universities and Minority Serving Institutions has a dollar amount attached to it: $450 billion. In their letter, the BBE expresses frustration and dismay: “The CBC’s 94 initiatives totaling $459 million basically leaves the Black business community with nothing, especially in New York state where all other ethnic groups and White-women’s participation far exceeds Black participation,” it states. “BBE is most disappointed that the CBC saw fit to argue the case for minorities, women and small businesses while neglecting to propose funding specifically for Black businesses. Harlem’s BBE finds this unacceptable!”

Ms. Preston said BBE is reaching out across American cities to see if business owners and others in the Black community are having the same issues.

“We’re figuring strategically to speak in one voice,” she said.

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Reading and Moving: Great Ways to Help Children Grow

NNPA NEWSWIRE — In these formative years, your little one will learn to walk, learn how to grab and hold items, begin building their muscle strength, and more. Here are some ways to facilitate positive motor development at home:

Published

5 days ago

September 9, 2024

Oakland Post

Council for Professional Recognition

Before a child even steps into a classroom or childcare center, their first life lessons occur within the walls of their home. During their formative years, from birth to age five, children undergo significant cognitive, motor, and behavioral development. As their primary guides and first teachers, parents, and guardians play a pivotal role in fostering these crucial aspects of growth.

The Council for Professional Recognition, a nonprofit, is dedicated to supporting parents and families in navigating questions about childcare and education training. In keeping with its goal of meeting the growing need for qualified early childcare and education staff, the Council administers the Child Development Associate (CDA). The CDA program is designed to assess and credential early childhood education professionals. This work gives the Council great insights into child development.

Cognitive Development: Building the Foundation of Learning

Cognitive development lays the groundwork for a child’s ability to learn, think, reason, and solve problems.

Read Together: One of the most powerful tools for cognitive development is reading. It introduces children to language, expands their vocabulary, and sparks imagination. Make reading a daily ritual by choosing age-appropriate books that capture their interest.
Play Together: Play is a child’s entry to the physical, social, and affective worlds. It’s a critical and necessary tool in the positive cognitive development of young children and is directly linked to long-term academic success.
Dance and Sing Together: These types of activities help young children develop spatial awareness and lead to improved communication skills. As a bonus, it’s also helpful for improving gross motor skills.
Invite your Child to Help you in the Kitchen: It’s a fun activity to do together and helps establish a basic understanding of math and lifelong healthy eating practices.
Encourage Questions: As children find their voice, they also find their curiosity for the world around them; persuade them to ask questions and then patiently provide answers.

Motor Development: Mastering Movement Skills

Motor development involves the refinement of both gross and fine motor skills, which are essential for physical coordination and independence. In these formative years, your little one will learn to walk, learn how to grab and hold items, begin building their muscle strength, and more. Here are some ways to facilitate positive motor development at home:

Tummy Time: Starting from infancy, incorporate daily tummy time sessions to strengthen neck and upper body muscles, promoting eventual crawling and walking. You can elevate the tummy time experience by:
- Giving children lots of open-ended toys to explore like nesting bowls, a pail and shovel, building blocks, wooden animals, and people figures.
- Hanging artwork on the wall that appeals to infants, including bold colors, clear designs, and art from various cultures.
- Providing mobiles that children can move safely and observe shapes and colors.
Outdoor Play: Provide opportunities for outdoor play, whether it’s at a park, playground, or in a backyard. Activities such as running, jumping, climbing, and swinging enhance gross motor skills while allowing children to connect with nature. Also, try gardening together! Not only does gardening promote motor skill development, but it offers many other benefits for young children including stress management, cognitive and emotional development, sensory development, and increased interest in math, sciences, and healthy eating.
Fine Motor Activities: Fine motor skills relate to movement of the hands and upper body, as well as vision. Activities that encourage hand-eye coordination and fine motor skill development include:
- Drawing and coloring
- Doing puzzles, with size and piece amounts dependent on the age of the child
- Dropping items or threading age-appropriate beads on strings
- Stacking toys
- Shaking maracas
- Using age-appropriate, blunt scissors
- Playing with puppets or playdough

This is the type of knowledge that early childhood educators who’ve earned a Child Development Associate credential exhibit as they foster the social, emotional, physical, and cognitive growth of young children.

Supporting Early Childhood Educators

Recently, a decision in Delaware has helped early childhood professionals further their efforts to apply this type of knowledge. Delaware State University, Delaware Technical Community College, and Wilmington University have signed agreements to award 12 credits for current and incoming students who hold the Child Development Associate credential.

Delaware Governor John Carney said, “I applaud the Department of Education and our higher education partners for this agreement, which will support our early childhood educators. Research shows how important early childhood education is to a child’s future success. This new agreement will help individuals earn their degrees and more quickly get into classrooms to do the important work of teaching our youngest learners in Delaware.”

Council for Professional Recognition CEO Calvin E. Moore, Jr., said his organization is honored to be a part of this partnership.

“Delaware and the work of these institutions is a model that other states should look to. This initiative strengthens the early childhood education workforce by accelerating the graduation of more credentialed educators, addressing the critical need for qualified educators in early childhood education. We have already seen the impact the work of the Early Childhood Innovation Center has brought to the children of Delaware.”

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Student Loan Debt Drops $10 Billion Due to Biden Administration Forgiveness

NNPA NEWSWIRE — The Center for American Progress estimates the interest waiver provisions would deliver relief to roughly 6 million Black borrowers, or 23 percent of the estimated number of borrowers receiving relief, as well as 4 million Hispanic or Latino borrowers (16 percent) and 13.5 million white borrowers (53 percent).

Published

5 days ago

September 9, 2024

Charlene Crowell NNPA Newswire Columnist

New Education Department Rules hold hope for 30 million more borrowers

By Charlene Crowell, The Center for Responsible Lending

As consumers struggle to cope with mounting debt, a new economic report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York includes an unprecedented glimmer of hope. Although debt for mortgages, credit cards, auto loans and more increased by billions of dollars in the second quarter of 2024, student loan debt decreased by $10 billion.

According to the New York Fed, borrowers ages 40-49 and ages 18-29 benefitted the most from the reduction in student loan debt.

In a separate and recent independent finding, 57 percent of Black Americans hold more than $25,000 in student loan debt compared to 47 percent of Americans overall, according to The Motley Fool’s analysis of student debt by geography, age and race. Black women have an average of $41,466 in undergraduate student loan debt one year after graduation, more than any other group and $10,000 more than men.

This same analysis found that Washington, DC residents carried the highest average federal student loan debt balance, with $54,146 outstanding per borrower. Americans holding high levels of student debt lived in many of the nation’s most populous states – including California, Texas, and Florida.

The Fed’s recent finding may be connected to actions taken by the Biden administration to rein in unsustainable debt held by people who sought higher education as a way to secure a better quality of life. This decline is even more noteworthy in light of a series of legal roadblocks to loan forgiveness. In response to these legal challenges, the Education Department on August 1 began emailing all borrowers of an approaching August 30 deadline to contact their loan servicer to decline future financial relief. Borrowers preferring to be considered for future relief proposed by pending departmental regulations should not respond.

If approved as drafted, the new rules would benefit over 30 million borrowers, including those who have already been approved for debt cancellation over the past three years.

“These latest steps will mark the next milestone in our efforts to help millions of borrowers who’ve been buried under a mountain of student loan interest, or who took on debt to pay for college programs that left them worse off financially, those who have been paying their loans for twenty or more years, and many others,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona.

The draft rules would benefit borrowers with either partial or full forgiveness in the following categories:

Borrowers who owe more now than they did at the start of repayment. This category is expected to largely benefit nearly 23 million borrowers, the majority of whom are Pell Grant recipients.
Borrowers who have been in repayment for decades. Borrowers of both undergraduate and graduate loans who began repayment on or before July 1, 2000 would qualify for relief in this category.
Borrowers who are otherwise eligible for loan forgiveness but have not yet applied. If a borrower hasn’t successfully enrolled in an income-driven repayment (IDR) plan but would be eligible for immediate forgiveness, they would be eligible for relief. Borrowers who would be eligible for closed school discharge or other types of forgiveness opportunities but haven’t successfully applied would also be eligible for this relief.
Borrowers who enrolled in low-financial value programs. If a borrower attended an institution that failed to provide sufficient financial value, or that failed one of the Department’s accountability standards for institutions, those borrowers would also be eligible for debt relief.

Most importantly, if the rules become approved as drafted, no related application or actions would be required from eligible borrowers — so long as they did not opt out of the relief by the August 30 deadline.

“The regulations would deliver on unfulfilled promises made by the federal government to student loan borrowers over decades and offer remedies for a dysfunctional system that has often created a financial burden, rather than economic mobility, for student borrowers pursuing a better future,” stated the Center for American Progress in an August 7 web article. “Meanwhile, the Biden-Harris administration also introduced income limits and caps on relief to ensure the borrowers who can afford to pay the full amount of their debts do so.”

“The Center for American Progress estimates the interest waiver provisions would deliver relief to roughly 6 million Black borrowers, or 23 percent of the estimated number of borrowers receiving relief, as well as 4 million Hispanic or Latino borrowers (16 percent) and 13.5 million white borrowers (53 percent).”

These pending regulations would further expand the $168.5 billion in financial relief that the Biden Administration has already provided to borrowers:

$69.2 billion for 946,000 borrowers through fixes to Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF).
$51 billion for more than 1 million borrowers through administrative adjustments to IDR payment counts. These adjustments have brought borrowers closer to forgiveness and addressed longstanding concerns with the misuse of forbearance by loan servicers.
$28.7 billion for more than 1.6 million borrowers who were cheated by their schools, saw their institutions precipitously close, or are covered by related court settlements.
$14.1 billion for more than 548,000 borrowers with a total and permanent disability.
$5.5 billion for 414,000 borrowers through the SAVE Plan.

More information for borrowers about this debt relief is available at StudentAid.gov/debt-relief.

Charlene Crowell is a senior fellow with the Center for Responsible Lending. She can be reached at Charlene.crowell@responsiblelending.org.

Charlene Crowell NNPA Newswire Columnist

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Congressional Black Caucus Releases Groundbreaking Corporate Accountability Report on DEI

NNPA NEWSWIRE — Most Fortune 500 companies participating in the CBC’s survey demonstrated their commitment to DEI even after the Supreme Court’s ruling. CBC members said this is crucial because conservative organizations, such as Stephen Miller-led America First Legal, are increasingly waging legal and political attacks against corporations’ diversity initiatives. These groups argue that DEI initiatives violate federal law, threatening legal action against companies that continue to promote workplace diversity.

Published

5 days ago

September 9, 2024

Stacy M. Brown

By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent
@StacyBrownMedia

Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) Chairman Steven Horsford (NV-04) and CBC members have released a first-of-its-kind report titled “What Good Looks Like: A Corporate Accountability Report on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.” The report aims to hold Fortune 500 companies accountable for their commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and the racial justice movement that followed. This initiative comes as corporate America faces renewed scrutiny following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn affirmative action in the Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard case.

The CBC’s report highlights which corporations are making tangible progress in advancing DEI and offers a roadmap for other companies to follow. Despite efforts from right-wing groups to dismantle diversity initiatives, the report finds that many Fortune 500 companies are standing firm in their commitments. The report also examines DEI practices in manufacturing, finance, insurance, and technology sectors, providing industry-specific insights.

Most Fortune 500 companies participating in the CBC’s survey demonstrated their commitment to DEI even after the Supreme Court’s ruling. CBC members said this is crucial because conservative organizations, such as Stephen Miller-led America First Legal, are increasingly waging legal and political attacks against corporations’ diversity initiatives. These groups argue that DEI initiatives violate federal law, threatening legal action against companies that continue to promote workplace diversity.

The Findings

The CBC’s report offers a detailed analysis of diversity efforts across various industries, using data from the Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS) and the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). Key findings include:

Sector Representation: The bulk of the responses came from companies in manufacturing (31%), finance and insurance (25%), and information (16%).
Best Practices: The report identifies 12 best practices, including leadership accountability, data disaggregation, talent retention, and pay equity. These examples provide a model for other companies to implement DEI strategies effectively.
Progress and Challenges: While many companies have made significant strides, persistent gaps remain, particularly in leadership diversity and retention rates. The report encourages corporations to move beyond public statements and implement measurable DEI outcomes.

The CBC hopes the report will serve as a tool for corporations to benchmark their progress and adopt more robust DEI measures. “What Good Looks Like” outlines not only where companies are succeeding but also where opportunities for improvement lie, urging corporate leaders to align their actions with their stated DEI values.

Conservative Backlash and the Fight for DEI

Officials said the CBC’s efforts to hold corporations accountable come amid heightened political tensions. Since the Supreme Court’s ruling, Donald Trump and his supporters have escalated their attacks on DEI programs. Right-wing legal campaigns have targeted not only corporate diversity efforts but also federal programs aimed at leveling the playing field for Black and minority-owned businesses.

Conservative attorneys general from over a dozen states have warned Fortune 500 companies, threatening legal action over their diversity programs. Additionally, anti-DEI bills have been introduced in more than 30 states, aiming to restrict diversity efforts in college admissions and the workplace.

Despite the attacks, the CBC said it remains steadfast in its commitment to advancing racial and economic equity. In December 2023, the CBC sent Fortune 500 companies an accountability letter urging them to uphold their DEI commitments in the face of political pressure, which catalyzed the report.

Corporate America’s response has been overwhelmingly positive. Since the CBC’s letter, companies have held over 50 meetings with CBC representatives, affirming their dedication to diversity. The CBC has also convened discussions with industry trade associations and hosted a briefing with more than 300 Fortune 500 company representatives to strengthen collaboration on DEI efforts.

Moving Forward

The CBC’s report is not just a reflection on past efforts but a call to action for the future. It highlights the importance of cross-industry learning, encouraging companies to share best practices and build upon one another’s successes. The CBC also recommends that corporations adopt consistent performance metrics to track progress and foster accountability.

Looking ahead, the CBC plans to push for more economic opportunities for Black Americans, focusing on closing the racial wealth gap. Horsford emphasized that DEI is not only a moral imperative but also an economic one. Research from McKinsey & Company shows that racially diverse companies outperform their peers by 39% in profitability, further underscoring the business case for diversity.

The CBC’s report offers a roadmap for companies committed to fostering a more inclusive and equitable future despite political and legal challenges.

“Following the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, we witnessed a nationwide response calling for long-overdue justice and accountability,” Horsford wrote in the report. “Millions of Americans flooded the streets in protest to advocate for an end to the cycles of violence against Black Americans that are perpetuated by systemic racism ingrained deeply in the United States.

“Now, in order to move forward and achieve the goals of these commitments, we must evaluate where we are and stay the course. We cannot allow a handful of right-wing agitators to bully corporations away from their promises.”