Our Black Year (9 page)

Although we might be a consumer group to reckon with, we still haven't figured out how to flex those muscles. According to author Robert E. Weems Jr., professor of African American history at the University of Missouri, “Black consumers . . . have a history of being disrespected,” with retailers in the first half of the twentieth century regularly treating us as “second-class” citizens while advertisers insulted and belittled us by using “a proliferation of products . . . that included such derogatory terms as ‘mammy,' ‘pickaninny,' ‘coon,' and ‘nigger.'”

African American buying power started to gain the attention of companies and advertisers with the Great Migration of 1916 to 1970,
when nearly seven million southern Blacks moved to urban areas in the north searching for jobs, largely in war-related industries and other manufacturing.

By 1920 Black spending power was more than $3 billion, about a third of which was spent on goods and services that African American companies produced. Record companies and makers of hair care products were two of the first industries to pay attention to the burgeoning Black market. White- and Black-owned companies alike began advertising heavily in African American newspapers, with much of that advertising pedaling products like skin lighteners and lip reducers.

The National Negro Business League, formed by W. E. B. Du Bois and others in 1900, started a national survey of Black businesses in 1928 in cities across the country, and it showed that savvy, powerful, White-owned corporations were hiring Black managers, sales reps, and employees to take business away from Black companies. At the same time, African American consumers were making purchases to, as Professor Weems states it, “buy respect and dignity. Sophisticated market research and advertising campaigns have helped American corporations to continually profit from Blacks' lingering social and psychological hangups.”

In the 1940s and '50s the Black migration to northern cities accelerated, and more White businesses made a concerted effort to reach the “Negro Market.” Beyond hiring Black managers, sales reps, and other employees, as had been done in the 1930s, large companies started to get into the act in a bigger way by bringing on Blacks as “Negro market specialists,” whom Professor Weems calls “the true African American pioneers in corporate America.”

One of the most prominent Black researchers was David J. Sullivan, who, in the early and mid-1940s, authored several pieces on African American demographics and offered advice to companies trying to appeal to African American consumers. Many of his tips are cringe-worthy to today's readers, such as: don't exaggerate Blacks' physical traits, avoid using White people in blackface makeup, and don't depict Black women as “buxom, broad-faced, grinning mammies.” Sullivan also discouraged the use of “nigger,” “coon,” “shine,” “darky,” and “Pickaninny” in advertising.

If there were ever a point in time when we could have demonstrated unity and pride—and do so as consumers—it should have been then. Though we fought to force White business owners to hire, sell to, and serve us, we did not assert that same kind of might when it came to how we were portrayed in their advertisements and how we were treated once we were in their establishments. Historically, the NAACP has led the struggle to ensure that the media did not perpetuate destructive stereotypes of Black people, but consumers were never called on to boycott these firms or, better yet, support our own companies. We let the political and community leaders handle it when the consumers actually had the power to change things.

By the mid-1940s African Americans' gross income was $10.3 billion, which was $1.5 billion more than the national income of Canada. Pepsi and Esso Standard Oil were taking active interests in the Black market. But perhaps the most powerful embodiment of White overtures to Black consumers wore the number 42 for the Brooklyn Dodgers. When Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball in 1947, followed by Satchel Paige a year later, the move “represented not only a source of pride for African Americans but a box-office bonanza” for Dodgers owner Branch Rickey, Professor Weems writes. Of course, those players moving to the major leagues also led others to do the same, which ultimately caused the downfall of the Negro Baseball League.

In the 1950s major corporations followed Pepsi and Esso in paying attention to African American consumers. The National Alliance of Market Developers, established in 1953, was created to provide professional training for African American pioneers in corporate America.

Most of these professionals staffed the marketing departments and were specifically recruited to target African American consumers. The NAMD's mission was to ensure that African American dollars were valued and to promote more inclusivity in marketing and advertising in general. Black consumers wanted to see more people like them in commercials as well as more products that reflected their preferences. They
wanted to see the corporations making an effort to respect their culture and appreciate their support. Several extensive studies of Black consumers and the impact of their spending on the American economy were also published during that decade.

But although corporate America responded vigorously with new products, ads, and diversity strategies, the efforts did not bring increased supplier, vendor, or franchisee diversity. This corporate munificence failed to benefit Black businesses. The fact that McDonald's and General Motors had begun placing Black folks in their commercials was seen as a historic civil rights achievement. We responded with our loyalty and our money—leaving Black businesses behind. The effect of these “accomplishments” was to further siphon dollars from Black businesses and neighborhoods.

The turbulent 1960s then brought the more confrontational “Black Power” movement. Marketers responded by creating and promoting the “soul” market, which sometimes celebrated but often dishonored Black culture and customs by relying on caricatures. This presented a great opportunity for Black marketing, branding, and advertising professionals, who offered advice on how to portray Black people respectfully by forgoing the exaggerated Afros, high fives, and jive talking.

The Negro Handbook
, produced by the Johnson Publishing Company in 1966, is another telling example of how marketing to African Americans helped drain the lifeblood from Black-owned businesses. The book was a universally accepted, credible tool for mainstream marketers, brand managers, and advertisers. Unfortunately, it also showed a clear disregard for African American–owned businesses. “The Negro consumer who was once the private property of the Negro owner and operator of hotels, restaurants, night clubs, and beauty and barber shops,” the handbook states, “has turned with increasing alacrity to white establishments which offer, in many cases, extra services, luxury atmosphere, and a degree of glamour for the same dollar.” That statement is little more than a polished, ad executive–friendly way of saying, “the White man's ice is colder.”

Then came the 1970s, when major motion picture studios discovered that urban Black consumers were an untapped market that could help pull those companies out of a collective financial nosedive. They made a series of “blaxploitation” films, starting with 1971's
Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song
and including
Shaft
and
Trouble Man
, to name a few, that were made relatively cheaply but reaped tens of millions of dollars for mostly White film companies from largely Black movie audiences. Those films glorified drug dealers, pimps, and other nefarious characters who were able “to stick it to the man.” By the mid-1970s Black audiences became more discerning, but those movies had a powerful, lasting, and corrosive impact on the souls of African Americans. Conspicuous consumption and rogue independence, which conflicted with the solidarity and widespread hope that the civil rights movement engendered, were fundamental to “blaxploitation” films and were particularly volatile in a culture that was angry at its powerlessness.

At about the same time, corporations started focusing on the booming industries of beauty and personal care products, on which African Americans spent about $750 million in 1977. Competition with Black-owned corporations for that market and others—notably advertising and insurance—became fierce and not always honorable. In 1975 the Federal Trade Commission ordered Johnson Products, the Chicago-based maker of Black beauty and personal care products, to place a warning that its popular Ultra Sheen Permanent Crème Relaxer contained sodium hydroxide, an ingredient that could cause hair loss and damage to eyes and skin. The company complied, but the FTC waited nearly two years before ordering the White-owned Revlon Company, whose products also contained the potentially dangerous substance, to place similar warnings on their labels.

In addition, Black-owned advertising agencies, aside from seeing business decline from the slow economy of the 1970s, were suffering a talent drain to larger, White-owned, better-paying agencies—a trend that struck African American insurance companies, too. The smaller Black insurance companies relied heavily on “industrial insurance,” which carried greater administrative costs that were passed on to the consumer, and
their smaller size hampered them from offering more reasonably priced coverage that White-owned firms, with their economies of scale, could provide. Like many Black-owned businesses, African American insurance companies were also hurt by the perception that transferring one's business to a White-owned insurance carrier meant one was “moving up.”

Professor Weems points out the broader, troubling consequences of the failing African American insurance industry. The number of what he calls “significant Black insurers” declined from forty-two in 1973 to four in 2006. That drop has probably expedited the erosion of urban Black neighborhoods. The reason: African American–owned insurance companies traditionally invest in their communities' real estate, whereas White-owned firms do not—another example of how Blacks contribute to the bottom line of White-owned corporations without the corporations returning the favor.

Then, the 1980s brought a sinister form of Black consumer exploitation. When market research indicated that urban Blacks were significant imbibers of alcohol, liquor companies intensified their advertising efforts in those neighborhoods, often with ads that linked a certain brand of liquor with sophistication, increased status, and sexual prowess, which, of course, preyed on Blacks' inferiority complex. Cigarette companies were close behind. Both engaged in heavy billboard advertising in urban areas, funneling millions of dollars into marketing while the government spent far less on educating African Americans on the dangers of alcohol and smoking. In 1986, for example, the amount spent on such programs was the downright paltry sum of $512,193. Many of these alcohol and tobacco companies were Black advertising agencies' biggest customers, donating millions of dollars to financially struggling, ethical Black organizations. Anheuser-Busch, for example, sponsored a telethon that supported the United Negro College Fund, and the brewer made large contributions to the National Urban League. The Joseph Coors Company, a target of protests for purportedly racist and anti-union practices, agreed to invest nearly $625 million between 1984 and 1989 with the NAACP, Operation PUSH, and other causes in African American and Hispanic communities.

This was a destructive one-two punch: A rising, more aware Black consumerism coupled with intensifying competition from White-owned corporations worked to funnel more money away from Black businesses and communities. It continued in the 1990s and exists to this day.

Larger companies targeted products and marketing specifically to the African American market. In 1991, for example, Maybelline launched its Shades of You line, while the Estée Lauder Company unveiled its Prescriptives All Skins. Both brands offered a vast array of makeup and related products for African American women, and they proved to be extremely successful. But they also dealt devastating blows to smaller ethnic cosmetic companies, such as Afram Cosmetics and Spectrum Cosmetics, two quality enterprises that had enjoyed exclusive reign over the Black female market before behemoth firms like L'Oreal and Estée Lauder decided to pay attention to it.

The same thing happened in the film industry. Blacks comprise roughly 13 percent of the population, but we account for 25 percent of film revenue. Although recent Black-oriented films have a broader appeal and offer a more nuanced treatment of Black life than those in the early 1970s, most of the profits from these films end up in Whites' bank accounts. The fact that, as of 1995, less than ten movie theaters in the United States were Black-owned is shocking.

More recently, as hip-hop has moved beyond the Black community and penetrated the culture at large, it has broadened African Americans' influence, particularly in advertising, TV, and film. The problem, according to Professor Weems, is that “hip hop artists have been used to manipulate young consumers, to ‘play' young people.”

As he explained at a 2010 meeting of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, African Americans' “acute case of status anxiety . . . fed the quest for bling,” a self-centered goal that erodes Blacks' historical, unified struggle.

“It is also worth noting,” he told the gathering, “that since African Americans do not own, in significant numbers, large jewelry stores, luxury car dealerships, yacht dealerships, or designer fashion businesses . . .
the primary beneficiaries of the ‘Ghetto Fabulous' phenomenon have been white businessmen.”

That one of the main legacies of the civil rights era has been the demise of so many Black-owned businesses is ironic. In the 1960s and '70s integration finally gave us the opportunity to shop with other people, and we reveled in the chance to show that our money was just as green as everyone else's. We righteously flocked downtown and to the suburbs, spending our money at mass retailers like Walgreens, Sears, and Woolworth's instead of our local, Black-owned firms. Those mainstream retailers were happy to take our money and target us with advertising that used Black models, but they didn't actually care to build stores in our neighborhoods. The combination fed an economic crisis in Black communities, starving those local businesses to death, decimating neighborhoods, and opening the door for a steady incursion of business owners from outside the community. By the 1980s and 90s immigrant groups—willing to locate businesses in our tattered neighborhoods and leveraging the low rents and available space—set up minimarts and liquor stores, hunkering down for the long haul.