Courtesy photo of Black family 

Black people’s collective economic condition in the United States, and more specifically D.C., warrants some concerns about how residents of African descent, whether they arrived yesterday or have been in the District for generations, will fare amid mass corporatization, skyrocketing college debt, increasing costs of living, and the lack of conventional employment opportunities, compared to what their parents and grandparents experienced in the years after the end of the Civil Rights movement.

In recent years, many Black Millennials, part of a generation scarred by the Great Recession and disillusioned by growing income inequality, have embraced unorthodox means of financial stability. Instead of relying solely on income generated from fulltime jobs, young people, in the spirit of entrepreneurship, are creating additional revenue streams through investments in properties and forays in the stock market. This has become part of a strategy to be self-determined and avoid the pitfalls that decimated Black wealth in less than a generation.

On the March edition of The AllEyesOnDC Show, Sade Chase-Marshall and Makiri Pugh, two Black millennial entrepreneurs from the D.C. metropolitan area, revealed the paths they are blazing on their path to socioeconomic self-determination. While their stories and tips for success in the capitalist market wooed some members of the audience, it sparked a much-needed discussion about the feasibility of similar results for those struggling to make it day by day. For better or worse, the conversation also compelled Baby Boomers and members of Generation X in the audience to examine how lack of communication between elders and the youth may have contributed to intergenerational financial setbacks within the Black family.

 

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