Now that the excitement from the holiday season is dying down and 2015 is progressing, organizational leaders from cities all over believe it is time to meet the challenges, hopes, and opportunities that the New Year brings.
To Sean Rugless, president and CEO of the African American Chamber of Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky a challenge is that the African American buying power is at $1 trillion with the expectation for it to climb to $1.3 trillion within the next few years. His concern is that a small amount of the dollars are being spent in the African-American neighborhoods.
He also questions if we are better off now than we were 50 years ago when the Civil Rights Act was enacted with the design to forbid discrimination on the basis of race and sex in the areas of hiring, promoting and firing. “Gaps still remain,” he says pointing out that the Black unemployment rate; home ownership and household assets or wealth has not reached the levels it should have within five decades. His solution; is to create and grow Black businesses and to support them. “We have the power to change our own conditions.”
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