I wasn’t familiar with the word—except in the context of diapers and roofs—until days before we embarked on The Ebony Experiment, when I met with Gus Tucker, director of the Chicago Urban League’s Entrepreneurship Center. I conveyed to him the details of a recent instance in which we’d been accused of being racist. He said that we needed to make people understand that the central concern in empowering struggling Black neighborhoods wasn’t as simple as choosing to support Black businesses over non-Black ones. Rather, it was about stanching the rapid exit of dollars—and much needed economic power—from these communities. His statement prompted me to do some research of my own. One of the first things I uncovered was a report from 2004 showing that for every $100 flowing into an average underserved Black community, about $95 leaves, either by being spent at local businesses owned by “outsiders” or at businesses outside the community. I read about the Black community in Tulsa, Oklahoma, located in the area known as Greenwood.
