HBCUs: America’s Pathway to Next Generation Prosperity

Ask any CEO, investor, entrepreneur or economic development planner what does "equity" mean and you'll hear the same crystal clear refrain over and over again: equity equals a share of ownership. That's right.

Equity = Ownership.

But ask the same question with a a racial qualifier and the responses from the same landscape of leaders will change.

What does "racial equity" mean?

The concise clarity around the meaning of equity becomes muddied with confusing qualifiers when race enters the equation. But to be clear, race is always in the equation. The same meaning of equity just isn't applied across all races. Yet, it should be.

Ownership of lands, homes and resources was the highest priority when Europeans first arrived on a continent full of nations and tens of millions of peoples with varying languages, customs and beliefs, who shared the land and resources for millennia. The belief in ownership was infused with a belief in racial hierarchy: the valuing and devaluing of humans according to an artificial construct of race, with White at the top of the value ladder and Black at the bottom. This racial construct has steered the ownership equation from the moment Black people became Black Americans in 1868 with the 14th amendment, to the moment Dr. King was killed in 1968, a century later.

FOSTERING PROSPEROUS CONDITIONS

Today, there is no Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (CEDS) plan that prioritizes the increased productivity, prosperity and equitable ownership of the American Dream for the Most Vulnerable Populations (MVP). Yet, such economic plans blanket the nation, creating conditions that foster prosperity and ownership of lands, homes, businesses and intellectual property. The government and private sectors invest in these strategies. They have for more than 50 years, contributing to the explosive economic growth of this nation (for the beneficiaries of the status quo).

Through an evolution of the Innovation Economy, through Third and Fourth Industrial Revolutions, the United States has risen to the top of the World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Index. Yet, it has failed to cultivate the inherent talent in America's Black populations, and other communities of color, left behind to suffer in the margins of society in what Dr. King called a "shameful condition."

HBCU COMPETITIVENESS

Yet, during a century in which white terrorism reigned unabated (1868 - 1968), targeting Black Americans who sought to navigate a hostile society that didn't want to educate our kids, didn't want us living next door, didn't want to pay us or treat us equal to White Americans, there was a reliable resource that fully believed in the ingenuity and innovation inherent in our children: Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU). This landscape produced talented workers and entrepreneurs that built wealth in oppressed families, communities and towns. Tragically, much of that wealth was destroyed by generations of white mob violence, abusive authorities, public planning and systemic segregationist policies and practices (much of which remains in place to this very day).

Since the end of the Civil War in 1865, to the last HBCU built nearly a century later, this extraordinary, yet underfunded and underinvested resource landscape of more than 100 institutions, has cultivated some of this nation's best talent. Ironically, HBCUs still continue to produce top workforce and entrepreneurial talent to this very day ... despite the ongoing war over America's racial identity crisis and the sad fact that most of White America has little knowledge of the extraordinary value HBCUs continue to produce for this nation.

When Bill Gates stepped down as Chairman of the Board of one of the tech industry's most successful companies, it was a Black graduate from Florida A&M (an HBCU) that replaced him. And when former Vice President Mike Pence vacated his seat, it was a proud Black and Asian graduate of Howard University (an HBCU) who made history in replacing him. For more than 150 years, HBCUs have quietly done the work needed to bolster America's global competitiveness, despite being undervalued with limited resources.

If a change in the status quo is to come across America, it will require us all working together. And it will center around the community of HBCUs.

BUILDING AN INCLUSIVE AMERICA

We all inherited a ubiquitous set of systemic challenges ingrained in segregationist laws, policies, practices and systems from a 20th century in which white supremacy permeated every institution of power, wealth and influence in America. To be fair, we did not create these problems. But we inherited a nation founded and built upon systemic racist policies. They did not magically disappear when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated.

The quintessential question we face, as did every generation before us, is simply will we sustain the status quo, or endeavor to reimagine, redesign and reconstruct a more equitable, inclusive America with pathways to prosperity for all in a 21st century multicultural society?

To better understand how we can transform our nation from systemic racial inequity to systemic racial equity across all sectors of society, read this commentary from Dr. Jamie Bracey-Green, a cultural economist, cognitive psychologist, STEM education integrator and Co-founder and CEO of The National Institute for Inclusive Competitiveness.

HBCUs: America's Pathway to Next Generation Prosperity

In tribute to Dr. King’s Calls for Economic Inclusion

By Jamie Bracey-Green, PhD

I once had a powerful interaction with Mrs. Coretta Scott King while taking her order for lunch. As she was teasing me about the taste of northern “barbeque” she suddenly turned to make the decisive statement, “they didn’t kill my Martin for civil rights, they killed him for turning to economics.” 

I don’t remember what she ordered, but I remember what she said. It was clear to me that she and her husband knew why he would die. Yet, they did not back down from the sacrifice, knowing that although Dr. King considered himself a nonviolent warrior, warriors often died. Still, they fought against a pervasive system of segregation that blanketed the nation as a tool of white supremacy, itself a system of economic violence to limit access to ill-gotten goods.

Two generations after that conversation, Citigroup’s 2020 report on the economic impact of racism suggests the economic violence we inherited has cost America $16T through institutional policies and practices that continue to economically starve vulnerable populations by limiting access to white owned resources, and protect the economic system the Kings had obviously discussed. 

Restricted access has resulted in beneficiaries of the status quo owning the wealth, while the most vulnerable Americans own the nation's poverty. Owners of that poverty are disproportionately children, and today, as in the century's past, America's most vulnerable children are given little access to resources and investments to participate in our nation’s future. It’s no longer a sustainable path.

As of 2014, 54% of our nation’s 50 million K12 students are of African and Hispanic descent, and they represent the next generation of leaders, activists, economists, industrialists, scientists and inventors. 30 million are qualified for free and reduced lunch. Even in fairly resourced schools most of America’s next generation lacks consistent exposure to high quality STEM knowledge and experiences they’ll need to achieve and sustain this administration's goal to “build back better” after the coronavirus shut downs.

The Biden administration is pivoting the nation toward health recovery. As states and cities scramble to close economic gaps using the $1.9T American Rescue Act, the paucity of data on Black employer-owned companies, entrepreneurs, and physical assets where those 54% live, hinders how we prioritize investments to ensure vulnerable communities are transformed into economically productive assets.

THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR INCLUSIVE COMPETITIVENESS

Our mission at the National Institute for Inclusive Competitiveness (The NIIC) is to shatter the intransigent barriers to entry to education and economic ecosystems that should (but don’t) serve vulnerable children attending segregated schools in the 21st century, or their families. 

Our call to action is simple and elegant – regions must invest in strategic planning that prioritize increasing economic productivity among our most vulnerable populations to attract and guide investments that strengthen the capacity of key stakeholders to cultivate talent and entrepreneurship aligned with America’s future. 

The NIIC believes Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) are central to this solution, and with an economic approach can leverage their physical and virtual infrastructures to create actionable, collective wealth.

The NIIC’s role as the nation’s chief advocate for inclusive economic competitiveness strategies is to address gaping racial inequalities by offering existing solutions that have been historically undervalued and underutilized. Our work is designed to align HBCUs, alongside their partners and investors, with high growth global opportunities that are based in the United States.

We seek to build HBCU capacity to increase pre-college STEM pathways for more of the 54% as well, who’ve been least likely to inherit STEM knowledge, readiness and mentorship. The creative ingenuity of Millennials is critical to bolster regional economic competitiveness, entrepreneurship and parity in business ownership that will be sustainable in a just and civil society.

Two generations into the future, no matter what anyone looks like, the climate is changing, new technologies are evolving, new markets are opening, new challenges to the environment are emerging and new viruses are coming. The NIIC is working with HBCUs and public-private partners to amplify the role of HBCUs as anchor institutions responsible for economic planning, R&D, technology transfer and seed capital for communities where their faculty, staff, students and employees live.

Dr. King wrote in his 1964 book, “Why We Can’t Wait”:

“The average Negro is born into want and deprivation. His struggle to escape his circumstances is hindered by color discrimination. He is deprived of normal education and normal social and economic opportunities. When he seeks opportunity, he is told, in effect, to lift himself by his own bootstraps, advice which does not take into account the fact that he is barefoot.”

America needs its most vulnerable populations to increase their productivity in the workforce, in entrepreneurship and business ownership. We need the 54% (and growing) to become Americans who are visionary inventors, employers and job-creators advancing the overall global competitiveness of the United States. 

To reach that objective we must invest in the economic ownership and equity aspirations of the next two generations of all young people, before their belief in America is permanently destroyed. Dr. and Mrs. King held onto that belief, and we must too.

Jamie Bracey Green, PhD is a Co-Founder & CEO of The NIIC 

Email: [email protected] 

Website: www.niicusa.org