And Covid-19 isn’t helping anything: More than 40 percent of Black-owned businesses shut down by April of last year, compared with a 17 percent decline among white-owned businesses. And while around 75 percent of Black-owned small businesses saw upticks in the two months after George Floyd’s death and subsequent national attention to issues around discrimination and police brutality, sales at many Black-owned businesses soon after plummeted back to their pre-Covid-19 rates, according to a survey by the Black Chamber of Commerce. Even if you shelf the pandemic’s effect on Black-owned businesses, eight out of 10 fail within the first 18 months.
“I’ve been Black my entire life, so the challenges I face due to my race aren’t new. I consider