Essay On Being A Black Entrepreneur

I come from a family where business and entrepreneurship are something not seen. I’ve always wanted to go down a different path than what the rest of my family has. Throughout high school, I always was enthralled by the thought of having the opportunity to be my own boss and be a business owner someday in the future. As I thought, I realized that there aren’t any black owned businesses in the area, or really any people who even look at me for that matter. As a black woman being a first generation college student with an end goal of becoming an entrepreneur, I am passionate about seeing people from my culture and community becoming successful. With this, I introduce my Community Service Initiative, “Supporting Black Owned”, to bring awareness on the importance of black owned businesses and encourage entrepreneurship within the local community.

Chamber of Commerce, there is an estimated 140,918 U.S. businesses with majority Black/African American ownership, which comes up to only 9.4% of business owners in the United States being Black/African American. Although the number of black entrepreneurs in the country have steadily risen throughout the past few decades, there’s still a number of struggles that come with being a black business owner in the United States, from negative financial capital to deep rooted stigmatized stereotypes. Black-owned non-employer businesses are less than half as likely to get financing as other firms; as a result, black entrepreneurs are nearly three times more likely to have business growth and profitability negatively impacted by a lack of financial capital. This is not okay, and everyone regardless of race should be able to start a business at the same rate as everyone