https://blackgirlnerds.com/8-ways-to-celebrate-black-business-month/
August is the last month of summer vacation, and it’s also Black Business Month. Although the celebration is only marked for 31 days, Black businesses should be celebrated all year long.
Black business is a phenomenon in itself. Many of the thriving businesses that we see today, from Oprah’s empire to Tabitha Brown’s clothing line, all started from people who had very little start-up capital but an abundance of faith and hard work. This grit is something we’ve seen throughout American history. Some historic examples include Madame C.J. Walker, who was the country’s first female self-made millionaire, and John Merrick, who in 1898 founded North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company, which now has assets of $160 million.
In the present day, Black businesses are still thriving. There are currently around 3 million Black-owned businesses that contribute over $200 billion to the American economy annually. With this sector only continuing to grow, Black Business Month is a celebration and an acknowledgment of an important part of Black history. It is a time to recognize that there are Black businesses for haircare, skincare, wellness, sports, and everything else. This acknowledgment helps level the playing field, especially since historic and current discrimination has prevented many Black business owners from receiving loans and financial support.
Whether you are a consumer or business owner, here are 8 ways you can support Black businesses and celebrate their existence.
The easiest way to celebrate Black Business Month is to buy services and products from Black businesses. Not sure how to find these businesses? There are great resources such as the Black Directory where you can search different cities for Black-owned businesses. Another great way to find them is through social media by searching the hashtags #Blackowned #Blackownedbusiness #Blackowned[insert product].
One simple way to support Black businesses is by sharing their information within your network. This can be done through word of mouth or social media. However, if you do choose to support through social media, remember liking 20 posts from a business’s page isn’t quality support. Instead, sharing their posts or other content will give them more exposure to different audiences and help boost their business.
A follow-up with this method is to write a review or leave a comment on how great their service is. Sharing isn’t just about name-dropping or pressing the share button; it’s about speaking highly of a business to people who may enjoy their service or product.
The social media space is run by influencers, so, for anyone with a blue check mark by their name, here is how to use your influence to support Black businesses. On the blog Fashion Steele NYC, Monroe Steele offers her advice on partnering with Black businesses, such as building a relationship first, offering payment, and considering working with smaller content creators.
The best partnerships happen when two businesses work together to accomplish a mutual goal. These arrangements can be short-term or long-term and can be hosting an event or having a business sell their product at your event. Partnership can also be having a Black business owner as a guest on your podcast.
Starting your own business is one of the best ways to celebrate Black Business Month. If you’re not sure how to get started, try reaching out to a Black business owner who you admire and ask to pick their brain or inquire about a mentorship. More Black businesses are good for the economy and the culture.
There are many Black businesses that not only started from finding a need in the market but were created from a place of preserving and honoring the culture. Callaloo Box, which was started by sisters Malika and Jamila Augustin who immigrated to New York from Trinidad and Tobago, delivers boxes filled with seasonings, sauces, and snacks from the Caribbean. These precious products are great reminders to learn more about Caribbean culture. With Black history, there is so much culture and history around food.
Whether you’ve tried a Black-owned hair product that’s done wonders for your curls or know a great soul-food restaurant, referrals are a great way to celebrate. By sending potential clients to a Black-owned business, you are helping them reach people they may not have come into contact with on their own. Referrals are beneficial for the business and the customers.
Although there are over 3 million Black businesses already, there are still hundreds more that could use some extra capital to help get started. This type of support is often available through grants and scholarships. By connecting Black businesses to grant opportunities and other business resources, you’re helping to set the foundation for a strong and sustainable business.
Luckily we have February for Black History Month and August for Black Business Month yet it’s possible to imagine a world where these months aren’t needed, meaning these months will no longer need to serve as a reminder to support Black people because Black people will be supported all year long. Therefore one of the biggest ways to support Black businesses and Black people as a society is to continue to support them all year long.
Remember that Black businesses are starting and growing every day, which means there are endless opportunities to celebrate and show your support.
August is the last month of summer vacation, and it’s also Black Business Month. Although the celebration is only marked for 31 days, Black businesses should be celebrated all year long.
Black business is a phenomenon in itself. Many of the thriving businesses that we see today, from Oprah’s empire to Tabitha Brown’s clothing line, all started from people who had very little start-up capital but an abundance of faith and hard work. This grit is something we’ve seen throughout American history. Some historic examples include Madame C.J. Walker, who was the country’s first female self-made millionaire, and John Merrick, who in 1898 founded North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company, which now has assets of $160 million.
In the present day, Black businesses are still thriving. There are currently around 3 million Black-owned businesses that contribute over $200 billion to the American economy annually. With this sector only continuing to grow, Black Business Month is a celebration and an acknowledgment of an important part of Black history. It is a time to recognize that there are Black businesses for haircare, skincare, wellness, sports, and everything else. This acknowledgment helps level the playing field, especially since historic and current discrimination has prevented many Black business owners from receiving loans and financial support.
Whether you are a consumer or business owner, here are 8 ways you can support Black businesses and celebrate their existence.
The easiest way to celebrate Black Business Month is to buy services and products from Black businesses. Not sure how to find these businesses? There are great resources such as the Black Directory where you can search different cities for Black-owned businesses. Another great way to find them is through social media by searching the hashtags #Blackowned #Blackownedbusiness #Blackowned[insert product].
One simple way to support Black businesses is by sharing their information within your network. This can be done through word of mouth or social media. However, if you do choose to support through social media, remember liking 20 posts from a business’s page isn’t quality support. Instead, sharing their posts or other content will give them more exposure to different audiences and help boost their business.
A follow-up with this method is to write a review or leave a comment on how great their service is. Sharing isn’t just about name-dropping or pressing the share button; it’s about speaking highly of a business to people who may enjoy their service or product.
The social media space is run by influencers, so, for anyone with a blue check mark by their name, here is how to use your influence to support Black businesses. On the blog Fashion Steele NYC, Monroe Steele offers her advice on partnering with Black businesses, such as building a relationship first, offering payment, and considering working with smaller content creators.
The best partnerships happen when two businesses work together to accomplish a mutual goal. These arrangements can be short-term or long-term and can be hosting an event or having a business sell their product at your event. Partnership can also be having a Black business owner as a guest on your podcast.
Starting your own business is one of the best ways to celebrate Black Business Month. If you’re not sure how to get started, try reaching out to a Black business owner who you admire and ask to pick their brain or inquire about a mentorship. More Black businesses are good for the economy and the culture.
There are many Black businesses that not only started from finding a need in the market but were created from a place of preserving and honoring the culture. Callaloo Box, which was started by sisters Malika and Jamila Augustin who immigrated to New York from Trinidad and Tobago, delivers boxes filled with seasonings, sauces, and snacks from the Caribbean. These precious products are great reminders to learn more about Caribbean culture. With Black history, there is so much culture and history around food.
Whether you’ve tried a Black-owned hair product that’s done wonders for your curls or know a great soul-food restaurant, referrals are a great way to celebrate. By sending potential clients to a Black-owned business, you are helping them reach people they may not have come into contact with on their own. Referrals are beneficial for the business and the customers.
Although there are over 3 million Black businesses already, there are still hundreds more that could use some extra capital to help get started. This type of support is often available through grants and scholarships. By connecting Black businesses to grant opportunities and other business resources, you’re helping to set the foundation for a strong and sustainable business.
Luckily we have February for Black History Month and August for Black Business Month yet it’s possible to imagine a world where these months aren’t needed, meaning these months will no longer need to serve as a reminder to support Black people because Black people will be supported all year long. Therefore one of the biggest ways to support Black businesses and Black people as a society is to continue to support them all year long.
Remember that Black businesses are starting and growing every day, which means there are endless opportunities to celebrate and show your support.
The eponymous heroine of the late ’90s/early ’00s television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer and her Scooby Gang have faced innumerable monsters that made their way from various mythos into popular culture.
This includes but isn’t limited to dangerous humans, undead, ghosts and spirits, vampires (of course), wizards and witches, and demons, as well as half-demons and “Old Ones” (Cthulhu for all intents and purposes). Some of them were forgettable vampire henchmen, while others stuck with the audience to this day.
However, few are as memorable as Glorificus (Clare Kramer), commonly known as Glory, a powerful goddess from a hellish domain. Glory appeared in Season 5 as the unstoppable force Buffy and the Scooby Gang had to deal with, and as powerful as she was, the not-so-typical Big Bad didn’t want to sow death, destruction, and world domination but something less ambitious. If that’s so, let’s examine the perspective from which Glory isn’t as Big of a Bad as we remember.
As we just mentioned, Glory had less ambitious plans than the Angelesus’ and Masters of Sunnydale, but rather her main objective was simply to make it back home. Although home was a hell dimension of unimaginable pain and suffering where welcome mats were few and far between, it was still her dimensional abode.
To elaborate, Glory, or the Beast as she was known, was a goddess from a hellish dimension where she ruled alongside two other god-like entities. For a long time, the three ruled their domain with equal power, but Glory’s power increased, growing beyond anything her former equals could muster together.
As her power grew, so did her lust for inflicting pain and suffering on the residents of her domain. She gained prominence as the most powerful and the most frightening among the three entities. So, out of fear that she would lay hold of their domain entirely for herself, the other two struck at her first. This started a great war, which Glory lost. She was cast out into the earthly dimension, bound to share a form with a human — a boy named Ben, whose sole purpose was to act as her vessel and “contain” her.
Surprisingly, despite her defeat, Glory proved too powerful to contain in a human form, and, after Ben had turned 20, she mustered enough strength to take over his body for short periods of time, transforming Ben into a beautiful but narcissistic woman. Her otherworldly power also granted her some superhuman abilities, like increased strength, speed, and near invulnerability. However, she was also very limited by her vessel, as the human body and mind weren’t intended to contain the power of a goddess.
This “co-share” slowly drove Glory insane. In order to maintain her mental stability, she had to feed off humans. But instead of feeding on human blood, like the vampires that she disdained, Glory would feed on human mental energy in a process Buffy and her friends called “brain sucking.” She would insert her fingers into the victim’s head and feed off their mental energies, leaving many of her victims babbling, incoherent, and mostly brain dead.
This sounds really bad, and so far the series’ writers had seemingly only replaced blood-sucking vampires with a brain-sucking deity, so there’s really not much of a difference. But they didn’t. One of the consequences that her victims suffered was the ability to see Dawn, Buffy’s sister, in her real form, which is The Key. Dawn was also introduced in Season 5 as Buffy’s younger sister after it was well established that Buffy was an only child. This made very little sense since the mystery of her sudden appearance wasn’t acknowledged by the other characters from the show.
As it was revealed later in the show, The Key was transformed into a human form by a group of monks tasked with protecting it from Glory and put in one place where no monster would dare look — at the Slayer’s side as her sister — via a memory altering spell. The purpose of this object-turned-person is to open portals to alternate dimensions, which is exactly what Glory wants to exploit to return home.
But mishandling The Key would cause the barriers separating all dimensions, including the one between Earth and other infernal dimensions, to break down, causing all worlds to seep into each other, finally bringing Hell’s reign to Earth. Despite knowing what damage using The Key could cause, Glory remained adamant about using it to return to her dimension, to be restored to the height of her former glory (pun very intended) and to exact vengeance upon those who had wronged her and cursed her with enduring a human form.
From that perspective, as a very powerful being who only wanted to go home and didn’t want anything to do with the human trifles of mortgages, mid-day traffic, and sales tax, she was ultimately a pitiable figure. Now, okay, perhaps brain eating and supernatural mayhem were not the best cries for help or sympathy one could muster, but as a demonic hellion, I am sure sharing was not one of her strong suits. She was short-tempered and took violent retaliation at the smallest of insults — but then, which deity doesn’t?
Ultimately, her actions, though evil, weren’t done for earthly domination but out of an all-consuming desire to return home where she already ruled. This makes her very misunderstood as a series Big Bad, especially in comparison with some of the other villains, like the First Evil, or the anarchistic, wild and fun Drusilla and Spike.
In the end, Buffy beat Glory until she reverted to a human form (turning back to Ben) and then died in the process to save her sister and the rest of the world by closing the portal to hell Glory’s minions opened. Still not the worst of endings.
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Let's get it, folks! Welcome to the latest episode of Afronerd Radio's Mid Week in Review broadcast airing each and every Wednesday on the BTalk 100 internet radio network. Join your gamma-irradiated AFROnerdists hosts, as they elucidate on the goings-on in blerd culture. The topics to be explored are: Genndy Tartakovsky's Primal is in the midst of season 2 on Adult Swim and viewers might have noticed a time jump from the prehistoric to the Gilded Age during the 5th episode. Let's discuss.; after noticing so many highly praised discussions centering on Netflix' Tollywood action film, RRR, Dburt decided to check it out for himself. And it pretty much lives up to the hype; troubled/disturbed actor, Ezra Miller (The Flash, Justice League) finally acknowledges that perhaps he has some mental issues that have to be addressed; James Bond casting rumors have started up again for the umpteenth time but the regular cast of candidates might be out of the running this go around; noted screenwriter/producer and purveyor of the CW Arrowverse might be chosen to helm the DCEU as the Warner Media equivalent of the MCU's Kevin Feige and we give our thoughts; And lastly, our thoughts about the arrest of a Black budding actress who was arrested in Atlanta and how her entitled behavior led to the altercation to be mischaracterized and become viral on the internet.
One thing that Dburt is doing (finally) is investing in cryptocurrency, courtesy of Roundlyx. We would implore our followers to investigate, discern and then explore by using our referral code: afro-87A4BF
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