Buying Black, Rebooted

“Where was this product made?”

“Is this brand sustainable?”

Those are common conscientious consumer queries these days. For a growing number of Americans, though, another question is taking precedence: “Is this a black-owned business?”

Nikki Porcher, the founder of the nonprofit Buy From a Black Woman, at Just Add Honey in Atlanta. PC: Diwang Valdez for The New York Times

What used to be considered a statement of radical Afrocentricism is now little different from “buy green,

buy woman-owned or even buy American,” said Maggie Anderson, the author of “Our Black Year: One Family’s Quest to Buy Black in America’s Racially Divided Economy,” via email.

Like those movements, buying black broadcasts one’s politics. But it is also a hit-them-where-it-hurts response to big brands that make racist gaffe (see: blackface balaclavas) after racist gaffe (see: Little Black Sambo charms). By buying black, consumers are consciously disengaging from the viral cycle of corporate ignorance, public outrage and corporate apology.

And in the face of today’s fraught politics and overt racism, it marks a return to a form of economic protest from another time in America’s not-so-distant history…

Read the full article here.