An Advent Vision To Inspire Equity and Strengthen Black Communities

Photo courtesy of Family Leadership Initiative.

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(OPINION) We are in a season of waiting. Advent, by its nature, contains the tension of the coming Light Incarnate and the reality that we groan in darkness as we wait. Perhaps nowhere in the American social fabric do we see this Advent disposition more acutely than in Black civil society. 

While our country struggles with a global health pandemic, unprecedented political turmoil and a long-overdue racial reckoning, the pillars that support Black communities are crumbling. The social institutions — businesses, churches and nonprofits — that have buttressed Black communities for generations are collapsing under the simultaneous burden of illness, death and widespread financial failure. Black social institutions are struggling to provide the stability and resilience required to maintain the life of Black communities. This crisis requires a large-scale response that can stabilize, strengthen and advance the health of Black communities and their vital role in American society.

COVID-19 has disproportionately impacted communities of color, causing extreme declines in financial and health related outcomes. This suffering is directly related to longstanding inequities produced by centuries of racial oppression and injustice. Historic, structural racism in the healthcare system and financial marketplace have created specific vulnerabilities that have overwhelmed Black communities and their core institutions.

In the midst of this current crisis and the historical context of racial injustice, there is an opportunity to systematically address many of the injustices endured by Black communities and institutions with a redemptive vision of holistic justice. The Black church, both as an organizing institution and as a transcendent moral authority, stands at the center of such an approach, corresponding to its historic position at the center of Black communities. There is a shared understanding among Black people, regardless of their religious affiliation, that the historic Black church has advanced a public ethic of freedom and equal human worth for all Black people.

Embedded within the Black church’s core theology and practice is an ecclesiological understanding that the Body of Christ is called to advance public justice. A public justice framework will prove useful to the church, as it addresses the interconnected public health and economic crises of COVID-19. A public justice approach to strengthening Black civil society builds upon the historic engagement of the Black church in bridging the divide between private faith and the public square. 

As Christian citizens, we must ask: what are God's good purposes for government and for social institutions (families, businesses, churches and nonprofits)? And how can we empower these institutions to live into their callings holistically?

The late Congressman John Lewis described the Black church's stance in a 2009 interview with Terry Gross where he described how Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. used both the prophetic weight of biblical scripture and public moral authority to advance the cause of public justice. Lewis explained, “…we must not just be concerned about the pearly gates and the streets with milk and honey. We have to be concerned about the streets of Montgomery… about jobs.” 

Rev. James Perkins, the immediate past president of the Progressive National Baptist Convention, described the resilience and social power of the historic Black church: “[we can] organize ourselves and speak in such a way that we can impact policy and make changes to health care and jobs and the economic circumstances that we face.” 

The Black church’s theological commitment to engage public life has positioned it as the predominant anchor institution within Black communities.

Historically, Black churches have demonstrated great resilience in the face of adversity and are intricately connected to the flourishing of Black communities, linking Black people to the Black civil society institutions that advance quality of life. 

Today, these same churches are compromised in their ability to respond to the current crisis because of the financial instability created by public health related church closures and the loss of large numbers of older leaders to COVID-19 related illness and death. 

Strengthening Black communities in this current moment of crisis requires implementing a new methodology that builds upon the social scaffolding that already exists by connecting the institutions that bind civil society together — houses of worship, nonprofit organizations, civic leadership and businesses. One example of such an approach is the Inspire Equity Platform. 

The Inspire Equity Platform is a national platform that was formed to make targeted, large-scale investments in Black communities aimed at stabilizing and strengthening the critical social institutions present in each community. The platform seeks to inject an unprecedented amount of capital into Black communities through a unique combination of charitable donations and private investment. Large-scale structural transformation of Black communities through the use of private capital has never been attempted at this scale before. 

Some may wonder why such an approach is needed. In the White community, synergistic investments of capital happen organically, enabled by the marketplace and social forces. In Black communities, however, there are multiple systemic cultural, economic and legal barriers that make synergistic capital inflow more challenging. Furthermore, the amounts of capital deployed in these communities have been artificially restricted by mechanisms of intentional oppression. The net result is that Black communities have historically suffered from poor access to capital when compared to the White community. 

The result of this disparity in access to capital is a long list of seemingly intractable problems. It has contributed to a system of financial oppression that has had a devastating impact on multiple generations within Black communities. This inequity has also affected a host of institutions within Black civil society including businesses, financial institutions, religious organizations and nonprofits. 

The Inspire Equity Platform provides a national mechanism to address this disparity by consolidating sizable amounts of private capital and rapidly injecting it in a strategic sequence into Black communities. The method includes providing substantial amounts of charitable donations to Black church and Black community-based organizations followed by private investment in Black-owned businesses. 

It is important to note that the volume and speed of the capital deployment is a crucial element of the approach. 

If we use a “waterjet” approach like a high-pressure cutting system, vast amounts of capital are channeled through a very narrow target area. In this approach, we are able to break through the hardest obstacles similar to the way that water can be used for mining and cutting steel. Targeted bursts of rapid capital deployment can profoundly transform fundamental social infrastructures within congregations, nonprofits and businesses.

We have discussed the role of the Black church in providing both a social scaffold and moral framework to unite the faith, civic and business communities with a common purpose. In “A Century of Social Work and Social Welfare at Penn,” research conducted by Stephanie Boddie shows that Black churches, despite more limited financial resources, have more social impact in their communities, providing disproportionately more social services and civic formation. 

Vince Bacote, in his article “Business as Cultural Engagement,” points out that business can be one way that human beings bear the image of God and contribute to shaping culture. The fact that some have misused businesses for selfish purposes does not invalidate the fact that “In business there is the ongoing possibility for the production of cultural goods that can bring God glory.” In a capitalist society where individual property rights and the free market serve as the basis of trade, distribution of goods and development, businesses serve as vehicles for cultivating human creativity.

Denying groups of people the ability to generate and accumulate economic wealth, intentionally through oppression or unintentionally because of bias, must be seen as a fundamental threat to their freedom. It is also a fundamental threat to the broader society. 

Individual human flourishing is intimately connected to the flourishing of the social and economic institutions in the communities where individuals live their lives. Strong, healthy businesses owned by community members are essential to having strong, healthy communities. Black communities are ready for an investment strategy that systematically addresses the lack of local ownership by infusing funding into Black owned business and religious social institutions which have the trust of the community. This twofold investment approach establishes economic anchors within Black communities and ensures that businesses in Black communities are owned by people who are committed to strengthening the community. 

There is also already a positive shifting of the tides as capital markets are becoming aware that Black owned businesses are worth investing in at the comparable scale as their White counterparts. Bloomberg reports that, according to an online survey, more than 50% of Americans now believe supporting Black owned businesses is important. Moreover, according to the Bloomberg News survey, 61% of Black respondents and 37% of White respondents said “they were more likely now than last year to make a conscious effort to shop at Black owned stores.”

Consumers and other businesses can see themselves as capital investors by patronizing Black owned businesses with the intention of making Black owned businesses profitable and of supporting the accumulation of wealth by Black business owners and their employees. Patronage of Black businesses becomes a means of intentionally strengthening and invigorating Black communities in the same way that supporting “buy local” strategies have successfully strengthened small, White owned businesses across the country.

It is possible to turn the tide and support communities that have shown resilience in the face of structural disenfranchisement and crisis. But this requires a national commitment to unlock the full funding opportunity of capital markets to invest in Black businesses and Black community organizations while also enabling White consumers to “invest” through their purchasing power.

Individuals can inspire equity through small steps, like prioritizing Black-owned businesses in holiday shopping, prioritizing Black-led, faith-based and community-based nonprofits in annual charitable giving or through big steps like prioritizing Black-owned businesses in investment portfolios. The right capital deployed in the right way at the right time can and will make a difference that can change the course of our Black communities while also strengthening our entire nation.

Rev. Khary Bridgewater is the co-founder of Norstell Capital Group, LLC, the parent company of the Inspire Equity Platform and its affiliated funds and charities. Bridgewater is the director of the Thriving Congregations Initiative, located in the Urban Church Leadership Center of Cornerstone University. 

Chelsea Langston Bombino is a Fellow with the Center for Public Justice, a wife and a mother.