For years racism hasn’t seemed to be a credible explanation to me for the lack of Black business success and wealth creation. I have always questioned and tested “common wisdom”. In testing the racism explanation, I postulated that if it were true then all groups of Africans in America should experience basically the same lack of success. However, there was one group of Africans in America that were extremely successful: the West Indians. They were as dark or darker than most home grown African Americans. They often spoke with an accent. Unlike many of the Asian immigrants who arrived with bankrolls, they often arrived with little more than the clothes on their backs. However, they succeed at levels that far surpass the native African Americans in spite of being subject to the same racism. Recently, I had a chance to work for a firm run by a couple of brothers from Guyana. I leapt at the opportunity to work with them and gain some insights into some of the reasons for West Indian success in America.

Most successful African Americans were raised by parents who repeatedly told them that they had to get a good education in order to get a good job. Their parents wanted their children to do better than they had done. They wanted their children to “make something” of themselves. This drive to get a good job, defined as a stable high paying job, influenced their entire careers.  It influenced their major in college. They could have been the next Billy Dee Williams or Duke Ellington but they majored in something practical like business administration, accounting, education, or law. It influenced the jobs that they applied for – almost without fail they only applied to large corporations or sought that good government job. The most important criterion was a stable and good income.