Tips For Black Americans

First place to end poverty is in your own mindset. If you believe that you are supposed to live in an unending state of poverty and hopelessness, then that is exactly where you will continue to find yourself. It is, therefore, refreshing to witness President Barack Obama and the U.S. Department of Commerce place a major national priority on increasing the development and economic sustainability of Black American-owned businesses. In particular, there has been a steady increase in younger African American entrepreneurs taking the lead in new business development across United States.

power is ordained and limited only for the sons and daughters of former slave masters who are entitled to wealth based on their historical inheritance of privilege and power over the flow of money. Too many people in our communities do not believe that they can achieve financial success and wealth. That is a sad and inaccurate understanding of the opportunities at hand today. 2011- 2012 ought to be the year of focus on building and expanding Black-owned businesses and constructing a more secure economic foundation and sustainability for the expansion of wealth-building in the African American community.

U.S. Department of Commerce Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) and U.S. Census Bureau released new data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Survey of Business Owners showing “that the number of African American-owned firms in the United States increased by 60.5 percent between 2002 and 2007 to 1.9 million firms. African American-owned businesses also drove job creation over the five-year period, with employment growing 22 percent, exceeding that of non-minority-owned businesses.” Keep in mind that this Black American business growth was also during the severe economic crisis in the United States. Today Black-owned businesses are helping to provide more new jobs and income into Black America than ever before.

According to the MBDA, “While minority-owned firms are experiencing substantial growth, African American-owned businesses still only represent 7 percent of all classifiable firms but 12 percent of the adult population. MBDA works to promote the growth and global competitiveness of minority businesses, so they are better equipped to create jobs, boost their local economies, and compete in the global marketplace.” Here is where we definitely agree with Hinson and the MBDA. Connecting Black-owned businesses in the United States to the global marketplace is critical and essential going forward. Million-dollar businesses in our communities have an opportunity to become billion-dollar businesses with the right networking by building global business relationships and joint ventures. In other words, we have to expand our vision and mission. Ending the poverty in the African American community will not happen overnight. Building more wealth in our communities will also not be done overnight. There are not going to be quick easy fixes to our financial status. But, there are real solutions to our problems.

The point here is that as we build more successful businesses that serve the economic interests of Black people, we will be stronger to remove poverty from both out mindset and our socioeconomic condition. For those who are doing better today financially and for those who will do better in the future, please do not forget about reaching back to provide more economic development opportunities for more of our sisters and brothers who really want a better quality of life. The more we acquire or have, the more we should give back and lend a helping hand.

African Americans inspired by Obama

Michelle’s family story points to a hidden side of the Irish-American experience

TO AMERICANS, Barack Obama will always be known as their country’s first black president. For that reason, many Americans were surprised by his visit to his ancestral home in Moneygall on Monday.

But the adoring reception he received there had little to do with his skin colour. He was the president of the United States. He was an extraordinarily charismatic politician in fine form. And he was another American exploring his roots in Ireland. That he was a black man seemed irrelevant.

Though Obama’s visit reinforced the sense of close ties between Ireland and the US, there are reasons to doubt the strength of his roots here. Genealogists say that he is probably at most about 5 per cent Irish and his closest relative in Moneygall is only an eighth cousin. However, Obama’s embrace of his Irish identity expresses a deeper truth about Irishness in the US today, which some commentators have described as an “optional ethnicity”. For recent Irish immigrants to the US, particularly the undocumented, being Irish is a powerful and inescapable force in their lives. But most of the millions of Americans who claim Irish identity have ancestors who emigrated two or more generations ago, as do I. For us, being Irish is a choice we can make, usually one among many.

Enda Kenny recognised this when he introduced Obama at College Green by extending a welcome to all Americans claiming to be Irish “whether by blood, or by marriage, or by desire.

A leading academic recently revealed that Irish immigrants and African Americans married more than any other ethnic groups in the U.S. in the 19th century. That slave owners and poor immigrant workers are the two main groups of Irish ancestors being uncovered by African American looking into their past, the Daily Mail reports.

Eneclann, the Irish heritage company who discovered Mr Obama’s Irish ancestry says, ‘About half of the people we spoke to were descended from slave owners and half from poor Irish immigrants.’

Mr Obama owes his ancestry to Jane de Montmorency Wright, his closest living relative as sixth cousin, three times removed.

Jane says: ‘I am the same generation as Obama’s great-grandparents on the family tree. And my seven grandchildren, the oldest of whom is 17, appear to be a generation older than the President,' as read in the Daily Mail.

In 1850 Falmouth Kearney, the 19-year-old son of a shoemaker, left the Irish town of Moneygall for America, where he married Charlotte Holloway from Ohio. He was Mr Obama’s great-great-great-grandfather.

Race and ethnicity in the United States Census

Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, as defined by the Federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the United States Census Bureau, are self-identification data items in which residents choose the race or races with which they most closely identify, and indicate whether or not they are of Hispanic or Latino origin (ethnicity).

The racial categories represent a social-political construct for the race or races that respondents consider themselves to be and "generally reflect a social definition of race recognized in this country. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) defines the concept of race as outlined for the US Census as not "scientific or anthropological" and takes into account "social and cultural characteristics as well as ancestry", using "appropriate scientific methodologies" that are not "primarily biological or genetic in reference. The race categories include both racial and national-origin groups.

Race and ethnicity are considered separate and distinct identities, with Hispanic or Latino origin asked as a separate question. Thus, in addition to their race or races, all respondents are categorized by membership in one of two ethnicities, which are "Hispanic or Latino" and "Not Hispanic or Latino".

In 1997, OMB issued a Federal Register Notice regarding revisions to the standards for the classification of federal data on race and ethnicity. OMB developed race and ethnic standards in order to provide "consistent data on race and ethnicity throughout the Federal Government. The development of the data standards stem in large measure from new responsibilities to enforce civil rights laws." Among the changes, OMB issued the instruction to "mark one or more races" after noting evidence of increasing numbers of interracial children and wanting to capture the diversity in a measurable way, and after having received requests by people who wanted to be able to acknowledge their or their children's full ancestry rather than identifying with only one group. Prior to this decision, the Census and other government data collections asked people to report only one race.

African American

African Americans,Black Americans or Afro-Americans, and formerly as American Negroes, are citizens or residents of the United States who have origins in any of the black populations of Africa. In the United States, the terms are generally used for Americans with at least partial Sub-Saharan African ancestry. Most African Americans are the direct descendants of captive Africans who survived the slavery era within the boundaries of the present United States, although some are—or are descended from—immigrants from African, Caribbean, Central American or South American nations. As an adjective, the term is usually written as African-American.

African-American history starts in the 17th century with indentured servitude in British America and progresses onto the election of Barack Obama as the 44th and current President of the United States. Between those landmarks there were other events and issues, both resolved and ongoing, that were faced by African Americans. Some of these were slavery, reconstruction, development of the African-American community, participation in the great military conflicts of the United States, racial segregation, and the Civil Rights Movement. African Americans make up the single largest racial minority in the United States and form the second largest racial group after whites in the United States.