Free Our Black Year by Maggie Anderson

place we passed was Moo & Oink. Figures. Moo & Oink is a Chicago-based, White-owned chain of stores selling low-quality, high-priced meats. Due to its famous ads—with Black voiceovers and Black singers, airing only on Black-themed (but not Black-owned) radio stations—and the fact that the outlets are situated in the poor, Black areas of Chicago, most people think the company is Black-owned.
    After the strip mall, the car wash, the McDonald’s, six barber shops or braid salons, a huge church and a couple of small ones, we had traveled almost a mile, walking into any business that was not obviously Black-owned—like the barber shop—and was not a funeral parlor, community center, or church. Even though the ratio of boarded-up storefronts to open businesses continued to grow, we still found a flower shop; a couple dry cleaners; five or six food marts; two check-cashing spots; a bunch of bulletproof, take-out joints; a soul food restaurant; two beauty supply stores; a Laundromat; and four liquor stores. Actually, it was more like eight liquor stores because the food marts and minimarts hardly had any food but were well stocked with alcohol.
    We went into every business along a four-block stretch on Madison between Laramie and just past Cicero. Not one was Black-owned except for the funeral parlors, two of the fast-food places, and all but one of the barber and braid shops. These West Side neighborhoods were all Black. The idea that a non-Black business owner resided here seemed highly unlikely. But, to test our assumption, we’d ask. And just like when we went hunting for a dollar store, we discovered that all of these business owners lived in places other than the West Side.
    And the residents were not happy about it.

    People complained to us about Moo & Oink, about how it was overpriced and that they’d never put a low-quality store like that on the affluent North Side, the predominantly White, wealthier part of town—the Chicago that people refer to when they describe how great the city is. Residents lamented that they had to go to “White parts of town” to find a Wal-Mart or other decent place to shop.
    Next, the four of us paused by a minimart, looking inside while debating whether to enter. A guy a shade or two lighter than me and underdressed for the weather was leaning on a pole outside a Laundromat, maybe getting ready to have a smoke while waiting for his clothes to dry. His short Afro needed combing and trimming.
    â€œAre y’all lost?” he asked.
    â€œNo,” I said. I decided to take a direct approach. “We’re just looking for Black-owned businesses. You wouldn’t happen to know of any in the neighborhood, would you?”
    He looked at me like an antenna had sprouted from the back of my head.
    â€œMan, we don’t own shit!” he said.
    John explained what we were looking for. The guy nodded and then shook his head.
    â€œNothing like that around here,” he said.
    We started to leave. But before we could, a middle-aged woman with freshly done microbraids who had overheard our conversation chimed in.
    â€œThese damn A-Rabs come up in here and take our money,” she said. “Then, they got the nerve to treat us like shit when we in their store.”
    We got back in the truck, with a collective pall spreading over us, and headed home.
    How naive we were. We went into The Ebony Experiment to engage in self-help economics—the practice of buying from Black businesses to empower the struggling Black community economically. All we had to do, we blithely thought, was “buy Black.”
    But it wasn’t so simple. How were we supposed to shop at Black-owned businesses when next to none exist? And for all its fine points,
Karriem’s store had its drawbacks. Its location was inconvenient for those who don’t live on the South Side. It didn’t carry the breakfast cereals, Pop-Tarts, or cheese crackers my kids were