What a Serious 10-Year Economic Plan for Black America Would Actually Look Like

Black America has a gross domestic product. Nobody calls it that, because the phrase is reserved for nations, but the economic output of 47 million Black Americans, measured by total consumer spending alone, exceeds $1.8 trillion annually. If Black America were a country, it would be the fifteenth-largest economy on earth — larger than Mexico, larger than Indonesia, larger than the Netherlands. This is not a metaphor. It is a measurement, published by the Selig Center for Economic Growth at the University of Georgia, and it describes a population that possesses the raw economic mass to transform its own condition without asking permission from anyone, provided it can solve a single problem that has persisted for a century and a half: the problem of circulation.

A dollar circulates in the Asian American community for approximately 28 days before leaving. In the white American community, approximately 20 days. In the Jewish American community, estimates range up to 20 days. In the Black American community, a dollar circulates for approximately six hours. Six hours. This figure, while debated in its precision, captures a directional truth that is confirmed by every economic analysis of Black spending patterns: Black consumers spend overwhelmingly outside of Black-owned businesses, Black-owned businesses are dramatically underrepresented relative to the Black population, and the wealth generated by Black labor and Black consumption flows out of Black communities and into the balance sheets of companies, landlords, and financial institutions that have no reciprocal obligation to those communities.

The plan that follows is not a wish list. It is not a set of demands directed at the federal government, at corporations, or at white Americans. It is a phased, costed, measurable economic development strategy modeled on the approaches that transformed Israel from a desert with no natural resources into a technology powerhouse, Singapore from a colonial outpost into a first-world city-state, and the Korean chaebol system from postwar rubble into the world’s twelfth-largest economy. Each of these transformations was accomplished in approximately one generation. Each began with a population that possessed less economic capital, less political power, and fewer institutional advantages than Black America possesses today. None of them waited for permission.

Years 1–2: Foundation

The first phase is redirection. Not revolution, not disruption — redirection. Black consumers spend $1.8 trillion annually, and approximately 2.8% of that spending goes to Black-owned businesses. The target for Years 1–2 is to move that number to 10%. That single shift — redirecting 7.2 percentage points of existing spending, roughly $130 billion per year — would represent the largest voluntary economic reallocation in American history, and it would require no new money, no government program, no corporate partnership, and no legislative action. It would require only the organized, sustained, measurable decision of Black consumers to spend differently.

This is not a boycott. Boycotts are temporary, reactive, and dependent on white institutional response. This is a purchasing preference, and it is precisely what every other economically successful ethnic group in America has practiced for generations. Korean Americans buy from Korean-owned businesses. Chinese Americans bank at Chinese-owned banks. Jewish Americans support Jewish-owned enterprises through networks and institutions that have been refined over centuries. The practice is not ethnocentrism. It is basic economics: when you spend within your community, the money circulates, creates jobs, generates tax revenue, builds equity, and compounds over time. When you spend outside your community, it does none of those things. The arithmetic is indifferent to feelings.

The infrastructure for this redirection must be built simultaneously. Five hundred new Community Development Financial Institutions — CDFIs — capitalized through a combination of individual deposits, institutional investment, and New Markets Tax Credit allocations. CDFIs are not a theoretical concept; they are existing, federally certified financial institutions that specialize in serving underserved communities, and they have a track record of outperforming traditional banks on loan performance in low-income areas. The current network of Black-focused CDFIs is grossly undercapitalized relative to the need. A coordinated campaign to direct deposits — $10 billion in the first two years — into these institutions would create the lending infrastructure necessary to finance the business creation that follows.

Concurrently: financial literacy at scale. Not the patronizing, corporate-sponsored financial literacy programs that teach adults to make a budget on a napkin, but a serious, curriculum-based, digitally distributed financial education program covering investment, business formation, tax optimization, credit management, estate planning, and the specific wealth-building strategies that have been documented in the academic literature as most effective for populations starting from low asset bases. The target: 5 million Black adults completing a standardized financial competency program in two years, delivered through churches, barbershops, community centers, and mobile platforms.

Years 3–5: Build

The second phase is construction. The foundation has been laid: spending is being redirected, CDFIs are capitalized, financial literacy is widespread. Now the economy must be built. The target for this phase is the creation of 1,000 new Black-owned businesses per month — 12,000 per year — across five strategic sectors: food and agriculture, healthcare services, technology, construction, and financial services. These sectors were selected because they represent the largest categories of Black consumer spending, the largest employment multipliers, and the greatest potential for import substitution — replacing the external suppliers who currently capture the majority of Black consumer dollars.

The financing mechanism is cooperative economics: collective investment funds, capitalized by individual contributions of $50 to $500 per month from a membership base of 500,000, producing a capital pool of approximately $10 billion over three years. This is not venture capital in the Silicon Valley sense — it is cooperative investment modeled on the Mondragon Corporation in Spain, which began with five workers in 1956 and now employs more than 80,000 people across 98 cooperatives. The Mondragon model demonstrates that cooperative economics can scale, that worker-owned enterprises can compete in global markets, and that the returns on cooperative investment — distributed among the investors rather than extracted by external shareholders — compound within the community rather than leaving it.

“We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”
— Martin Luther King Jr., speech at St. Louis, 1964

Trade apprenticeship programs, targeting 100,000 Black youth in the first three years, focused on skilled trades that pay $50,000 to $100,000 annually without requiring a four-year degree: electrical, plumbing, HVAC, welding, carpentry, and heavy equipment operation. The skilled trades have a demographic crisis — the average age of a skilled tradesperson in America is 55 and rising — and the earnings potential is extraordinary. A Black electrician who completes a four-year apprenticeship at age 22 will earn more in his lifetime than 70% of four-year college graduates, and he will do so without student debt. The HBCU-Silicon Valley pipeline, running in parallel, targets the 10% of Black youth with the aptitude and interest for technology careers, connecting them directly to internships, mentorships, and employment at technology companies through structured partnerships.

Years 6–8: Scale

The third phase is scaling what works and eliminating what does not. By Year 6, the data will show which sectors have produced the highest returns, which business models have the strongest survival rates, which geographic markets have the most untapped demand, and which cooperative structures have generated the most jobs per dollar invested. The plan shifts from breadth to depth: instead of launching businesses across five sectors, concentrate capital in the two or three sectors where Black-owned businesses have demonstrated competitive advantage.

The target for this phase is Black-owned supply chains in at least five industries. Not individual businesses competing against established enterprises, but integrated supply chains in which Black-owned firms supply Black-owned firms, creating closed-loop economic circuits that capture and recirculate value at multiple levels. This is the chaebol model — the Korean approach in which a network of interconnected companies, sharing resources, information, and capital, achieves efficiencies and scale that individual firms cannot. Samsung, Hyundai, and LG did not succeed as isolated companies. They succeeded as ecosystems, and the ecosystems were deliberately constructed by a population that understood that national economic transformation required coordinated action, not individual entrepreneurship.

Community land trusts in 100 cities, acquiring and holding real estate in trust for community benefit, preventing the displacement that has historically erased Black wealth whenever a neighborhood becomes attractive to outside investors. The community land trust model separates the ownership of land from the ownership of buildings, allowing residents to own their homes while the trust retains ownership of the land, ensuring that appreciation benefits the community rather than being captured by speculators. The model has been tested in cities from Burlington, Vermont, to Houston, Texas, and it works. The barrier is not design. It is capital, and by Year 6, the capital exists.

$50 billion in Black-managed investment funds. Not Black-targeted funds managed by white firms — a category that has exploded in recent years as ESG investing has become fashionable — but funds managed by Black investment professionals, investing in Black enterprises, and returning profits to Black investors. The target is ambitious but not unreasonable: Black households hold approximately $150 billion in financial assets, and redirecting one-third of those assets into Black-managed funds over a three-year period would produce the targeted capital base.

Years 9–10: Sustain

The final phase is institutionalization — making the gains permanent. Economic development without political infrastructure is vulnerable to policy reversal, regulatory capture, and the cyclical nature of political attention. The target for this phase is the construction of a permanent institutional architecture that can defend the economic gains of the previous eight years and extend them into the next generation.

First, political lobbying infrastructure. A $500 million political war chest, funded by the investment returns generated during Years 3–8, operating through a network of PACs, super PACs, and 501(c)(4) organizations that represent Black economic interests with the same professionalism, consistency, and strategic discipline that AIPAC brings to Israeli interests or the NRA brings to gun rights. This is not about electing Black politicians. It is about electing politicians — of any race — who will vote for policies that support Black economic development, and about ensuring that those politicians understand that their votes will be tracked, measured, and rewarded or punished with the same rigor that every other interest group in America applies to its legislative priorities.

Second, a Black-controlled media ecosystem. Not a single network or a single publication, but an integrated ecosystem of news outlets, entertainment platforms, social media channels, and educational content providers that are owned by Black institutions, managed by Black professionals, and accountable to Black audiences. The current media landscape covers Black America as a problem to be studied, a constituency to be courted, or a market to be exploited. A Black-owned media ecosystem covers Black America as a community to be served, and it does so with the editorial independence that ownership provides and dependency prevents.

Third, endowed scholarship programs. The returns on the cooperative investment funds, by Year 9, should be sufficient to endow 10,000 full-tuition scholarships per year at HBCUs and other institutions, in perpetuity, without external funding. These are not scholarships dependent on corporate goodwill, government appropriation, or alumni generosity. They are endowed — meaning the principal generates sufficient returns to fund the scholarships indefinitely — and they are controlled by the institutions that award them. Every scholarship that depends on external funding is a scholarship that can be withdrawn. Every scholarship funded by an endowment is permanent.

The Math

The total self-generated capital over ten years: approximately $200 billion. This figure is derived from three sources: the redirection of consumer spending (which generates business revenue that circulates within the community), the returns on cooperative investment funds (which compound annually), and the productivity gains from financial literacy, trade apprenticeships, and business formation (which increase individual and household income). No component of this plan requires federal appropriation, corporate partnership, or philanthropic donation. Every dollar is generated internally, through the organized reallocation of resources that already exist within the Black community.

The objections are predictable. It is too ambitious. It requires too much coordination. Black America is not a monolith. The cultural and class divisions within the community make collective action impossible. These objections are reasonable, and they are also the same objections that were raised about Israel in 1948, about Singapore in 1965, and about South Korea in 1961. In each case, the objections were overridden by a population that decided that the alternative to coordinated action was continued dependency, and that continued dependency was unacceptable.

The Choice

Black America can continue to wait. It can wait for reparations that may or may not come, in amounts that may or may not be sufficient, administered by a government that has demonstrated over 160 years that its commitment to Black economic advancement is episodic at best and performative at worst. It can wait for corporate diversity initiatives that produce press releases and chief diversity officers but have not, in two decades of implementation, moved the needle on the racial wealth gap by a single percentage point. It can wait for the next election, the next protest, the next viral video, the next national conversation that produces empathy without action and action without results.

Or it can build. Not ask. Build. The resources exist. The models exist. The institutional knowledge exists. The only thing that does not exist is the organized will to deploy them, and that will is not a resource that can be provided externally. It must be generated from within, by a community that decides, collectively and deliberately, that its $1.8 trillion in annual spending is not a number on a Selig Center report but a lever — the most powerful economic lever available to any minority group in the history of the world — and that the time to pull it is now, because every year it remains in its current position, the wealth gap widens, the opportunity gap deepens, and the next generation inherits a deficit that is larger, more entrenched, and harder to overcome than the one this generation received.

Ten years. Three phases. Two hundred billion dollars. Not requested. Generated. The plan is on the table. The resources are in the room. The only question is whether this generation has the discipline to execute what previous generations could only imagine — or whether it will add another decade to the list of decades in which Black America had the power to change its economic destiny and chose, instead, to wait for someone else to do it.