Answer: There are plenty of obstacles for professionals and entrepreneurs of color: a wage gap, a funding gap, and plenty of discrimination. But for many there’s also an unspoken challenge while trying to build their companies, their career, or their wealth. A common phenomenon that some refer to as the “black tax”–money they give to family members each month. When Sheena Allen, founder, and CEO of tech companies CAPWAY and Phocal expressed the stress of “black tax” in a viral tweet recently, she started a conversation of what “black tax” looks like for black founders and professionals.
Explanation: creates a massive financial burden on Black American households that dramatically reduces their ability to leave a substantial legacy for future generations. Mr. Rochester lays out an extraordinarily compelling case which documents the enormous financial cost of current and past anti-black discrimination on African American households. The Black Tax, provides the fact pattern, data and evidence to substantiate what African Americans have long experienced and tried to convey to an unbelieving American public. Backed by an exceptional amount of research, Mr. Rochester not only highlights the extraordinary cost of the discrimination that African Americans currently face, but also explores the massive cost of past discrimination to explain why after 400 years Black Americans own only about 2% of American wealth. He then establishes a framework that Black Americans and other concerned parties can use to eliminate this tax and help create the 6 million jobs and 1.4 million businesses that are missing from the Black community. The Black Tax takes the reader through a complete paradigm shift that causes the reader to evaluate all forms of spending and investment in terms of the number of jobs created or businesses developed within the Black community. The Black Tax is immensely informative, thoroughly engaging and makes one of the most compelling and effective cases to commercialize Black businesses since the founding of the Negro Business League in 1910.
