BlackEconomics.org®
We are long-time advocates of Black Americans emigrating to areas where the White American majority can be most easily swamped by a Black majority. We considered this important topic in our 2020 volume, Exodus and in a March 2024 analysis brief entitled, “Moving South.”(i)
In Exodus, the argument is built from an economic efficiency perspective, but we now build a “structural” argument in support of this strategy. Black Americans represent a relatively high percentage of the population in certain southern states (Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, and Mississippi)—over 30 percent in each state. But these states will require more Black population growth or emigration than would be required to achieve a Black population majority in states highlighted in Chapter Five of Exodus (Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming).
However, from a structural perspective—and this is the focus of this essay—we believe that the economies of the above-named Southern states are likely to have a much less favorable future than the just named Midwestern states due to their current economic structure.
A state with a large Black population percentage results from a long-time presence of a sizeable Black population. Given the history of racism and discrimination in America and the absolute requirement to ensure Black American economic inferiority, these states have spent generations evolving systems to suppress Black American economic development. To suppress our economic development the just-mentioned systems require “experts.” Experts are compensated more highly than non-experts or support staff.
When experts are mainly White Americans, a class of White economic elites is created automatically. Whether the economic activity required to suppress Black American economic development is operationalized in the public or private sectors, White experts grow in number as the Black population grows and the economy expands. As more White American experts are employed, more top-tier incomes are produced, and the greater the White-Black income and wealth gap.
What are the mechanisms for suppressing Black American economic development? Begin with those fields or industries that affect our economic development directly and indirectly. Education is important because it determines, in part, our level of knowledge—our intellectual capital. Next, consider the health aspect of our human capital. Two industries that are directly tied to intellectual performance and health are agriculture and food manufacturing. Those who do not consume foods that promote high-level brain development or who consume foods that are known to be deleterious to health cannot perform effectively. When considering food, one automatically considers industries that provide food for home and away from home (i.e., retail establishments (grocers), restaurants, etc.).
An industry that directly suppresses our economic performance and development is the criminal injustice system and the prison industrial complex. On the other hand, what is seemingly an indirect approach to suppressing our economic development but that affects our economic development directly is the enabling and promotion of our overindulgence in, and over consumption of, nonproductive activities—mainly entertainment in all its many and expanding forms.
In the just-mentioned industries, experts are compensated well—both the experts and the expert managers who provide oversight for production: Educators and psychologists, physicians and psychiatrists, agricultural and biological experts, engineers, pharmacists, attorneys and judges, directors and producers, and coaches.
Higher levels of income create demand for industries that absorb surplus financial resources as investment: e.g., Banking, real estate, and construction. To govern the related high-income and wealthy polity, there is a requirement for a full complement of high-level and highly compensated government officials. Not stopping there, we add all the related licensing apparatuses, organizations, and associations—more experts—that provide oversight for industrial and governmental operations.
State economies that produce high incomes mainly for White Americans, have a sizeable Black American population, reflect intense racism and discrimination, and suppress Black American economic development, generally have economies that are structured to ensure these outcomes. Such an economic structure is not likely to be favorably positioned for a future of high productivity and growth as the shift continues toward adoption of more STEMAIR (science, technology, engineering, mathematics, artificial intelligence, and robotization) features. This is without regard to whether Black Americans will benefit from such new technology-oriented economies.
If Black Americans increase our populations and engineer political majorities in these southern states and seek to make them more economically friendly and favorable for Black Americans, then we will face a gargantuan task of reconfiguring their economies. This will take a considerable amount of time and will likely result in considerable economic hardships—unless Black elites, who gain control of these economies, continue past practices of suppressing Black American economic development and our gross exploitation.(ii)
All this, while states with a history of smaller Black American populations, economies with far less infrastructure for suppressing Black economic development, and states with less Black-White economic inequality are likely to be better positioned for transitioning to new technology-oriented economies rapidly.
We close this essay by supporting these views with Tables 1 and 2 that permit a statistical comparison of the Southern and Midwestern states discussed in this essay. The tables are presented without discussion below.
©B Robinson
120624
i See Chapter Five of Brooks Robinson (2020), Exodus: A Book for Black Americans Suggesting a Way Out and Up. BlackEconomics.org. Honolulu. https://www.blackeconomics.org/BEAP/exodus.pdf (873 KB). Also, see Brooks Robinson (2024), “Moving South,” BlackEconomics.org; https://www.blackeconomics.org/BELit/ms032924.pdf (Ret. 120624).
ii The gross exploitation of Black American economic development is characterized by using our bodies as inputs to production processes that create jobs for non-Black Americans, and that simultaneously prevent us from engaging in and benefiting from economic activity. Also, it is understood that the production of good or services that place us in positions or conditions to be grossly exploited should not be overlooked.
iii Statistics presented in Tables 1 and 2 were collected, analyzed, used for calculations, and visualized by BlackEconomics.org (Ret. 12624).
(a) Census Bureau (2024a), QuickFacts of the United States, https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/.
(b) Ibid (Census Bureau (2024)).
(c) Census Bureau (2024b), “Selected Population Profile in the United States,” American Community Survey, https://data.census.gov/table/ACSSPP1Y2023.S0201?q=Median%20Household%20Income%20by%20detailed%20ancestry&t=-00:-A0:Income%20and%20Poverty&g=010XX00US$0400000.
(d) Kirby Posey (2023), Household Income in States and Metropolitan Areas: 2022, American Community Survey, Census Bureau, https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2023/acs/acsbr-017.html.
(e) TCGen (2024), The TCGen Total Innovation Rank Index, https://www.tcgen.com/most-innovative-us-states-ranked/.