Cook County leads the nation in concentration of black-owned businesses, yet in Illinois only 10% of all black businesses are in communities outside of the Chicagoland area.
Larry Ivory is President and CEO of the Illinois Black Chamber of Commerce. “We have about 120,000 black business in Illinois, and that’s good news. That’s more than Asians and Hispanics put together. The bad news is they [Black businesses] generate on average only about $68,000 a year in revenue, while Hispanic-owned businesses generate $268,000 a year on average. For Asian-owned businesses it’s a half million dollars.”
Ivory said, “We don’t have a social economic problem; we have an economic social problem.” Issues like inequity in the criminal justice system and access to quality education are related to economic opportunities, which are limited when Black entrepreneurship lags behind.”
“When you don’t have adequate housing and criminal justice, it’s largely due to an economic impact,” Ivory said. “The only real way to mitigate the wealth gap is through entrepreneurship. You can have a great education, but if you have an education and no money, you still have a problem.”
The Illinois Black Chamber of Commerce aims to facilitate connections among established Black-owned businesses in Cook County and would-be business owners in downstate communities. According to Ivory, the Chamber works with leaders on all levels of government, from city mayors on up, but would like to see more outreach from the Pritzker administration particularly.
When it comes to support from state government, the COVID-19 pandemic offers a good example of Black-owned businesses coming up short as a function of an unequal playing field.
“We had an issue with the P.P.E.,” said Ivory, “where there were businesses who were pivoting because of the coronavirus, and we tried to reach out to make sure that Black businesses who could offer those goods and services—things like mask and gowns—for us to have a real impact, because they were buying those goods and we were the group that was most adversely impacted by COVID-19. But we didn’t get the response we’d hoped from the Governor’s office.”
According to Ivory, the Pritzker administration and the Illinois Black Chamber of Commerce are likeminded on most issues but there’s room for improvement when it comes to working together to best serve all of Illinois constituencies.