“I’m proud,” said Harry Alford, president and CEO of the National Black Chamber of Commerce. “We’re the fastest-growing segment.”
Alford said black entrepreneurs have been helped by improved education levels and increased incomes among black consumers and business owners.
Blacks as a group still trail whites in education and income, but they have made gains in the past half-century. In 1950, only 14 percent of black adults had high school diplomas, compared with 36 percent of whites, according to the Census Bureau. The gap narrowed by 2000, when 72 percent of black adults had at least a high school diploma, compared with 84 percent of whites.
“We’ve got the first generation of significantly educated people,” Alford said. “There’s a black middle class like never before.”
Not bad for an irredeemably racist country.
