Come To The Hood

If blacks want businesses in their hoods, get rid of the violent crime and businesses will want to invest. #Simple.

— Florida Made (@RichardMIATL) January 11, 2015

An entrepreneur comes to me looking for an investment in his company. I've been watching Shark Tank long enough to know the kinds of questions to ask: I'm going to ask about location, my return on investment, and I'll gauge how much knowledge and connections I have about their product and make my decision. I'm a successful businessman looking to open another business in a thriving area of the big city. I'm looking at location, proximity to attractions and most of all safety. I hate to say this, but I wouldn't put a business in the hood because of safety concerns. I'm constantly worried about my business being vandalized or burglarized, my customers would have to worry about being victims of crime because of thuggery. Some inner-city people don't want to work for theirs, so they turn to robbing someone else. Not everyone in the ghetto is criminally-inclined, but the criminal element does outweigh the law-abiding citizens.

If I pay for heavy police protection, that could alleviate some of my customers' concerns, as well as my own. It's like this: A lot of blacks complain about lack of investment in their hoods, but look at Ferguson, South Los Angeles, and any other black neighborhood that's suffered from disturbances; the rioters burned down and looted their own businesses. No one's going to invest in your community if you don't take care of it. That means standing up to the criminal element and working with the police to rid your hood of violent crime. I'm growing tired of some blacks complaining about the lack of investment in their communities when all some of them do is burn their own down if a cop shoots down an unarmed black guy. If I compare black neighborhoods to white neighborhoods, I'm likely to make more money in the white communities because of low crime risk, location and because whites are pro-business. They're quick to support up-and-coming business because it makes their community look good, and it does.

I'm not saying that blacks won't support business because a lot of them will, but unfortunately, a lot of black communities have a very high crime risk so it wouldn't make good business sense to open a business in a black neighborhood. I wish that weren't true, but unfortunately it is. I'm all for investment coming into black communities because it's really needed, but there's too many barriers preventing investment from coming into black neighborhoods.