In the midst of federal job layoffs, and the increasing handwringing by Black female supporters of former presidential candidate Kamala Harris on whether to rest or help others fight during the next four years, an intriguing conference – dubbed The Opportunity Summit - gathered last week in both the U.S. Capitol and Hart Senate Office Building.
This coming together featured an unusual political spectrum of very successful Black business owners and no less than twelve senators from both sides of the political aisle, including Republican Senators Ted Cruz (Texas) and Pete Ricketts (Nebraska) and New York Stock Exchange chairman Jeffrey C. Sprecher and his wife, newly appointed administrator of the Small Business Administration Kelly Loeffler.
Among its prominent speakers were Republican Senator Tim Scott and Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock, who at one point genuinely referred to Senator Scott as “my brother.”
If not quite the Illuminati, all this star power felt at least like a gathering of today’s “Talented Tenth.” This was an effort to engage in meaningful dialogue with a bipartisan group of businesspeople and policymakers — which is important because a lot of people just engage solely on the left or on the right. But these were men and women who say, “Look, we want to engage with both parties to talk about how we want, as a Black business community, to be a part of this expanding economy.”
One of the hosts, Walter Davis, a Charlotte business leader, set the tone of the event right from the start: “This is all about engagement. You know, there’s a lot swirling right now. Someone recently said to me that Black women are disengaging because they don’t want to support people who don’t support us – so we’ll just focus on us. But we don’t have a choice but to engage. Frederick Douglass didn’t disengage. Martin Luther King didn’t disengage. If you want change, you have to engage.”
Or, in the words of Senator Tim Scott in addressing the conference: “Our relatives have paid too high of a price for us not to see discomfort as a motivating factor for our success. I can be a victim, or I can be victorious. But I couldn’t be both. What matters is our ability to persevere. We come from people who are victorious through perseverance.”
Loren Douglass, from the Harvey C. Russell, Jr., Institute for International Business and Strategic Coalitions, offered an even more direct, practical take: “We now know that affirmative action and DEI are things of the past — so we’re going to harness the power of the markets to make affirmative action and DEI irrelevant.” He also pointed out that the American economy has historically grown at a 1.5% clip, while the average return on capital has been 45%. What this means is that you’ve got to own to accumulate wealth. This is a “capitalist” economy and not one powered by wages.
Not that this is anything easy. In particular, Warnock framed the reality for Black individuals: “We all know that this is a system we’ve always been a part of, although that system has not always recognized our contributions, has not, for that matter, always recognized our humanity. And in many ways, we find ourselves in that fight again, but we’re not new to this fight, and we’re ready.”
Indeed, there’s no value to be found in sitting out these four years. In fact, there are tremendous economic opportunities that promise to present themselves if we stay engaged.
“It’s incredibly important for us to figure out how to unlock capital for disadvantaged communities,” said Senator Scott. “My goal is to set the kind of parameters that allows for $1 trillion of capital to be set free in disadvantaged communities in the next 10 years. I believe we can get even to $2 trillion…. What does that take? It takes us creating a little more flexibility on the resources that we create for affordable housing. It also takes financial inclusion.”
For those of us disengaged, note that this is a Republican talking – and not simply a Republican but the chair of the Senate Banking Committee.
“If you’re not about red or blue, but you’re about green,” Scott concluded, “And you’re agnostic about the person bringing the assistance, let us celebrate the people who bring the assistance to you.”