Guide for significant moments in Black History in the United States
http://www.momentsinblackhistory.com/index.cfm
http://www.momentsinblackhistory.com/index.cfm
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In media, it is even more complicated given its ability to shape the values and ideals of its consumer. When news breaks on anything relating to our community very rarely do we as African Americans turn first to our news sources. Even covering the Mike Brown, Trayvon Martin, and other police shootings almost none of my Facebook feed posted articles relating to the matter from an African American owned media outlet.
Unfortunately, such a disproportionate amount being given to churches with our limited income leaves little for investment in the rest of African America’s institutions. Over the past 100 years African American owned hospitals have decreased from 500 to 1, African American boarding schools have decreased from 100 to 4, the institutional gap in HWCU/HBCU endowments has grown from 46:1 to 106:1 over the past 20 years, HWCU/HBCU research expenditures gap is 30:1, Harlem and countless other African American communities have been gentrified, and the wealth gap among all other groups (except Native Americans) and African Americans continues to severely widen. Yet, the African American church continues to be a booming industry. As a result we see even the African American non-religous based credit unions and banks anchoring their “business” products to churches.
A total of eleven HBCU-based credit unions that control a combined $87 million in assets and have 17 099 in members. For comparison, Navy Federal Credit Union, America’s largest credit union has $63.7 billion in assets and 5.3 million members. Three years ago, I wrote on what forming a national HBCU credit union would look like and why it should be a reality. As it turns out, much of the infrastructure for this reality is already in place. Now the question is, what is holding us back?
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Unfortunately, there also seems to be no urgency by these credit unions to do the things necessary to increase their membership and assets. Students entering into HBCUs today may be more financially illiterate than a generation ago, but they have more complex financial needs thanks in large part to student loans playing such a large role into today’s higher education finance. Not to mention the reduced role that social security will play in their long-term retirement planning.