Business and equity

Hello everyone!

For this Black History Month I attended an African American Chamber of Commerce conference this week to get some takes outside the cannabis space about the overall state of business for the Black community and what it means for all communities. Interesting, and hard conversations with the below Q&A.

As always, I hope you enjoy the issue.

Take care and until next time…

— Jelani Gibson

Q&A with …

Dr. Denise Anderson

This week I went to an African-American Chamber of Commerce meeting that discussed disparities for Black business. What I pulled from the meeting was that many at the conference put forward solutions that were similar in many ways to what’s already being done in the cannabis space.

There was also a certain amount of consternation among people who knew the issues that the cannabis space was dealing with and wondered whether or not the proposed solutions were going to be good enough to get things in a productive direction.

One of the primary complaints at the conferences? The amount of bureaucracy it takes for businesses to get government contracts and get reviewed in a timely manner. This is something that has been consistently talked about in the cannabis space as well when it comes to licensing.

So, for this interview we’re going to check in outside of the cannabis space so that we can also reflect on what other industries are doing, what they’re learning from the cannabis industry and vice versa.

Here we start our Q&A with Dr. Denise Anderson, an African American Chamber of Commerce board member. We discuss solutions, the state of Black business, lessons from cannabis and what it means for New Jersey.

You gave a presentation at the conference about a recent report commissioned by the Murphy administration that showed disparities in Black businesses and government contracting. Could you go through what you think needs to be quantitatively done to measure the effectiveness of impact and promises kept when it comes to breaching that gap?

In order to see this to fruition, we really need accountability. There has to be accountability at the government level and transparency with that accountability because what we saw was this five year look-back at the data. We can’t afford to look at this again in another two or even three years.

Once these parameters are put in a place we have the baseline. And let’s be honest, we’re now in 2024. This [report] covered 2015 to 2020. The disparities are probably greater, but we don’t know. We don’t even know what the differences are; how much worse this could possibly look for 2021, 2022, we just finished 2023.

The point is that once a program has been put into place for minority and business enterprises, it’s important to be able to look at this on a quarterly basis and on the annual basis. There should be a dashboard, there should be goals.

If you’re watching that on a monthly basis, you’re looking at that quarterly, you’re looking at that annually, what it does is, it allows you to assess and course correct in real time and not wait for another year or years worth of data to say, ‘Oh that didn’t work.’

A lot of the things that you were suggesting, the closest government agency that we have that currently recreates a process like that and pushes out diversity data for a business licensing process along those quarterly lines is the Cannabis Regulatory Commission. The market was, however, started off by a group of large companies. Are there any parallels here for what was talked about at the conference?

There are these consistent, highly utilized contractors that are receiving most of the state business. So what we’re asking for is an opportunity and fairness to be able to participate in this. As long as we’re being blocked out, as long as it’s just this cohort of the same folks that are receiving the opportunities it’s just not equitable. It’s not fair when it comes to this same cohort of people getting the contracts.

Does this have a lot to do with the way that politics and business intersect in New Jersey?

I believe so. Because it’s all about who you know. John Harmon [African American Chamber of Commerce director] always likes to say ‘It’s not about who you know, but who knows you.’ I think that’s very applicable here in the business space and it really goes back to a broader issue that we have.

When we talk about business relationships we’re usually going to partner with someone that we have a partnership with but that’s a greater social concern.

What we see is that when we look into our networks of who it is that we know, they typically share the same demographics. If that is the only way that you’re going to reach out and partner and bring other people in, then it’s a bigger context.

Because in order to now start to build a rapport in a relationship with business owners that do not share your own demographics, there has to be an intentional social endeavor there.

Do you think that the State Democratic Party has kept their promises to Black people commensurate with the amount of support they show that often exceeds 90%.

I acknowledge some of the policies from this Democratic governor that definitely are beneficial to communities of color and Black communities. However, they need to go further. I still stand by the fact that all of these other things without policies that address economic prosperity and opportunity, [those] other things just move along slowly.

At the belly of the beast, at the heart of all this, is going to be economic stability.

Explain how economic stability is core to the state of Black business.

If we’re talking about economic stability, we start to think about our educational systems. I mentioned how Black people are hyper-segregated in urban centers across the country. We’re talking about Newark, we’re talking about Trenton, we’re talking about Camden, Paterson. We start to see where our children are being left behind where there are so many social things that are pulling from the resources of the school systems.

Education is linked to employment. Not being able to receive your education, not being able to graduate from high school or get a GED directly impacts your employability.

We’re also a country absent of universal health care. Our healthcare is based upon largely being employed. If you’re not working, then you’re more likely not to have insurance. Most people receive insurance from the job they’re on.

We see all of the things about increases in violence, the over-representation of fast food restaurants, liquor stores, things of that nature. We see a lack of green spaces, bike lanes, and parks. It’s all interconnected. Homeownership? You have to have a job for that.

So, what I’m hearing here is that the inequities of Black existence carry over into Black business and the state of Black business — that the state of Black business is not simply the state of Black business. The state of Black business is the state of Black existence?

Absolutely. I love the way you put that together. This is about our lives and livelihoods. At the heart of it is financial security. It affects everything we’re able to do and what we’re not able to do. That generational wealth — it’s important.

What about all of the back room conversations and politics? How do you get over that?

We’re not going to be able to stop the backroom conversations, politics and the elbow rubbing. That’s going to continue to happen. We have to be forward-facing in terms of establishing expectations, monitoring and accountability. So what happens when the state agencies or municipalities and counties don’t reach those goals?

People have to have a true consequence that is compelling enough to make them do the right thing when their moral consciousness won’t allow them to.

• Smoking Classics, Newark’s Largest Cannabis Dispensary, Gains Approval by Jersey Digs’ Chris Fry: A plan to convert a vacant car sales and auto body shop into a sprawling cannabis destination has been given the green light as a new business called Smoking Classics hopes to open in Newark this summer.
• Does marijuana cause psychosis? The answer is complicated, a CNN opinion piece by David Nathan and Peter Grinspoon: It is unlikely that cannabis use by itself causes schizophrenia. The rates of schizophrenia have been stable for the last 70 years, while the rates of worldwide cannabis use have gone up from the hundreds of thousands in the 1950s to the hundreds of millions today. If cannabis caused schizophrenia, the rates of schizophrenia would have risen alongside the thousand-fold increase in cannabis use, and they haven’t.
• U.S. Navy Expands Marijuana Waiver Authority To Address Recruiting Shortfalls by Marijuana Moment’s Ben Adlin: Amid the U.S. military’s ongoing recruiting crisis, the Navy is expanding authority to grant waivers to recruits who arrive at boot camp and initially test positive for marijuana, instead of simply sending them home. “If they fail that test and own up—’Yes, I smoke marijuana ‘—we do an evaluation of the young person to make sure there’s not something else going on,” Rear Adm. James Waters told reporters this week. “But we trust that through the process of boot camp that we have an opportunity to bring them along with our culture.”

For cannabis recruitment solutions please contact Deneen Wright, dwright@njadvancemedia.com or call 201-324-5092.