Success Runs in Our Race

The Complete Guide to Effective Networking in the Black Community

George C. Fraser

• Publisher: HarperCollins e-books
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780061927027
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Careers

A completely updated and revised edition of a bestselling book that has helped tens of thousands of people learn how to network effectively, Success Runs in Our Race is more important than ever in this fluctuating economy. With scores of anecdotes taken from interviews with successful African Americans -- from Keith Clinkscales, founder and former CEO of Vanguarde Media, to Oprah Winfrey -- Fraser shows how to network for information, for influence, and for resources. Readers will learn, among other things, how to cultivate valuable listening skills, which conferences blacks are most likely to attend when looking to build their business network, and how to effectively circulate a résumé.

More than a guide for personal achievement, this is an information-packed bible of networking that also seeks to inspire a social movement and a rebirth of the "Underground Railroad, " in which successful African Americans share the lessons of self-determination and empowerment with those still struggling to scale the ladder of success.

Part One

SUCCESS RUNS IN OUR RACE

1

Twenty Thousand Personal Guides to Success

God bless the Underground
Great praise to it shall ever resound.
The train, it never left the track.
No one was lost. No one turned back.

—FRANK MORRIS

A top a bale of hay in the back of a badly dented pickup truck, Juliet E. K. Walker, Ph.D., rides through a rutted hog run in a remote corner of the Midwest. When the lurching truck reaches the edge of a cornfield, the University of Illinois history professor, who has done postdoctoral work at Harvard, jumps out and plunges in between the tight rows.

She walks for fifty yards through the clawing cornstalks until she comes to a wooded patch of ground overgrown with Queen Anne’s lace and shaded by hundred-year-old evergreens. Filtered sunlight lands upon the bleached faces of twenty weathered tombstones in the clearing. One of the stones, a simple cracked tablet that has been knocked flat to the ground, marks the final resting place of Walker’s personal and professional inspiration: her great-great-grandfather, Free Frank McWorter.

The offspring of a West African slave woman and her Irish-Scot slave master, McWorter was born into servitude in 1777 in South Carolina. As a young slave, he became manager of his master’s farm in Kentucky, and earned extra wages by hiring his work out to others. He put those wages toward the establishment of his own business mining and selling saltpeter for the manufacture of gunpowder. With the profits from these ventures and others, Free Frank eventually purchased not only his own freedom, but that of his wife, Lucy, and fourteen other family members spanning four generations. He later moved his freed family to Illinois, where he used his entrepreneurial skills to buy land and become the first African American to legally establish his own town, New Philadelphia. From this town, populated by both blacks and whites, Free Frank operated a station in the Underground Railroad, covertly shuttling some of the hundred thousand runaway slaves who found freedom from slave masters and bounty hunters to the North and Canada.

In her doctoral dissertation, “Free Frank: A Black Pioneer on the Antebellum Frontier,” Walker wrote of her little-known ancestor’s dedication to improving not only his own life, but that of all black people.

Free Frank achieved success that was almost unheard-of for blacks of his time, and once he achieved that success, he dedicated himself to reaching back and elevating the lives of others of his race.

A NEW MILLENNIUM: A NEW UNDERGROUND RAILROAD

With this book, I am calling for the revival of that Afrocentric communal spirit among the millions of black Americans who are seeking personal and professional success, as well as for those who have already achieved success and now wish to build upon it and to spread it to others of our race.

Afrocentricity, which will be discussed at length later in this book, promotes the oneness of all things. Cooperation, collectivism, and sharing are the essential elements. Community is considered before the individual. Many of our black organizations have come to embrace Afrocentric principles. It is my belief, and that of many other blacks, that the image of the black community and in too many cases the actions of black people do not reflect the image and actions of our success-oriented ancestors. I’m speaking of great people such as the kings and queens of Africa, and more modern figures such as Sojourner Truth, Free Frank, Harriet Tubman, Malcolm X, and the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. These are the role models for a successful black community. These are the people who fought for us all.

Consider this then your personal guidebook for a modern version of the Underground Railroad; an Afrocentric Networking Movement that hopefully will deliver you to a destination called “Success” in both your personal and your professional life—a success marked by compassion and striving for the enrichment of all our people.

In many ways, it is understandable why so many blacks came to view their struggle in a hostile, racist, and exclusionary environment as an individual struggle. But the time has come to join together so that those who have succeeded can use their collective power to raise up those who are still struggling. “Networking helps people share psychological as well as political and economic interests, and it provides the sense that someone cares and is willing to help, easing the feeling that a black person is alone and at the mercy of an institutionalized white system that might be overtly or covertly against him or her,” said Dr. Alvin Poussaint, Harvard psychologist and expert on black families.

Like the Underground Railroad, networks with an Afrocentric philosophy are dedicated to improving the lives of blacks and elevating our race as a whole. Afrocentric networks come in many forms. If you belong to a black fraternity such as Alpha Phi Alpha or a black sorority such as Delta Sigma Theta or Alpha Kappa Alpha—or any organization devoted to uplifting the lives of its members—then you belong to an Afrocentric network. Many black on-line discussion groups, professional organizations, alumni groups, service clubs, and mentor or role-modeling programs are essentially Afrocentric networks.

Looking quickly in my own electronic organizer, which I affectionately call my “Soul-O-Dex” and which has grown from one thousand to twenty thousand names since 1992, I find the National Association of Black Social Workers, the National Society of Black Engineers, the American Association of Blacks in Energy, the National Association of Black Journalists, and hundreds more black networking groups.

There is no doubt that we know how to form organizations. But do we know how to use them to network for the good of our entire race of people? Or do we use them to further our personal ambitions, and maybe the agenda of our profession or special-interest group, rather than as sources of collective strength and self-determination for the good of all?

An organization of black lawyers is a professional network, but if its only goal is to benefit the lawyers, then it is too narrowly focused and, from my perspective, selfish. If that same organization, however, networks by putting the collective knowledge, energy, and talents of those lawyers to work to provide legal aid to the poor, or to draft legislative reforms to benefit the black community, or to mentor children and college students so that they might have positive role models, then that is Afrocentric networking for the benefit of our race. That is the sort of networking that we must advocate within all of our organizations.

If you belong to the congregation of a black church and you attend church social events, then you are part of that network, and it is a benevolent network. But it can also be a powerful force for change and good if, as has happened in various locations across the country, its congregation members pool their economic resources and put them to use to revitalize their neighborhoods or to conduct special educational programs for neighborhood children. That is the kind of Afrocentric networking that uplifts a community.

While many people think of networks as business tools, they have historically been used to implement social change. The Underground Railroad is an amazing example of networking for social change, as was the civil rights movement, in which a network of like-minded people came together, expanded their network, and forced a nation to change. Often, people turn to networking when they become frustrated by traditional power structures and by hierarchical institutions that refuse to listen. Leaders emerge in any group, but in networks, leadership is generally shared more readily and spread across the group rather than organized in the traditional pyramid style. Information becomes the source of power, and information flows to anyone willing to receive it. It is not racist or elitist or exclusive. That is what makes networking so effective: Many voices are heard, many minds are tapped. Ideas flourish in this environment. Power builds.

The rapidly expanding economic power of networking among blacks has not gone unnoticed. Every year, publications like Black Enterprise, Fortune, and Newsweek document several powerful examples of high-level networking among a group of the nation’s most prominent and affluent blacks. Carolyn M. Brown wrote an article in Black Enterprise entitled “Come together with colleagues and private groups to build a community of profitable black-owned business.” The article spotlighted Athletes Building Better Communities LLC (ABBC). AABC came into being when Mike D. Jones, Jason Fisk, Eddie Robinson, Jr., and Henry Ford of the Tennessee Titans decided to come together to reinvest in their communities by starting businesses. Each invested $100,000 into the Nashville-located AABC. The goal of the LLC is to invest in housing developments, franchises, real estate, and retail outlets located in Nashville’s underserved communities. Another one of AABC’s goals, according to the Black Enterprise article, is to form alliances with community development organizations, banks, faith-based organizations, and educational institutions. Titan defensive end Mike D. Jones stated in the article, “We took the seeds of the notion and developed a viable business plan.”

Another example, former basketball great Magic Johnson, has redefined himself as a businessman who focuses his efforts on revitalizing neglected communities and providing quality entertainment and services. As chairman and chief executive officer of Johnson Development Corporation, Johnson partnered with Kenneth Lombard, who serves as president of the corporation. Lombard had been regional director for Grubb & Ellis Real Estate Company. There he raised over $100 million by developing and executing creative investment programs targeted for pension funds and other institutions. Using his expertise and Magic’s desire to focus his efforts on revitalizing neglected communities, the company has successfully negotiated partnership ventures with Sony/Loews Cineplex Entertainment, Starbucks, T.G.I. Friday’s, Fatburger, and CALPERS. The development projects and related operations create jobs and employ local minority contractors and service vendors. All Johnson Development partnership entities perform in the top 10 percent of their respective businesses.

Other black “power networking” has also proven successful. There’s the collaboration between J Bruce Llewellyn, CEO of Philadelphia Coca-Cola Bottling Company (the only African American among Coke’s 394 U.S. bottlers), and a group of investors that included basketball star Julius “Dr. J” Erving, which bought a controlling interest in Philly Coke and has since built an enterprise that produces nearly 40 million cases of Coke products each year and earned $400 million in annual sales in 2001. Presently, the company is the third largest black-owned firm in the United States. Roy Johnson, former editor-in-chief of Savoy, a lifestyle magazine for anyone interested in how blacks affect the areas of business, politics, and art, forged collaboration with Keith Clinkscales, chairman and CEO of Vanguarde Media. Don Coleman, president of Global Hue (formerly Don Coleman Agency), made a strategic business alliance and joined the New American Strategies Group. Global Hue, Coleman’s full marketing services company, merged with several minority agencies that represent $270 million in billings. The rapidly expanding economic power of networking among blacks has not gone unnoticed.

Blacks are asserting themselves in positions of power in education, finance and banking, small business development, technology, publishing, real estate development, and entertainment and music.

I will give you more detailed examples of Afrocentric networks that work for our mutual benefit rather than individual gain in later chapters, particularly Chapter 10, “Networks at Work.” One of my premises is that blacks still have not used networking as a social reform tool, at least not as wholeheartedly or as effectively as other cultural groups. I find this perplexing, because the basic philosophy of networking—cooperative effort for the common good—is very much a part of our African tribal heritage.

In most African tribes, there was no such thing as private property; everything was considered community property held for the benefit of the group. Even in more recent history, certain segments of black society in other countries have worked together for the good of all much more enthusiastically than black people in America. The late Robert Maynard, editor and president of the Tribune in Oakland, California, often spoke of how his father’s small trucking company benefited from a network of men who, like his father, were natives of Barbados who immigrated to the United States. This “Barbadian network” had a communal spirit that somehow had not been allowed to flourish throughout the black community, Maynard frequently noted. But that can be changed, particularly in these ripe times in which thousands and thousands of successful blacks are in a position to join together for the good of their race.

The “twenty thousand personal guides to success” referred to in this chapter title come from the pages of SuccessGuide Worldwide; The Networking Guide to Black Resources, a resource guide published by my company, FraserNet, Inc. The SuccessGuide Worldwide provides resources and contacts from around the world, including Australia, Bahamas, Brazil, Cameroon, Canada, East Africa, Ghana, Jamaica, Japan, Puerto Rico, Senegal, South Africa, Switzerland, The Netherlands, United Kingdom, U.S. Virgin Islands, United States, West Africa, West Indies, and Zambia. They are modern examples, just as Free Frank is a historic example, of why I believe that success runs in our race. There are millions of blacks who are still impoverished, yes. But millions have been successful not only as individuals who have survived slavery, segregation, and American apartheid but as an enduring race of people who developed highly complex and sophisticated civilizations in Africa long before the white man evolved on the European continent. In other words, more than we have ever really acknowledged, success is a tradition in our race. We have it as our history, and we have it now.

As the only immigrants to come to this country in shackles and chains, we have come a great way. The questions that remain are: How can those of us who have succeeded use our success to empower those still locked in the struggle of poverty? How can we better educate and elevate our young? How can we build upon our successes to crea...

Table of contents

• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword by Les Brown
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part One
• Part Two
• Part Three
• Appendix A
• Appendix B
• Appendix C
• Appendix D
• Glossary
• Suggested Reading
• Your Comments, Please
• Searchable Terms
• About the Author
• Praise
• Other Books by George C. Fraser
• Copyright
• About the Publisher