It’s time to recognize our opportunity
By David L. Steward
Guest Columnist
The new five-year, $20 million economic development campaign launched earlier this month by the St. Louis Regional Chamber & Growth Association (RCGA) deserves the enthusiastic support of the entire African-American community, and especially of our business community.
The campaign, which is using the tagline, “St. Louis: Perfectly Centered. Remarkably Connected,” has three main goals: persuading new businesses from outside the region to establish an operation here; persuading existing businesses to stay and expand; and persuading entrepreneurs to start and develop companies. Put them all together, and you have a campaign that targets one of the St. Louis region’s key needs – faster economic growth.
For decades, the economy of the St. Louis area – defined as the City of St. Louis, St. Louis County, and 14 other Missouri and Illinois counties – has been growing at about half the national average. A shortage of job opportunities for the 2.7 million people who already live here has been one key result. Another has been an inability to attract new people – representing new talent, new energy, new ideas – on a net basis.
This has been doubly true for the African-American community. Our unemployment rate this past August was 11.2 percent, according to calculations by Randall Clark, labor market analyst for the Missouri Department of Economic Development. That compares with 4.9 percent for the St. Louis area population as a whole.
The African-American community also, of course, trails seriously in many other economic and social indicators. In 2000, median household income for all St. Louisans was $44,437, the Census Bureau found; for African-American households, it was nearly 40 percent less – only $27,310. There are similar gaps between the races in housing, infant mortality and education.
All of this means that the African-American community has a huge stake in seeing stronger growth in the area economy. The whole pie has to grow if we are to have any hope of getting a larger share.
I believe we can get a larger share. The emergence of African-American entrepreneurs and businesspeople – like Brenda Newberry of The Newberry Group, Michael and Steven Roberts, Arnold Donald, Tim Slater of DPSI, Kelvin Westbrook of Millennium Digital Media, Mike Lockette of Commworld of St. Louis, and many others – proves that African Americans today can succeed in meaningful ways in the St. Louis area business community.
Historically, this was not true. We did not have access to the broad economy. And so our talented young people headed for places like Atlanta and Washington, D.C. and New York to find opportunity.
But over the last 10 years, the St. Louis area has changed. Companies like the ones I’ve just mentioned show that if African Americans are prepared and ready to meet the challenges of the business world, they can make it here.
In fact, I believe that St. Louis now offers a competitive edge for entrepreneurs of any race. I think we offer something remarkable that we tend to discount or overlook altogether – core values and a terrific work ethic.
St. Louisans exhibit a loyalty, trust, commitment, and willingness to work that I haven’t seen duplicated anywhere in all my years of business. If you think that’s corny or unimportant, just ask all the people who had stock in Enron and Adelphia and all the other companies that went poof in recent years.
St. Louisans are also skilled and educated. The presence here of excellent universities, including nationally ranked Washington University, has something to do with that. So does the presence of excellent public schools in the suburbs and private and parochial schools. And in the St. Louis Public Schools, I am confident that we are on the way to significant improvement with the new leadership and board.
When you combine these two characteristics – character and work ethic, on the one hand, with skill and education on the other – you get a workforce that gives you a competitive edge. I know that workforce has been the number one reason for World Wide Technology’s success.
It’s time that more of us in St. Louis recognize that we really do have something special here. Part of the strategy of the new campaign is to get people here to be better ambassadors for our region with the outside world – a role we St. Louisans haven’t played very well traditionally. Specifically, the organizers want St. Louisans to understand that our community offers an outstanding quality of life, with the business, cultural and recreational assets of a big city along with the affordability, convenience and sense of community of a smaller one. They also want St. Louisans to recognize that we have a broadly skilled and highly talented work force and a strategic, central location that provides easy access to national and international markets.
I think all those things are true. Of course, our African-American community hasn’t reaped a fair share of the benefits. But the time has come when we can do something about that. Let’s take advantage of our opportunity. Let’s build this community, business by business.
David Steward is founder and chairman of World Wide Technology, Inc., the largest African-American-owned company in America.