Grooming worthy successors.

Few milestones in the life of a thriving family-owned enterprise are more important--and more challenging--than the development and preparation of new executive leadership. It is one of the most difficult transitions for an entrepreneur to negotiate, and so, is neglected by most business owners. In fact, only 28% of the nation's family-owned companies have a succession plan in place. It's no wonder that only a third of these businesses make it into a second generation, and only 10% survive into the third. This is a critical issue for the nation's largest black-owned companies as the 20th century draws to a close. More than half of the BE INDUSTRIES/SERVICE 100 companies have been in operation for two decades or more.

BLACK ENTERPRISE will celebrate its 30th anniversary in the year 2000. However, the issue of succession has been a concern of mine since the magazine was launched in 1970. I am proud to say that paying attention to the grooming of worthy successors has paid off for my wife and partner, Barbara, and me. Our youngest son, Michael, continues to develop as the top executive at our Washington. D.C., Pepsi Cola distributorship. Our middle son, Johnny, now leads our newest and highly successful division, Black Enterprise Unlimited. And in December, a significant milestone in the history of Earl G. Graves Ltd. was reached when I named my oldest son, Earl "Butch" Jr., president of our publishing company.

The challenges facing Butch and the rest of his generation of entrepreneurial leaders are daunting. African Americans remain at economic risk, despite the tremendous progress we have made during the last half of this century. Black-owned businesses are growing larger, faster and in greater numbers than ever before, yet the combined revenues of all our companies remain less than that of many individual Fortune 500 concerns. While total money income for African Americans is projected to break the $450 billion barrier this year, we still generate less income per capita than white Americans, who are projected to generate nearly $4.6 trillion. And no matter who's in the White House or how bullish our nation's economy is, black unemployment remains double that of whites.

And let's be clear: our precarious economic position was not caused--and has certainly not been worsened--by affirmative action, but by the denial of educational, employment and business opportunities that are prerequisite to sharing fully in the wealth and power of this great nation. It is that legacy of exclusion, and not Rev. Martin Luther King's call for people of all races to be measured by the content of their characters, that is the true inspiration of California's Proposition 209 and similar "civil rights" initiatives. Substituting race-neutral, class-based programs, aimed at reserving preferential treatment for the poor, for race-based affirmative action, does nothing to mitigate the debilitating effects of racism on how our nation's resources are allocated. African Americans aren't discriminated against because we are economically deprived; we are economically deprived because we are discriminated against.

Most white Americans want King's Dream of racial justice to become a glorious reality--as long as they don't have to be discomforted by having to change their attitudes or the status quo. What's alarming is not white Americans' ambivalence to the aggressive pursuit of economic equity for black Americans, but our own lack of vocal and insistent advocacy on our own behalf. When our adversaries send the Ward Connerlys of the nation on a media tour to demonize affirmative action, where is our counter offensive?.Why are so many of us, in an effort to seem reasonable and responsible in the eyes of an increasingly conservative American mainstream, so willing to silently make unreasonable and irresponsible concessions in our struggle for the economic power that is prerequisite to us achieving full and complete freedom as Americans?

Too many African Americans want to be able to gain as much, and go as far and as fast as any other citizen of this great land--as long as they don't have to risk being a "trouble maker" by agitating against the practices, policies and behaviors that prevent them from doing so. To paraphrase an old saying, freedom's not free. If we want to gain full economic and social empowerment, we must agitate--not because we are trouble makers, but because we are in trouble.

As long as African Americans are denied access to our nation's bounty, all Americans are at risk of losing it. Our willingness to agitate has been our only means to open the doors to the educational, job and business opportunities that are the legal tender of freedom in America. Our adversaries are working hard to close these doors. They will succeed, unless we vocally and insistently require that they not only be kept open, but opened wider, by any means necessary--including, but not limited to, affirmative action. In the words of Frederick Douglass: "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."

It has never been easy to lead a black-owned company in a business environment hostile to the ambitions of African Americans. It may get much tougher before it gets better for black entrepreneurs as we enter the 21st century. That's why it is critical that we groom worthy successors to the mantle of executive leadership of our enterprises, large and small. If the young lions of Earl G. Graves Ltd. are any indication, the future of black business is in very good hands.