The Baton Rouge Area Chamber today released a statement vowing action to both address racial disparities and improve economic inclusion in the Capital Region.
“We have a responsibility to express solidarity that Black lives matter, to commit to doing more to understand and remove systemic barriers and institutional racism, and to help each other understand what has brought us to this moment,” BRAC writes in the statement.
The stark disparities between Black and White residents in the Capital Region prior to COVID-19 have only been amplified, and have manifested into a double-hit for the Black community: COVID-19’s health impacts are much worse, and the economic impacts are expected to be worse as well, because of issues like lack of access to capital, the concentration of Black Louisianans in the service industries, and education attainment gaps, BRAC says.
During the process to develop BRAC’s new five-year strategic plan, halted by the onset of COVID-19, the organization compiled statistics benchmarking the Capital Region against some 40 peer metropolitan areas. The results of this research showed that across a broad swath of indicators measuring a region’s relative strength for economic inclusion, broken down by race–poverty rate; household income; educational attainment; and workers in management positions–the Baton Rouge area performs in or very near the bottom half of every list.
BRAC says it plans to take action by doing these things:
• Calling on not only our existing Baton Rouge Procurement Opportunity Partnership partners, but all companies in the region to be more intentional about offering equitable opportunities for Black-owned suppliers.
• Pledging to connect Black-owned businesses in metro Baton Rouge to banking or credit partners to assist them with their application for a forgivable Paycheck Protection Program loan. No Black-owned business in Baton Rouge should go out of business for lack of access to this financial lifeline.
• Urging more businesses and business leaders to support the creation of diversity committees within their own businesses.
• Committing to cost-share Dialogue on Race tuition with the first 20 businesses who reach out to us, and to pursue those dialogues within our own organization.
• Engaging with young people who have taken a leading role in organizing local protests and discussing with them issue areas like law enforcement reforms and strategies to support reinvestment in disinvested communities.
• Championing and supporting people’s opportunities to serve as direct change agents themselves–filling out the Census, registering to vote and voting, reading the literature of racial injustice, and participating in our Diversity and Inclusion Committee.
