In a statement issued this morning, the Baton Rouge Area Chamber joined the chorus of voices around the country responding to the death of George Floyd, pledging sustained action to address racial disparities and improve the region’s economic inclusion.
“We call upon the Baton Rouge Area business community to stand together and say, with one voice: enough,” the statement reads. “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.”
The statement called to mind another strongly worded statement from BRAC, issued in 2016 at a news conference of BRAC leaders in response to protests over the killing of Alton Sterling. Then, as now, the chamber vowed to do its part to improve race relations and socioeconomic inequality.
“Our community is hurting and it is divided,” said then-Capital One Bank Market President Ric Kearny at the time. “We have to acknowledge that racism, bias and discrimination still exist today in America, in Baton Rouge.”
But four years later, it appears little has changed, which raises the question: Why will this promise of sustained action be any different?
BRAC President and CEO Adam Knapp points to several specific things the chamber has done in the years since Sterling to address the complex challenges but concedes there’s a lot more work to be done.
“Has there been progress? Not enough,” Knapp says. “There needs to be more and we want to say that very clearly.”
Among the most significant initiatives BRAC has established since 2016 is the procurement opportunity partnership, or BRPOP. The program, a partnership with the mayor’s office, helps connect small minority and disadvantaged businesses with procurement opportunities in the community.
In the year since it began, the program has facilitated more than 46 contract awards and purchase orders with small businesses, representing more than $5 million in value.
BRAC has also made diversity and inclusion part of its five-year strategic plan since 2016 and every year has tried to expand on what it can do in that arena. In 2018, it led a canvas trip to Cincinnati to study how that city’s business community had invested in and helped revitalize an underserved historic neighborhood called Over the Rhine.
BRAC’s diversity and inclusion committee has hosted seminars and lectures to increase awareness about issues related to racial and economic discrimination, and also created an awards program that recognizes local businesses that promote diversity in their workplace.
The group’s latest pledge of support promises to do still more.
But engineer Ann Trappey, who chaired the BRAC board in 2016 and worked on some of the diversity and inclusiveness initiatives, says it’s hard to move the needle when the roots of the problem run so deep. Though the business community has to do more, she says it’s hard to know where to start.
“There has been generational racism for so long, how do you change that in five years?” she asks. “We all want to do something but how do we make that happen? I don’t know what to do.”
