Our Black Year: One Family's Quest to Buy Black in America's Racially Divided Economy

Maggie and John Anderson were successful African American professionals raising two daughters in a tony suburb of Chicago. But they felt uneasy over their good fortune. Most African Americans live in economically starved neighborhoods. Black wealth is about one tenth of white wealth, and black businesses lag behind businesses of all other racial groups in every measure of success. One problem is that black consumers — unlike consumers of other ethnicities — choose not to support black-owned...