The Cost of Exclusion

BLACKeNOMICS the book, and an update

"N---as drink a lot of Coke."

— Clarence Avant

I stepped away from Substack in August to finish the manuscript of my book Blackenomics. The book, all 87,000 words, is in the hands of my editor, Emi Ikkanda, at Tiny Reparations Books (an imprint of Penguin Random House), with an expected publication in Fall 2026.

I used an AI program to help me visualize what I might want in a book cover.

Those five words above were delivered in a Coca-Cola boardroom by Clarence Avant – the legendary music executive known as the "Black Godfather." In one blunt sentence, he made a room of executives face an obvious truth: Black people are big consumers, yet they’re often excluded from the prosperity they inspire and help fuel. That one-liner is the spiritual anchor of BLACKeNOMICS, my upcoming book about race and the American economy. I wanted to title the book: N—as Drink Coke. But I don’t want to alienate the audience. But that central truth is straightforward: while Black and Brown people bear the brunt of racism, no one escapes the damage. NO ONE. Some feel it more acutely, but no one escapes. By shutting out so many, America makes the economy smaller and dulls our national imagination.

America happily borrows foods from every culture – tacos and pad thai, barbecue and banh mi – but it doesn’t build its economy like its cuisine. We embrace the flavors of the world, yet often shut out the people who create them. In economic terms, racism isn’t just immoral – it’s inefficient. It’s wasted talent, wasted innovation, wasted growth.

I’ve spent nearly two decades reporting on business, culture, and politics, often as the only Black man in the newsroom, and I wrote BLACKeNOMICS to explore this inefficiency of racism. The book draws on stories from my career and dozens of new interviews. To be honest, it was written from a place of frustration with editors, who were IGNORANT of anything Black. I didn’t want to write some dry economics treatise or deliver a finger-wagging polemic. The book is a journey through real lives and hidden histories that show how race and money have always been intertwined.

From the Introduction to BLACKeNOMICS:

But what I’ve come to realize is that our fundamental misunderstanding of the economy and our lack of imagination is the idea that the economy is a zero-sum game. There is a secret belief that white people benefit from racism. That if a Black man or woman gets a job, then a white man loses one. White people will lose if the economy is more open. That's fundamentally not true.

That note is the very point of the book. Ending racism isn't only good for Black people. We are so fearful about race that we don’t see the massive economic benefits in ending the practice. The thing is, you have to believe that prisons are filled with Black Steve Jobs and Warren Buffetts.

The economic victors of the civil rights movement are white. DEI is not about doing the right thing; it’s about doing the economically efficient and expedient thing. The economic miracle of the 20th century was that each of us was given the opportunity to participate. Our silly rhetoric about race blinds us collectively to basic economic facts. The reason this book isn’t obvious is that mainstream news organizations don’t usually have Black men regularly reporting on the economy.

From that foundation, BLACKeNOMICS moves through history and into the present to show what we’ve been missing. From Biddy Mason – who rose from enslavement to become a wealthy landowner in California – to Sadie Alexander, the first Black economist in America, who warned in the 1940s that racial exclusion would handicap the nation’s prosperity, the book uncovers early visionaries who understood the cost of racism. It shines a light on cultural pioneers like Josephine Baker, an entertainer who found freedom in France (exactly 100 years ago this fall) and leveraged her fame to fight racism back home, and Oscar Micheaux, the filmmaker who built a Black movie studio when Hollywood shut him out. It recounts how Paul Williams, a Black architect, designed some of California’s most iconic buildings, even when clients refused to shake his hand. For political change, we meet Chicago powerhouses Dorothy Tillman, John Stroger, and Bill Beavers, who took time to teach me about money and race in Chicago and Los Angeles civil rights leader John Mack, who bridged communities and police. In the realm of music and entertainment, BLACKeNOMICS amplifies voices like Clarence Avant – the deal-maker who proved Black consumers’ power – and Quincy Jones, who rose from Chicago’s South Side to become a global musical icon once the doors opened.

In unpacking these stories, I tried to flip some familiar scripts. Take the watermelon, a fruit long weaponized as a racist caricature. After slavery, growing and selling watermelons was actually a path to financial stability for many Black families, a taste of economic freedom that was used to mock and belittle the success of Black entrepreneurs. Or consider fried chicken: today it’s comfort food, even a punchline, but a century ago, women across the South sold fried chicken to make ends meet, yet the primary face of American fried chicken is a huckster Kentucky “Colonel”. The very things twisted into stereotypes were, in truth, about our ingenuity and resilience.

Crucially, this book isn’t just about history. Blackenomics is about our economy now, and how we can do so much better. Alongside these narratives, I spoke with economists and thinkers to help connect the dots to the present. Janelle Jones, whose rallying cry “Black Women Best” reframes how we measure economic health, and labor scholar Steven Pitts, who amplifies Black workers’ voices, offered insight into the labor market’s realities. Sandy Darity and Darrick Hamilton broke down the racial wealth gap and floated bold ideas like Baby Bonds to close it. I explore the work of Cecilia Conrad about investing in diverse innovators, and I pulled from years of interviews with William Rodgers and Valerie Wilson about what truly inclusive growth might look like.

Beyond the experts, I learned from people working on the front lines of change: Anton Seals, who is planting seeds of renewal in Chicago’s neighborhoods through urban farming and cooperative business; Sharif El-Mekki, a Philadelphia educator building a pipeline of Black teachers to uplift students; and Karen Washington, a food justice advocate turning vacant lots in New York into gardens and opportunity. Each of these voices adds a piece to the puzzle, and they all echo one refrain: racism has a price tag, and we’re all paying it.

That price tag is the cost of exclusion, the wasted potential, talent, and prosperity that our society squanders by shutting people out. It’s measured in brilliant ideas that never get heard, cures never realized, in businesses that never open, in jobs that never materialize. It’s the wasted potential of a country that stifles HUGE parts of its genius. What if the next Google or the next great American novel never emerges because its would-be creator is shut out because of some old system no one thought to question? BLACKeNOMICS argues that we can’t afford these losses any more than we can accept the injustice behind them. The American economy – and spirit – can only reach its full potential when everyone is included.

After two years immersed in writing this book, I’m thrilled (and a little nervous) to finally begin to share it. Over the coming weeks and months, this newsletter will offer a sneak peek at what’s to come. Let’s consider this space a mixtape, before the album drops. I hope these stories spark some “driveway moments” of your own, the kind that make you sit in the car a little longer to hear how it ends. Because how it ends is up to us.