In a recent opinion piece on TheGrio.com, writer Lawrence M. Watkins explored myths and half-truths about the black business community and why you should continue to buy black.
In a recent article he wrote called “The Guide to Buying Black,” Watkins’ piece received many negative comments about consumer experiences with black businesses and how they weren’t positive ones.
Below is an excerpt of the piece:
1. “Customer service is terrible with black-owned businesses.â€
Black businesses have the reputation for having poor customer service. What is often left out is that many white-owned businesses are plagued with poor customer service as well. As I can attest, one of the most challenging things to do with any new business is to set up a culture and process of excellent customer service.
Not all black businesses have bad customer service. The poor reputation of black businesses leads to confirmation bias, which is our tendency to favor information that confirms our beliefs. We selectively recall the bad experiences that we have with black businesses while ignoring all of the good ones. Often, we completely ignore the good and bad experiences from businesses outside of the black community and just assume that they were all superior.
Read the rest of the half-truths at TheGrio