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Pulling back the curtains on wage-theft enforcement in MN; Trump's latest attack is on RFK, Jr; NM LGBTQ+ equality group endorses 2024 'Rock Star' candidates; Michigan's youth justice reforms: Expanded diversion, no fees.

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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says rebuilding Baltimore's Key Bridge will be challenging and expensive. An Alabama Democrat flips a state legislature seat and former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman dies at 82.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Study: Banks Not Banking on Minority-Owned Businesses

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Monday, March 3, 2014   

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - People of color make up 60 percent of the Golden State's population, yet California's largest banks do business with precious few of them when it comes to purchasing goods and services. That's according to a first-of-its-kind study from The Greenlining Institute. It found less than 8 percent of those purchases by banks in 2012 came from businesses owned by African Americans, Latinos, Asians or Native Americans.

According to Bruce Mirken, media relations director at The Greenlining Institute, it's not acceptable when a bank's supplier network fails to reflect the diversity of California.

"It's not really any conscious discrimination," he said. "It is more just an 'Old Boy Network.' They get used to using certain suppliers that they've used for years, which tend to be businesses owned by white men."

Mirken said banks are a key engine of the California economy, purchasing more than $51 billion worth of goods and services in 2012. The study encourages banks and other corporations to make an effort to diversify their supplier network.

Mirken declared that entrepreneurship is key to the American Dream.

"We have this enormous racial wealth gap in this country," he charged. "And if we can encourage businesses in these diverse communities - the entrepreneurial spirit is certainly there - it'll help everybody ultimately; it'll boost our whole economy."

Nationwide, the average amount of business that banks did with minority-owned suppliers was just 6 percent.

Read that report at: Greenlining.org.





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