Not too long ago, I wrote about the Empowerment Experiment. This social movement was started by African Americans who want to help black-owned business thrive. I asked whether Latinos should consider undertaking a similar project, or if it was all just racial politics.
Regardless, in that post, I wrote about how Latinos’ economic power lags behind that of African Americans. It’s not just that blacks do better than Hispanics statistically. It’s that black-owned businesses and entrepreneurs seem commonplace, while identifying Latinos in positions of authority is a little trickier.
For example, what is the largest Hispanic-owned business in the United States? Unless you work for it (or took a few minutes to google the question) you probably don’t know that, according to Hispanic Business.com, the biggest Latino-run organization is the Brightstar Corporation.
In addition to holding a spiffy, optimistic name, this company “is a solution provider and value-added distribution and manufacturing services company.” No, I don’t know what that Dilbert-inspired corporate doublespeak means either.
I was going to suggest that we all buy Brightstar products or employ Brightstar consultants or use Brightstar for all our networking/culinary/communications/porn-access/whatever needs. But like I said, I can’t tell what the company actually does. I just know that it’s big. For all I know, they manufacture toilet seats.
But isn’t it great to see that Latinos can create a mystifying corporate identity and spew business jargon that is just as vague and uninspiring as white America can? Yes, it’s a brand new day.
