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“There’s an old Wall Street story of a ‘customer’s man’ (that’s what stock- brokers used to be called) walking with a client by a riverside near the marina after a particularly weak spell in the stock market. When the broker pointed out the bankers’ yachts, then the lawyers’ yachts, and then the brokers’ yachts, the customer is said to have asked, ‘Yes, but where are the customers’ yachts?’”
  Wandering around, seeing Bermuda’s big new construction projects starting, the big construction works in project middle, and the big construction projects coming to an end, I was asking the same kind of question.
   My thoughts were picked up in a conversation with a middle-aged black Bermudian entrepreneur who has been in the construction business since he left college — where he majored in studies related to the world of business generally and the construction industry in particular.
  I asked him if he knew of any new large black-owned construction firm that had come into existence in the last ten years, and that was still in existence now.
  Answering my question, he replied: “Burchall, all the same people are still doing business in the same old way. All the big contracts still go to the white and Portuguese firms. We don’t get any of those big contracts. We’re still just getting crumbs. The crumbs might be bigger, but they’re still crumbs. Ain’t nothing changed.”
   Having heard him, I continued to look, see, and think. I confess that I found little that would help refute his assertion. Looking at the signs on all those ‘tower cranes’ that, like Bermuda’s new national bird, are standing and weaving new steel and concrete nests to hold all the new business fledglings; looking at the signs that adorn the nest’s billboards that announce the square footage and completion date; and that give the ancestry and DNA of the businesses that supply the goods and services; I found no evidence of new major black-owned businesses.
    That left me wondering if, over the past ten years, there has been any real change in the underlying flow of general business and overall economic activity in Bermuda.
Blacks in government
Back to my friend, now joined by another: “You know, I see a lot more black faces in government and I see a lot more government people looking a lot more comfortable, but I don’t see any real change out here in the real world. Brown and Co got going early but there’s been nobody since. I don’t think anybody really cares a damn about anybody except themselves…”
  Every now and again Dr Eva Hodgson holds forth on ‘black empowerment’.  I think that Dr Hodgson believes that one of the changes that must be wrought is that what she sees as historically disadvantaged black Bermudians should, as a matter of public policy, be specially helped so as to redress the big sins of the past. That blacks should be given special opportunities to improve their overall economic standing.
   I partly — but only partly — agree with her. I reckon that the Government-of-this-day as well as any Government-of-tomorrow is obligated to ensure that the economic playing field is made and kept level. Scrupulously, scientifically, statistically level. Or, at least as level as is humanly possible given the many foibles and failings of mere mortals. That way every person has an equal chance to crawl, walk, or run on and then perform. Performance is then up to each inividual — as it is with Barack Obama.
  That left me with this question: “Was the field made level? Is today’s field a level field?”
Some may argue that ten years is not long enough for field-leveling. But Microsoft went from startup to a one hundred million dollar company in ten years. Bermuda’s own Brown and Co went from idea to major operation in less than ten years. The City of Hamilton has had a huge change in skyscape and character in ten years.  
    Some may believe that black entrepreneurs lack the skills and intelligence that allows them to succeed in construction. But I’ll leave Dr Eva Hodgson to address the blatant racism that supports that thought.
    Finally, it can be argued that the playing field has not really been levelled. That despite all the rhetoric, all the grand speeches, all the posturing and profiling; nothing much has changed at all. That things are as that entrepreneur said and are still being done in “…the same old way.”
    So, are there any “customers’ yachts?”[[In-content Ad]]

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