Black Enterprise magazine released the nation’s top Black Owned Business in America for their 35th anniversary. This analysis included 100 industrial/service companies, 100 auto dealerships, 60 financial firms, and 15 advertising companies.

In 1973, BE magazine compiled this list of top 100 enterprises, the gross sales was $473 million. In 2007, BE magazine’s gross sales from the top 100 is more than $27 billion.

Below, I have listed some top 10 black owned Enterprises in America.

No 1. World Wide Technologies ( IT Firm) ($2 Billion)

No 2. CAMAC ( Natural resources) ( $1.6 billion)

BE ADVERTISING AGENCY: GlobalHue, Southfield, MI ($550 million in billings)

BE BANK: Carver Federal Savings Bank, New York, NY ($765 million in assets)

BE INVESTMENT BANK: The Williams Capital Group L.P., New York, NY ($142 billion in total managed issues)

BE ASSET MANAGER: EARNEST Partners, Atlanta, GA ($26 billion in assets under management)

BE PRIVATE EQUITY FIRM: Fairview Capital Partners Inc., Farmington, CT($2.4 billion in capital under management)

We proud of the black leader of today and tomorrow. We can become the entreprenuers of the future by focusing and achieving what we want out of life.

DO WHAT YOU LIKE DOING AND YOU’LL BE ABLE TO ACHIEVE ANYTHING!!!

Source 

A common virus, believed to be transmitted during oral sex, is the cause of a rare throat cancer in both men and women, US researchers said Wednesday.
The study is the first to prove the link between the human papillomavirus or HPV — the leading cause of cervical cancer — and oropharyngeal cancer, according to the paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University, Maryland, who studied 100 men and women newly diagnosed with the rare malignancy and 200 healthy people found that a common strain of HPV — HPV 16 — was present in 72 percent of tumours.

Patients whose blood or saliva samples indicated that they had prior HPV infection were 32 times more likely to develop oropharnygeal cancer, which affects the throat, tonsils and back of the tongue.

And those people who had had more than six oral sex partners were 8.6 times more likely to develop the HPV-linked cancer.

The figures establish HPV infection as the greatest risk factor for this type of cancer, overturning previous theories blaming a pack-a-day smoking habit for 20 years, or regular heavy alcohol consumption over 15 years.

Source

In today’s society, the media and other sources of influence have convinced the majority black people to believe light skinned women should be more accepted than dark skinned females.

Our pop culture have drilled in our minds that light skinned women are a form of popular beauty. Take a look at the barbie aisle in your nearest Toy R US, how many light skinned barbies do you see?

Musical pop culture has played a dominate role in brain-washing our black females to feel insecure about their skin colour either dark or light skin. If we turn on BET 106 & Dumb, most video vixens are light skin (shaking ass, acting naughty) . Dark skinned women generally play the role as educated newscaster or women activist. Turn on CNN, BET NEWS or any talk show to see this come to play.

As you realize, our pop culture and black society have allowed our women to be stereotyped into categories of beauty. Light skinned female tends to be the woman of adventure and exotica and our dark skinned females are intelligent “wifey material/home girls”.

Our stereotypical views have hurt our black women in feeling insecure and self-conscious about themselves. Thus, weave, extensions, and bleach come into play in our society. Micheal Jackson is a perfect example! He felt the need to bleach his skin because of his discolouration and to boost his career further in the music industry (it worked).

The battle between dark and light skinned black females will never die, therefore, there really isn’t any true conclusion. But maybe its not a battle between the females but a battle within themselves fighting against pop culture up-bringing.

Insecurity can turn into insanity quickly. We can never abolish stereotypes in popular culture, however, we can minimize the effect on our black females by educating and discussing these views openly.

I’ve placed a video which briefly touches on this subject. This 7-minute video was developed and arranged by a 17-year old woman. She believes this is an important discussion for our black people to understand.

Click on video below.

In the 1970, discrimination and racism was running wild throughout North America, especially the USA. Also, there has been countless Black leaders fighting to open the door of opportunity for the Black people today. In advertising, black people were used in print ads targeting to their culture in Ebony Magazines. However, there was one brand that revolutionized advertising and broke down the racial barriers in TV commercial ad campaigns.

The brand that took this giant step to abolish this racial barrier is 7-UP. 7-Up wanted to create an ad to fit the tropical theme for the “7-UP UnCola” Campaign. The 7-Up company and their advertising agency hired Geoffrey Holder from Trinidad to help create a dramatic change in history.

In this ad, Geroffrey Holder is a Caribbean planter explaining the difference between cola nuts and 7-Up’s “uncola nuts”. If you watch this commercial you’ll notice that Holder cannot pronounce 7-Up, he says “7-mmmup”. This pronunciation was not scripted, giving the commercial a natural West Indian touch.

If you take into consideration all the racism and discrimination of this time, 7-Up was playing with fire. In the end, this became the most 100 memorable ads in history. Also, opening the doors for Black actors to star in TV commercials.

This was an Melanin Breakthrough with a passionate idea by 7-Up and their advertising agency!

Users of marijuana (also called cannabis) who vaporize the drug have fewer lung symptoms than those who smoke it, researchers report.

Based on his research, Dr. Mitch Earleywine said: “The argument that the medical use of cannabis is inappropriate because of its potential to create (lung) problems is now clearly invalid. Regular users of joints, blunts, pipes, and water pipes might decrease respiratory symptoms by switching to a vaporizer.”

Earleywine, of the State University of New York, Albany and colleagues note that marijuana smoking can lead to respiratory trouble. However, vaporizers heat cannabis to release the psychoactive ingredients, but remain cool enough to avoid the smoke and toxins associated with combustion.

To investigate what impact this might have, the researchers examined Internet survey responses from people who had used marijuana in the previous month.
Respondents who had cystic fibrosis or asthma or reported oral ingestion as their primary means of cannabis use were excluded, as were those who had inhaled other drugs.

Of the 6,882 marijuana users included in the study, only 152 (2.2 percent) reported vaporizing as their primary method of cannabis use.

However, 100 of these users — nearly 66 percent — reported no respiratory problems compared to 56 percent of those who did not use vaporizers.

“These data, in conjunction with previous work,” Earleywine said, “reveal that people can use cannabis without fear of respiratory problems.”

Source: http://www.healthrelatedinfos.com/2007/05/05/vaporized-marijuana-may-be-easier-on-the-lungs.html">

Born as a 80’s baby you’ll remember the explosion of hip-hop in the 90’s. Remember the day when you were exposed to B.I.G(R.I.P), Nas, Big Pun (R.I.P), Jay-Z, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Common, The Firm, CNN, Big L (R.I.P), 2 PAC (R.I.P) and many other rappers, don’t forget the Snoop Dogg. These rap artists and groups brought the street depression and their struggles into your ears. You were able to paint a picture of hood struggles providing you with food for thought. Hip-hop (the art form) was able to bring awareness of situations that Corporate America ignored. Also, Hip-hop brought unity into the Black Culture, saying “Hey, I can relate to that” “I’m not the only one”. As this music began to form into a popular genre the growth of BET rose into our lives as a daily channel for our black society.

Before BET sold out, we were able to watch BET as a family programming station for black culture. Even though the production was not the best, we looked beyond it because we had our own station. We were able to have a station that played our music, listen to our views, embraced our culture with positive enlightment. Corporate America saw this rise to action from our culture and they said ” Hey, we can capitalize from this market.” And so they did. BET was sold to Corporate America, destroying our music, controlling our society by dumming down our culture through meaningless music videos over and over again.

I’ll stop right here…Please watch this 4 part video below to understand the destruction of BET.

Click on the URL for the 4 Part Series :

Confessions of a BET Producer

Confessions of a BET Producer Part II

Confessions of a BET Producer Part III

Confessions of a BET Producer Part IV