“Jacquise Purifoy wakes up every day to face the reality that in her city of Detroit, where 79 percent of the population is black, the average white-owned business makes $1.36 million in revenue a year, while the average black-owned business makes just $32,525 a year.
“Generational wealth gaps,” says Purifoy, a black woman. “I’ve had a white client tell me, basically, ‘Thank God Grandma died and gave me $250,000 from her will,’ and they opened a very lucrative business here in Detroit. Sadly when our grandmas die there’s no will, there’s no life insurance, we never get that kind of infusion. It’s the opposite. We end up on GoFundMe or selling fish dinners just to bury somebody.”