When you look at the disparity between the need for urban development and how much the black dollar is spent, it kind of makes you scratch your head. While the answer as to where blacks spend their money and why may be a complex multi-faceted question, the solution is not so much: start investing in us. It's not that we don't understand the importance of black entrepreneurship, it's just that breaking the habit of old shopping norms as well as the assessing these storefronts is difficult.

Ranked fourth in the country in minority ownership — claiming 47,000 of 62,000 small businesses within the city — one would guess Detroit to be a hotbed for the black economy yet half of the new businesses are not surviving beyond five years. A new social group made up of young black professionals decided to take matters into their own hands and prove why the D is called 'America's Comeback City.'

According to the Michigan Chronicle, The Soulcial Scene’ has a two-fold mission: first, to create social events to attend and secondly, to provide an avenue for growth opportunities for black-owned businesses to survive and thrive in metropolitan cities such as Detroit. 

The Soulcial Scene bunch took on this social experience by shuttling residents and professionals to these set locations from the downtown and midtown office populations for happy hours during the work week and recruit subscriptions to a membership that includes monthly social events. Detroit is the testing ground but the plan is to spread to major cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

“Our goal is to use black-owned business growth as a tool to provide resources and job opportunities for black families, which we believe is the key to community transformation,” Damion Ellis, founder of The Soulcial Scene, shared with Michigan Chronicle. As a former finance executive for General Motors, he left solely to focus on supporting black businesses. This is just the beginning.