ICYMI: Veteran Financial Executive Jacob Walthour Outlines How New Jersey Can Better Help Black-Owned Businesses 

To Start Black History Month, Longtime Garden State Resident Says New Gubernatorial Administration Needs Better Procurement Process for NJ Contracts

New Jersey — Jacob Walthour, a renowned asset manager with more than 30 years in the financial industry, laid out a pathway on NJ.com yesterday for the Garden State to improve how it does business with Black-owned firms. In his piece, timed around the start of Black History Month, Walthour outlines the continued fight for economic justice in New Jersey, which only awarded 1% of State contracts to Black-owned firms over a five year period. 

Sherrill could make history by boosting N.J.’s 1% contracts for Black businesses
NJ.com

By Jacob Walthour

Less than two weeks after what would have been Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 97th birthday, we now mark another seminal moment with the start of Black History Month. In between these two major inflection points, my mind continues to draw back to the fact that the most impactful leader of a generation was assassinated nearly 60 years ago while fighting for basic civil rights and economic justice. To him, racial and economic justice were inseparable.  In fact, his final speech, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” delivered to the striking workers in Memphis, he declared that racial equality was impossible without economic equality.

While his assassination cut short his precious life, it laid the foundational basis for 60 years of struggle and continued demand for systemic solutions to injustice. I was three months old when Dr. King was assassinated. And, the sad truth is that for the majority of women and people of color and businesses owned by them not much has changed. Racial and gender bias are as real today as they were in the 1960’s. Therefore, I have resigned that I will spend the remainder of my lifetime advocating, agitating and litigating for economic justice.

Our nation voted overwhelmingly for a sequel, “Make America Great Again Part 2” in 2024. The first chapter of the book opened with outward hostility toward women and people of color under a false narrative that our minds, ideas and businesses are somehow inferior and part of America’s problem.  The reality is that the systematic exclusion of talented businesses owned by women and people of color is the biggest obstacle to “Making America Great Again.”  The entrenched “old-boy” networks that control capital and contracts are suppressing job creation and wealth formation, and ultimately limiting the potential not only of individual Americans but of the nation as a whole.

I reside in New Jersey which despite its “Blue State” status is the “poster child” for racial bias. The state government begrudgingly released a report two years ago that confirmed it had only awarded a paltry 1% of government contracts to Black-owned businesses between 2015 and 2020. In the professional services sector, Black-owned owned firms won $13.7 million in contracts — an eye-popping 2,381% less than the $3.4 billion awarded to those owned by white men. If that wasn’t alarming enough, look at the State’s construction awards: $3.3 million to Black-owned firms compared to $10.8 billion to white male-owned ones. A state that prides itself on diversity publicly has practiced an irrefutable policy of racial and sexual marginalization and a single percent to Black-owned businesses in a state in which we make up some 15% of the population is inexcusable. 

The United States has been a capitalist nation since its founding; it’s why people come here. We pride ourselves for being a country where anyone, regardless or race or sex, can build wealth and realize the American Dream. I am Black and my family has lived the American Dream.  I believe in it and will forever fight against barriers to the American Dream.

As New Jersey’s new governor, Mikie Sherrill has an opportunity to honor Dr. King’s legacy not only through words, but through action. The state has real financial struggles including a looming multi-billion deficit and a severely underfunded pension plan.  She must recognize that businesses founded and led by women and people of color are not the problem, but they are part of the solution.  They are an untapped source of excellence, growth, performance and competition.

Let’s see whether she understands that making America great again begins with honoring talent over tradition, and opening the field to those most worthy of the chance to rise up, compete and succeed.

Jacob Walthour has been a New Jersey resident for the past 28 years and is a 30-year veteran of the financial industry. Since 2015, he has served as CEO of Blueprint Capital Advisors.